The ceremony at the Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium Brown & Williamson Club honored faculty in six categories:
- the President’s Distinguished Faculty Awards for outstanding service; teaching; and scholarship, research and creative activity
- the President’s Exemplary Multicultural Teaching Award
- newly endowed chairs and professors
- the Paul Weber Departmental Excellence in Teaching Award
- university scholars and distinguished university scholars
- creative work resulting in new patents and licenses
There are many wonderful celebrations that are part of the academy, said President James Ramsey. Today’s program is one of those very special occasions in the life of our institution, for we pause this afternoon to pay tribute and to honor our outstanding faculty who have distinguished themselves among their peers and in their professions. We thank each of these individuals for their work.
In all, 49 individual faculty members and one collaborative group received recognition.
UofL Today will run information on the honorees in segments starting today with the President’s Distinguished Faculty Award and Exemplary Multicultural Teaching Award winners.
The following comes from nomination materials and from the Office of the President. While the faculty who earned these awards have extensive curricula vitae and are distinguished in many areas, UofL Today pulled information that focused on their respective award areas. Selection committees ask nominees for distinguished teaching to provide statements on their teaching philosophies. Parts of those also have been included.
Richard Aud, DFA for career of service, School of Medicine
Richard Aud, a full-time faculty member in the Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine since 1991, has focused on community outreach throughout his career. As the state’s Area Health Education Center medical director Aud serves as liaison among UofL, area health education centers and community-based faculty. Previously he directed the Kentucky Interdisciplinary Community Screening program. During his tenure from 1993 to 2005, students and faculty from UofL’s schools of nursing, dentistry, medicine and social work, and health education students and faculty from Western Kentucky University provided more than 3,550 comprehensive health screenings to patients in 37 rural and 10 urban underserved locations. Aud also helped start a family medicine residency program in Glasgow and served as a visiting professor for that program, plus he has developed outreach programs and worked with Hispanic communities in Shelbyville and Bowling Green, as well as with the Mennonite community in Scottsville.
Donald Miller, DFA for service to the community, commonwealth and region, School of Medicine
Donald Miller is the director of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center (JGBCC) and UofL’s associate vice president for health affairs. Miller has been active in the community since he came to UofL in 1999. He has served on the board of directors of the Kentucky Lung Cancer Research Fund since its inception in 2000 and as director of its grants program since 2001. This program is a 20-year initiative that mandates the combined efforts of UofL and the University of Kentucky in lung cancer translational and clinical research, early detection and epidemiology initiatives, and in developing the Kentucky Clinical Trial Network.
Miller served on the board of the Louisville chapter of the Komen Foundation from 2001 to 2008 and now is chair of the chapter’s grant program. The Louisville chapter serves eight counties and has raised and granted millions of dollars to local breast health programs. Miller also serves on the board of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Louisville chapter.
Gordon Tobin, DFA for national/international service, School of Medicine
Gordon Tobin, surgery professor and director emeritus of plastic and reconstructive surgery, is chairman of the Kentucky Medical Association and past president of both the Greater Louisville Medical Society and the Kentucky Society of Plastic Surgeons. As KMA president, he directs advocacy programs that address health disparities and drug abuse and that support addiction recovery programs across the state. Tobin co-founded the Louisville-Vietnam Burn Care Project and has been involved for years with various Supplies Over Seas international medical aid projects. He has led many volunteer missions to perform reconstructive surgery for burn victims and birth defects in Third World countries. He received UofL’s Fitzbutler Prize for Humanitarianism in Medicine, the Caritas Foundation Award for International Humanitarian Service and Whitman College Alumnus of Merit Award. Tobin is a member of the Louisville team that conducted research for the world’s first successful hand transplant. His current research focuses on composite tissue allografts (hand and face transplants), ethics of novel transplants and wound healing.
