Allison Druin won the UMD Outstanding Faculty award this year out of over 50 nominees throughout the entire university. She was nominated by her group of undergraduate Gemstones students who she has mentored for the past 3 years.
Gemstones is an honors program for undergraduates to participate in research.
Gemstone is a three year research program in which 6-12 students from diverse majors come together in multidisciplinary teams to conduct projects that examine issues of major societal importance. Each team develops their own project guided by a faculty mentor. The role of this mentor is to oversee the progress of the team and assist them in developing a project to pursue. Dr. Druin has done this and more. When we decided to nominate Dr. Druin for an outstanding faculty member award we had a hard time determining whether to nominate her as an outstanding teacher or outstanding advisor as Dr. Druin has been both for all seven of us.