Assistant Chemical Engineering Professor Matthew Panzer was last week named the Dr. Gerald R. Gill Professor of the Year, marking the first time the award has been chosen by the student body.
The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate this year altered the selection process to extend participation to the entire student body through an email nomination process. The Senate initiated the Professor of the Year Award in 1999, and Gill, who passed away in 2007, was its inaugural recipient.
This new process allowed the choice to reflect the voice of the student body, according to TCU Education Chair Chartise Clark.
"I decided to open it up just because the award is supposed to come from students," Clark said. "I thought that it would just be a much more authentic and much more legitimate process if … the student body actually got to do it themselves, as opposed [to] us just picking," Clark said.
The more transparent selection process will allow the recipient to be representative of Tufts' diverse students and not just of the academically homogenous composition of the Senate, according to Clark.
Since the Senate is typically composed primarily of students studying political science, Clark said the selection process could be "skewed" against professors in other departments.
Clarke sent an email to all students requesting nominations for outstanding faculty members, she said. The committee then reduced the pool of nominated professors to a group of six finalists.
Panzer was chosen by paper ballot in the Mayer Campus Center by voters from the student body last Tuesday, according to junior Jessica Kulig, who was a member of the committee responsible for selecting the finalists.
In selecting finalists, the committee looked for candidates who, according to the students' descriptions, uphold the legacy of the award's namesake, a late Tufts history professor.
"The award is named after Gerald Gill, known for his distinguished scholarship, teaching, leadership and advising," Kulig said. "Considering those characteristics, we looked at … professors who took a personal interest in students and their success in the classroom and university as a whole."
Currently in his second year at Tufts, Panzer said he felt humbled by the award.
"I feel really honored," Panzer said. "It's really clear to me that I'm definitely doing the job of my dreams. I'm so glad that I went into the academic life; I love being a student, and it's really rewarding for me to pass that on, to help new students get excited about engineering and the sort of things I was excited about as a student. So it's extremely rewarding, I love coming to work every day."
Panzer, who teaches a course on thermodynamics required for all sophomore chemical engineering majors, described his pedagogical approach as "distilling" information down to the essentials. He strives to teach with enthusiasm, he said.
"If you don't, it's going to be pretty dry and boring," he said. "It's a lot of math, it's a lot of abstract concepts, lots of variables, lots of Greek letters."
Outside of the classroom, Panzer, along with undergraduate and graduate student assistants, conducts research with a focus on innovative alternative energy.
"My research is in alternative energy, so it's nontraditional chemical engineering … we look at things like solar cells, and specifically we use nontraditional materials," Panzer said. "So we're trying to make next generation solar cells using things like polymers and organic molecules, which could potentially be cheaper, lighter, more flexible."
A reception will be held to honor Panzer and the other finalists towards the end of April, according to Clark.