Jerry Tolson, DFA for service to UofL and Exemplary Multicultural Teaching Award, School of Music
Jerry Tolson, associate professor of jazz studies and music education, directs jazz ensembles and teaches jazz pedagogy, style and history as well as African American music and teacher education. Tolson is an internationally known clinician, adjudicator, guest conductor, instructor and jazz performer. He co-founded UofL’s African American Music Heritage Institute and teacher training institutes sponsored by the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE). He serves on the UofL Athletic Association board and coordinates the national anthem singers for the UofL men’s basketball program. Tolson has served on the University Club and IAJE boards, the Commission on Diversity and Racial Equality and many other university committees. He extends UofL’s reach through work with a percussion program at Portland Neighborhood House, part of UofL’s Signature Partnership, and with the Louisville Leopards group.
In addition to the distinguished faculty honor, Tolson also received the Multicultural Teaching Award. Tolson believes that to understand and appreciate the creation and performance of music, it is important that people recognize social, economic and cultural factors.
Barbara Wheeler, DFA for service to the profession, School of Music
Barbara Wheeler, a University Scholar and professor of music therapy, came to UofL to establish its music therapy program in 2000. She also has developed music therapy programs at several Louisville hospitals and worked with people with various health problems. Wheeler is active in local, national and international music therapy. She helped set up the Music Therapy Association of Kentucky shortly after the UofL program began and has served since that time on its executive board. She is an American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) past president; during her two-year presidency she attended and presented at seven regional conferences, represented AMTA at international conferences and helped initiate changes in its professional journals. She received the AMTA 1999 Publication and Research Award and the 2005 Southeastern Region-AMTA Service Award. Wheeler previously served on the Council of the World Federation of Music Therapy, helping it to develop worldwide educational guidelines. She has been keynote speaker and conference presenter throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, Asia and South America.
John Eaton, DFA for career achievement, scholarship, research and creative activity, School of Medicine
John Eaton began his academic career teaching anthropology, but drifted into biomedical research. He has worked on a variety of topics ranging from infectious and hematologic diseases to biomaterials. Over the years, Eaton’s laboratory has identified the cause of hemolytic anemia in dialysis patients, found abnormalities in red cell calcium content in patients with sickle cell disease, floated an explanation for why people in tropical climates have dark skin, identified a toxin produced by whooping cough that impairs host defense, examined the metabolic interdependence of red cells and malaria parasites, partially explained the inflammatory response to implanted biomaterials, elucidated the cause of hemolytic anemia in cats eating semi-moist cat food and developed a method for coating red cells with a polymer that hides blood group antigens. Eaton is the James Graham Brown professor of cancer biology, professor of medicine and pharmacology/toxicology and deputy director of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center.
Kent Hatteberg, DFA for creative and performing arts, scholarship, research and creative activity; School of Music
Kent Hatteberg is director of choral activities and a University Scholar. He conducts the Collegiate Chorale, the Cardinal Singers and the University Chorus. Ensembles under his direction have performed at several national music association conventions in the United States and at the Seventh World Symposium on Choral Music in Japan, the Taipei International Choral Festival and the Beijing International Choral Festival. Under his direction the Cardinal Singers have won international recognition at such choral competitions as the World Choir Championships (South Korea, 2009), the Harmonie Festival (Lindenhausen, Germany, 2005), the Marktoberdorf Chamber Choir Competition (Germany, 2005) and the Choir Olympics (Bremen, Germany, 2004). Hatteberg is active nationally and internationally as a guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator and recently served on the international jury at the Tolosa Choral Contest in Tolosa, Spain. He also is chorus master for the Louisville Orchestra and serves as co-director of the Kentucky Ambassadors of Music, a program that gives students from across Kentucky the opportunity to perform and tour in Europe..
Sumanth Prabhu, DFA for basic and applied sciences, scholarship, research and creative activity; School of Medicine
Sumanth Prabhu is a professor in the Department of Medicine, director of heart failure/transplantation research in the Institute of Molecular Cardiology, chief of cardiology at UofL Hospital and a University Scholar. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. A cardiologist and clinician-scientist, Prabhu’s research centers on the mechanisms of cardiac dysfunction in heart failure. The importance of his research is self-evident, since heart failure affects more than 5 million Americans. Prabhu has made discoveries that have advanced scientific knowledge and increased scientists’ understanding of heart failure. He also has made discoveries that suggest why beta-blockers benefit patients with heart failure – something scientists have known to be true, but haven’t known why.
