University Times

CAS teaching award winners announced

Winners and nominees for the David and Tina Bellet CAS Teaching Excellence Award will be recognized at a dinner April 17 in the William Pitt Union Ballroom.

Harold B. Rollins of geology and planetary sciences and Philip Watts of French and Italian languages and literatures have been named winners of the first Bellet CAS Teaching Excellence Award. The winners were announced by Associate Dean Beverly Harris-Schenz.

Each winner will receive $2,000 plus a grant of $3,000 in support of his teaching. The CAS teaching award was established by the Bellet family to recognize outstanding and innovative teaching in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Rollins has been a member of the Pitt faculty since 1968, teaching everything from large survey courses that fulfill general curriculum requirements to advanced seminars for majors. He has been a mentor for undergraduate research projects and has served for 15 years as undergraduate adviser to department majors. He assisted in developing the environmental studies major and is an instructor in its core curriculum, and advises the Environmental Studies Club.

Watts has been a member of the Pitt faculty since 1992. He teaches a variety of courses devoted to French language, culture and literature, including an Introduction to French Civilization for freshmen and sophomores and an undergraduate seminar on the literature and cinema of Algeria. During his tenure here, he has taught 33 different courses, 25 of which were for CAS undergraduates. Watts also serves as a departmental undergraduate adviser, has directed the "Pitt in France" program in Nantes for the last three years, arranged placement of three Pitt students as teachers of English in France, and organized a translation workshop for undergraduate majors with a French novelist and his American translator.

Other faculty nominated for this year's award were John Garies, communication and rhetoric; Susan Godfrey, biological sciences; Martin Greenburg, psychology; James Knapp, English; Barbara McCloskey, history of art and architecture; Keiko McDonald, East Asian languages and literatures; Linda Penkower, religious studies; Edward Powell, studio arts; Paul Rasmussen, chemistry; Carol Stabile, communication and rhetoric; Sabine von Dirke, Germanic languages and literatures, and David Waldeck, chemistry.