CAS Teaching Award Winners Announced

• Four College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) faculty members were named winners of the 2001 Tina and David Bellet CAS Teaching Excellence Awards.
• The annual teaching awards were established with a $200,000 donation from the Bellet family to recognize outstanding and innovative teaching in CAS.
• This year's winners are: George C. Bandik, Department of Chemistry; Paul Kameen, Department of English; John C. Ramirez, Department of Computer Science; and Edward M. Stricker, Department of Neuroscience.
• Each award recipient will receive a one-time cash prize of $2,000 and a grant of $3,000 in support of his teaching. The recipients will be honored at an awards dinner on April 21 at 6 p.m. in the William Pitt Union Ballroom.
• Ramirez, who joined the Pitt faculty in 1992, teaches undergraduate computer science courses across a broad range, from introductory(Introduction to Computer Science), to intermediate (Introduction to Information Structures), to upper-level (Data Structures and Algorithms).
• The computer science department has consistently recognized Ramirez for high-quality instruction by 12 times presenting him the departmental award for "the highest rating of overall teaching effectiveness," which is based on student evaluations.
• In addition to classroom teaching, Ramirez contributes to the department as director of the undergraduate program, coordinator of undergraduate advising and faculty adviser to the student chapter of the Association for Computer Machinery.
• In the area of community service, Ramirez serves as the computer science liaison to the College in High School Program and project associate and instructor for the Link-to-Learn Project funded by the State of Pennsylvania.