Skip to Navigation
University of Pittsburgh
Print This Page Print this pages

April 4, 2002

CAS names Bellet teaching award winners

Four Pitt Faculty and College of Arts and Sciences faculty members were named winners of the 2002 Tina and David Bellet CAS Teaching Excellence Awards.

The annual teaching awards were established in 1998 with a $200,000 donation from the Bellet family to recognize outstanding and innovative teaching in undergraduate Arts and Sciences.

This year's winners are: John W. Gareis, communication; Keiko I. McDonald, East Asian languages and literatures; Francesca L. Savoia, French and Italian languages and literatures, and Aaron Sheon, history of art and architecture.

Each award recipient will receive a one-time cash prize of $2,000 and a grant of $3,000 in support of his or her teaching.

Gareis has been a member of the Pitt faculty since 1988. His teaching responsibilities have included undergraduate courses in Organizational Communication, Small Group Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Communication Process, Public Speaking and Freshman Studies.

In recognition of his teaching, Gareis also is the recipient of the CGS Apple for the Teacher Award, the International Communication Association Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Golden Key National Honor Society and the Student Government Board Faculty Honor Roll. He is an honorary member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

In the communication department, Gareis is the director of undergraduate academic advising, a member of the department's Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and the College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Curriculum Review Committee. He serves as faculty adviser to the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and adviser to the Undergraduate Communication Club.

A member of the Pitt faculty since 1975, McDonald has taught undergraduate courses in Japanese Culture and Society Through Cinema, Introduction to Japanese Literature, Fourth-Year Japanese, Westerns and Samurai Films, Introduction to East Asian Cinema, Japanese Literature on Screen and Fourth-Year Japanese II.

McDonald is the recipient of the Asian Studies Teaching Excellence Award and has twice been named to the Student Government Board's Faculty Honor Roll. In the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, she is the undergraduate academic adviser for the Japanese program.

Savoia has been a Pitt faculty member since 1985. Her undergraduate courses have included Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced Italian, Italian Conversation, Advanced Composition, Phonetics, The Novel, Short Fiction, Lyric Poetry, Theater, Italian Cultural Heritage and Italian Theatrical Workshop.

Sheon has taught a wide range of undergraduate courses including Art and Scientific Thought, Modern Art Survey, Contemporary Art, History of Graphic Arts, History of Photography, Art Historical Methods and Theory, 18th-Century Art, 20th-Century Art, Romanticism and Neoclassicism, Realism and Impressionism, Modern Sculpture, Van Gogh, the Undergraduate Writing Seminar, Study Abroad, the History and Architecture of Paris, Field of Research, Realism and Revivals in 19th-Century Art, 19th-Century Graphic Arts, Landscape Painting, Photography and Painting, Realism, and France Between the World Wars.

With a research award from Arts and Sciences, Sheon is developing a touch museum and an art history course for blind and vision impaired students and adults.

Sheon has been named to the Student Government Board's Faculty Honor Roll. He is the Department of the History of Art and Architecture's undergraduate academic adviser.

Sheon has been a member of the Pitt faculty since 1966.

The four faculty Bellet award recipients will be honored at a dinner April 13 in the Schenley Ballroom at the Holiday Inn University Center.


Leave a Reply