One of Prabhu’s research interests is cardiac risk factors related to environmental pollution. That work has taken him into the community where his team found increased risk for heart disease and asthma in neighborhoods adjacent to Louisville’s industrialized areas. A grant to fund Prabhu’s environmental health research has allowed him to establish the Louisville Healthy Heart Clinic, which is also open to patients.
Gary Crim, DFA for full-time teaching, School of Dentistry
Gary Crim has taught at UofL since 1976 and is an expert in dental materials and operative dentistry – foundation subjects that dental students will draw upon throughout their careers. He also teaches courses in ethics in dentistry. The associate dean of predoctoral education, Crim directs several courses each semester and gives more than 50 lectures each year. His use of evidence-based dentistry serves as a template for other courses in the school’s curriculum. Education, he said, begins and ends with respect. Effective, successful human beings have the need to be respected. Feeling respected is the best way to bring out the potential that is within each student.
Donn Everette Graham, DFA for full-time teaching, School of Music
Donn Everette Graham, who began teaching at UofL in 1980, has performed extensively as a singer, throughout Western Europe and the United States since 1972, appearing in operas, concerts, oratorios and recitals. Teaching singing, he said, encompasses many skills such as as vocal technique; language diction in Italian, Latin, French, German and English; musicianship; interpretation of a poem, text, ballad, narrative; communication and presentation of a song, aria, recitative and more. It also involves coaching students on how to prepare a performance that meets the standards of the international music community. Everette noted that working with students who wish to become singers, teachers, choral conductors, ministers of music … gives me the opportunity to communicate and interact with students at many levels, and I cherish this opportunity each and every day.
Robert Luginbill, DFA for full-time teaching, College of Arts & Sciences
Robert D. Luginbill came to UofL in 1991 and is a professor of Greek and Latin in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages. His teaching style and classroom demeanor have been called extremely engaging, and he has a passionate interest in his students’ development. Luginbill said he tries to motivate every student not only to love Greek and Latin as I do, but also to embrace them, to engage heart and soul for the entire hour and to take away more than knowledge – to take away a joy, a determination and a measure of insight that lasts beyond the day, throughout life’s voyage if at all possible. Luginbill uses music, realia, multimedia, computer-assisted education, books, libraries and outside venues as teaching tools. He also tries, he said, to integrate the learning experiences of his students into the broader college experience by working closely with colleagues in the humanities and liberal arts.
David Richardson, DFA for full-time teaching, School of Medicine
David Richardson has been in the Department of Surgery since 1976. He is departmental vice chair as well as chief of surgery and director of emergency surgical services at UofL Hospital. Richardson brings a unique blend of common sense, intense knowledge of the literature, and clinical experience and wisdom to his teaching. He said his philosophy is to make learning fun and relevant, noting that third-year medical students have been working toward becoming doctors for at least six years by the time they begin clinical work. They are older and may be somewhat jaded. For students, where stress seems inevitable and the fear factor of attending (particularly in surgery) is occasionally palpable, I have always tried to reduce stress and involve students as much as possible in the learning experience in the lecture and small group format. His approach, he said, is similar for residents. I have viewed much of my job as acting as a mentor, particularly in matters of professionalism and interpersonal relationships.
Robert Urekew, DFA for part-time teaching, College of Arts & Sciences
Robert Urekew has been a member of the Department of Philosophy’s part-time faculty since 2000. He teaches classes in Louisville and in UofL’s Panama program, as well as online. It is my belief that the accent in higher education should always be on the learner, not the instructor, Urekew said. Learning is an activity. …. When the instructor is active, the student is passive. This would seem to be at odds with the goals of education. With this in mind, I believe that the instructor is not so much a teacher as a facilitator, one who promotes active learning in and among the students. The instructor does this by facilitating interaction at every level and opportunity. My goal is the empowerment of my students to become independent, critical thinkers.
