Four selected for Graduate Mentoring Awards

Princeton NJ -- Four faculty members have been named the inaugural recipients of Graduate Mentoring Awards and will be honored during the Graduate School's hooding ceremony on Monday, June 3.
    They are: Sara Curran, assistant professor of sociology; Barbara Hahn, professor of Germanic languages and literatures; Mansour Shayegan, professor of electrical engineering; and Elias Stein, the Albert Baldwin Dod Professor of Mathematics.
    The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, together with the Graduate School, instituted the award this year to honor Princeton faculty members whose work with graduate students is particularly outstanding.
    "To our surprise and delight, approximately 100 students responded," said Georgia Nugent, dean of the McGraw Center. "In all, 36 faculty members from 21 different departments were put forward by appreciative graduate students."
    One faculty member in each academic division (humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering) was chosen for the award by a committee of faculty members and graduate students. In addition to being honored at the ceremony, each will receive a commemorative gift.

Curran's teaching and research interests include internal migration, family demography, gender and development in the global south, particularly Southeast Asia. She has been a faculty member at Princeton since 1996.
    In nominating her for the award, students mentioned her dedicated guidance in their efforts to write research papers and her work to collaborate with them on projects. Others appreciated her advice on career-related issues.
    "She, more than any other professor I know, came to personify that ideal Princeton teacher whose dedication to students and their pursuit of knowledge forms the very essence of the Princeton experience," wrote one.

Hahn also joined the Princeton faculty in 1996. Her research and teaching interests include the history of Jewish acculturation in Germany, the theory of literary genres, intellectual history and women authors. She also serves as director of graduate studies in her department.
    In their nomination letters for the award, students cited her helpful advice on their dissertations, her inspirational teaching methods and her efforts outside the classroom to organize additional activities, such as book lectures and reading groups, to enrich the academic experience.
    "Professor Hahn is highly respected as an outstanding professor who teaches, mentors and advises with the highest degree of insight and commitment and constantly displays an incredible passion for her own intellectual endeavors, the interests of her students, and the stability and direction of her field in general," wrote two students in their nomination letter.

A Princeton faculty member since 1985, Shayegan specializes in the physics of semiconductors, with an emphasis on their electronic properties.
    Students praised his generosity with his time in discussing research projects, his emphasis on collaboration and his work in helping students prepare papers and conference talks.
    "We feel that by sharing so much of his time and experience with us, by instilling in us a strong work ethic and a collaborative spirit, Professor Shayegan has fully prepared us for top-quality professional and scholarly work," wrote several students in nominating him for the award.

Stein joined the Princeton faculty in 1963 and has spent much of his career studying and improving upon Fourier analysis, which allows scientists to understand the harmonic content of wave forms. The winner of the 2002 National Medal of Science, he teaches courses on topics such as partial differential equations and complex analysis.
    In nominating him for the award, students mentioned his selfless availability to provide help and advice, his love of teaching mathematics, his personal warmth and his "unique understanding of the unity of science and scientific thinking."
    They said that his books constitute "essential reading and an invaluable reference" and that his graduate courses are "similarly inspirational." "The courses always focus on the main mathematical ideas, eschewing unnecessary tedious details and instead enlightening students with mathematical clarity and beauty," they wrote.

 
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June 3, 2002
Vol. 92, No. 27
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Contents

Commencement
•Commencement ceremony set
•Selection as valedictorian a family affair for the Pierces
•Love of languages inspires salutatorian

Page one
•Former Secretary of State Baker donates papers to Princeton
•World's first four printed Bibles part of a special one-day display

Inside
•Marion Levy Jr., Princeton scholar of modernization, dies at age 83
•Four selected for Graduate Mentoring Awards
•Wireless course a hit with students and NSF
•Student helps transform tin shack into school
•Tuition grant increased
•Swim season is here

 Sections
•People briefs
•People spotlight, obituaries
•By the numbers
•Calendar of events

Editor: Ruth Stevens
Calendar editor: Carolyn Geller
Staff writers: Jennifer Greenstein Altmann, Steven Schultz
Contributing writers: Marilyn Marks, Evelyn Tu
Photographer: Denise Applewhite
Design: Mahlon Lovett, Laurel Masten Cantor, Megan Peterson
Web edition: Mahlon Lovett