According to Bruce Bursten, chairman of the Department of Chemistry, his department plans to use the cash award to fund a summer course for high school teachers and will apply the annual rate to salaries or toward hiring a new faculty or staff member. The winners were selected by a committee consisting of three Alumni Association members, three students and one faculty member from each department that has been a recipient of the award during the past three years. Others chosen as finalists this year were the French, linguistics and East Asian languages and literatures departments. Garland said it was difficult to compare the smaller departments to the larger ones. The hard job the committee has is comparing apples and oranges, Garland said.
Chemistry is a huge operation with a huge commitment to teaching.
We have the luxury of investing our time with individual students. According to Garland, faculty attentiveness to students was one of the main things the selection committee noticed about the food science and technology department. What struck us was the enthusiasm of the students for the program and faculty, Garland said. She also pointed out the department showed a high level of cultural diversity in proportion to its size, which the committee found impressive. People just seem to be committed to making it work, she said.