2023 Faculty Excellence Award winners are honored for their brilliance and leadership
2023 Faculty Excellence Award winners are honored for their brilliance and leadership
The UDC Faculty Excellence Awards recognizes the outstanding achievements and accomplishments of faculty in four categories: Faculty Excellence in Service, Scholarly/Creative Works, Teaching and External Funding. Faculty honorees were nominated by their deans and selected by the Executive Cabinet. They were recognized during the Faculty Appreciation Luncheon on May 1.
2023 Faculty Excellence in Service Award
Dr. Angelyn Flowers, professor of homeland security and administration of justice, project director, UDC HS-STEM Program, co-director, Institute for Public Safety & Justice, coordinator, Crime, Justice & Security Studies Program.
What does this award mean to you?
Receiving the Faculty Excellence in Service Award is an honor. So many faculty at the University of the District of Columbia go “above and beyond” in answering the call to serve our students, our institution and our university—that to be singled out is humbling.
What does working at UDC mean to you?
A very old and revered book says, “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” Working at UDC to me, is about feeding people for a lifetime. It is an opportunity not only to enhance people’s material/economic position, but also their spirit and intellect. It is about reaching not only that individual student, but indirectly, their family and community. Working at UDC, in short, is about answering a call to activism through building the future, one person at a time.
What are your near-future plans in terms of work goals?
Once I survive the spring semester, I plan to spend the summer working on my research activities and prepping for my fall classes.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Awards are given to individuals, but no individual is in a position to be considered for an award without the assistance and support of those around them. The faculty in the Crime, Justice, and Security program work tirelessly to support our students, strengthen and continuously update our two academic programs (M.S. in Homeland Security, and B.A. in Administration of Justice), all while maintaining strong research interests as well as profiles at the professional and national levels. I therefore want to extend my deepest appreciation to the CJSS faculty, who continue to be there for our students in circumstances that can sometimes be challenging. Looking broadly, I also want to acknowledge the support of the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the College of Arts & Sciences. Finally, it is important that I acknowledge the administrative personnel throughout the University, who always respond to my sometimes-frantic requests for assistance. It is the support of all of these individuals that frankly make me look good, and I am deeply grateful.
2023 Faculty Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Works Award
Dr. Bryan Higgs, assistant professor, Department of Civil Engineering and director of the UDC Center of Climate Change Analytics.
What does this award mean to you?
This award means recognition for making a difference, which makes me feel valued as a faculty member. It also affirms that my ideas and goals are making an impact that is being noticed. Overall, it gives me a boost of motivation that I will be applying to further my research goals.
What does working at UDC mean to you?
Working at UDC means making a difference, a difference in students’ lives, a difference in the community and a difference in the world. Being in a position to motivate and enable students to achieve their goals is highly rewarding. Being able to conduct research to address the issues facing society is highly rewarding as well.
What are your near-future plans in terms of work goals?
My plans are to continue to grow the newly established UDC Center of Climate Change Analytics, for which I serve as director. I envision that this center will be a unifying hub for faculty to come together and work on the issue of climate change. My work focuses on the application of game theory, where the decisions that we make today are affecting the projected future climate of the planet. The UDC Center of Climate Change Analytics is meant to expand on my work and enable research that explores the impacts of climate change across a variety of fields of study ranging from social impacts to economic impacts to critical infrastructure systems and beyond.
Anything else you’d like to share?
I was awarded a $1,000,000 NSF grant for the project titled “HBCU-RISE: Game Theory Based Climate Change Impact Analysis for the Protection of Critical Infrastructure Systems.” This grant will be funding four Ph.D. students to grow our Ph.D. program. Based on this research, I mentored a computer science student, Karla Dimitri, for a poster competition at the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute Annual meeting, where she earned second place. I have to recognize my research team (Dr. Pradeep Behera, Dr. Hossain Azam, Dr. Thabet Kacem and Dr. Dong Jeong) as it has been a team effort to put together a winning proposal and then execute the plans from that proposal.
2023 Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award
Dr. Amanda Huron, associate professor of political science and interdisciplinary social sciences and coordinator of the Political Science Program.
What does this award mean to you?
I am deeply honored to have my teaching recognized in this way. Teaching is such a profoundly creative act, and I love thinking of new ways to help students learn. Receiving this award tells me that my teaching work has been seen.
What does working at UDC mean to you?
I am so fortunate to be able to teach at the public university in my hometown. Much of my research focuses on the city of DC, and in particular the city’s history, and I am lucky to be able to teach at a place that values that specific expertise. I adore my colleagues, and our students are a fantastic group.
What are your near-future plans in terms of work goals?
This summer I will be working on a grant-funded research project with Dr. Elizabeth Gearin, my colleague in CAUSES, “Mapping Contemporary and Historic Ecological Stewardship in Washington, DC.” I will also be consulting as a DC history content expert for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) as they revise their social studies standards, including their DC history standards. I’m also working on a new research project in the field of urban ecology and geography, examining the concept of an urban pollinator commons.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Go Firebirds!
2023 Faculty Excellence in Extramural Funding Award
Dr. Hongmei Dang, assistant professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
What does this award mean to you?
I am very honored and grateful to receive the faculty award. This award is recognition of my outstanding contribution in promoting a culture of excellence in teaching and research at UDC with ~$12 million federal grants-Department of Energy grant, NSF-CREST Grant, NSF-Major Research Instrumentation Award, NIST-PREP grant.
What does working at UDC mean to you?
UDC is a premier institution that offers affordable and effective undergraduate, graduate, professional and workplace learning opportunities in the nation’s capital. It is my honor to work here. UDC provides a diverse work environment so that I can focus on enhancing teaching and research skills and providing students with experiential learning experience and interdisciplinary knowledge and skills in microelectronics field. The University also provides excellent training and a life-long learning environment. I can continue to advance the current curriculum development and advise students’ research in an effort to prepare a diverse, highly competitive workforce in rapidly evolving hardware technologies. It is great that all of my teaching, research and services serve UDC and diverse students, and increase the visibility of the school in the research and professional community.
What are your near-future plans as far as your work goes?
My work is dedicated to advances in electrical and computer engineering/microelectronics, which are matters of critical national importance. My plans for the near future are to continue to conduct cutting edge research in highly demand fields such as semiconductors, microelectronics, novel materials and renewable energy area. I will also develop new research directions in quantum computing and artificial intelligence and support a wide range of multi-level research from undergraduate to Ph.D. students by advising their research. I plan to provide experiential learning to undergraduate and graduate students at UDC, local K-12 students and teachers to develop a well-trained, diverse workforce for U.S. national needs in semiconductor and microelectronics. Finally, I will create a successful partnership with Federal laboratory and local research Universities to promote UDC become a nationally competitive research university.
Anything else you’d like to share?
We would like to have more students enrolled in electrical and computer engineering. In electrical and computer engineering, students will be exposed to very exciting fields-signal and processing, communication and networking, cybersecurity, smart grid and renewable energy, microelectronics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
