Thank you to all of the junior and senior undergraduate students who participated in the polling for the 2021 W.A. Gustafson Teaching Award.  Based upon the student responses, the recipient of this year’s W. A. Gustafson Teaching Award is Prof. Tyler Tallman.

Congratulations to Tyler on this recognition from our students! 

The rest of the top five recipients of student votes for the 2021 Gustafson Award are:

Joe Jewell

Bill Crossley

Sergey Macheret

Leif Leifsson (tie)

Kathie Howell (tie)

As the top-placing assistant professor in the Gustafson balloting this year, AAE will nominate Tyler to be the College of Engineering’s candidate for the University-level Early Career Teaching Award.  Last year, Tyler was also the top-placing assistant professor in the Gustafson balloting, so he was nominated for and subsequently won the College’s Early Career Teaching Award.  He also ended up as the College’s candidate for the University-level Early Career Award.  Tyler is not eligible to repeat as the College-level award winner, but he can repeat as the College’s nominee for the University-level award.

This means that Prof. Joe Jewell, as the highest-placing eligible assistant professor in the Gustafson balloting, will be our nominee for the College’s Early Career Teaching Award this year. 

This year’s Gustafson balloting led to the closest scoring in recent memory between the top-two faculty members, so it is great that we can move both Tyler and Joe forward for higher-level recognition for their teaching efforts.

The School also uses the Gustafson award to select our nominee for the University-level Murphy Teaching award, which limits eligibility to associate and full professors; this makes Prof. Bill Crossley the School’s nominee for the Murphy award.

The Gustafson Teaching award is named to honor Winthrop A. (Gus) Gustafson, who was a faculty member in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 1960 to 1998 and had a distinguished career of teaching and service to the School, including serving as the Associate Head and undergraduate counselor from 1981 to 1998.

Again, congratulations to all of the tenured and tenure-track faculty identified by students as demonstrating teaching excellence, particularly while we continue to work through issues related to teaching during the COVID pandemic.