As UNT grows, so does its commitment to offering a high-quality education to undergraduate and graduate students across the disciplines. The university’s faculty members are winning more awards for teaching, research and creative activities. And when faculty succeed, student achievement follows.
This fall, talented students and faculty members earned nationally competitive awards for their work in fields as diverse as fashion design, communication design, computer science, plant biology, chemistry, geography and psychology.
Student excellence
Robert Richard, a double major in fashion design and fashion merchandising, created a job interview suit that earned him second place and a $4,000 scholarship at the national Design Your Future competition presented by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities and Gap Inc. Richard was one of five finalists who competed in September during HACU’s 24th annual conference.
For an interactive design class at UNT, communication design senior Emily Schwarting, used Adobe After Effects software to create an interface concept that helps people shop for food while looking for recipes to fit their groceries. Her project was named one of three finalists in the non-browser-based design category at the international Adobe Design Achievement Awards 2010, the world’s premier design, film, and interactive media competition for higher education students.
Five Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science students were named regional finalists at the 2010-11 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology for their research in computer science, chemistry and biological sciences, and another 11 students were named semifinalists, winning more awards than students from any other participating Texas school.
Emily video
View Emily Schwarting's Adobe Design Achievement Awards page
Chemistry doctoral student Chris Dewberry won an award to attend the Nobel Laureates Meeting in Lindau, Germany, this year, the third UNT student chosen in three years. Top students and young researchers from around the world apply. At UNT, Dewberry constructs and tests prototype microwave spectrometers, which provide information about a molecule’s geometry and electronic structure.
And doctoral student Joe Louis has been selected to receive the 2010 John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Award by the Entomological Society of America. Louis, who is working toward his doctoral degree in plant molecular biology, is one of five students across the country chosen to receive the prestigious and highly competitive award designed to promote interest in entomology at the graduate level.
Award-winning faculty
Several UNT researchers have received national and international recognition this fall for their work.
Cheng Yu, assistant professor of engineering technology, is UNT’s newest recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the most prestigious award the NSF gives to young investigators. His research will help design stronger, reliable cold-formed steel buildings to withstand earthquakes or hurricanes. Yu is the sixth UNT faculty member to receive a CAREER award.
Feifei Pan, assistant professor of geography, has been selected to receive one of 32 nationally competitive Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, from 114 applicants. Pan was one of only four faculty members from Texas colleges and universities selected as winners. He is the seventh UNT faculty member to win a Powe award since 2005.
For his work promoting disability issues in psychology graduate training and education, Randall J. Cox, principal lecturer in psychology and director of the Psychology Clinic, received the Distinguished Contributions to the Advancement of Disability Issues in Psychology Award. It is given by the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Disability Issues in Psychology.
Wes Borden, the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry, received the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, one of the American Chemical Society’s most prestigious honors.
And Angela Wilson, professor of chemistry and co-director of the Center for Advanced Scientific Computing and Modeling (CASCaM), has been named to the 2010 Class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society. She also received this year’s international Quantum Systems in Chemistry and Physics Promising Scientist Award of CMOA (the Centre de Mécanique Ondulatoire Appliquée in Paris).
