In the past year, three GVSU mathematics faculty have been honored with awards for their work. Lauren Keough received the Mathematical Association of America’s Henry L. Alder Award for Teaching Excellence, David Clark the GVSU Pew Teaching Excellence Award, and Robert Talbert the GVSU Pew Teaching and Learning Enrichment Award.

Lauren Keough joined the GVSU faculty in 2016 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022.  Already a winner of a GVSU Pew Teaching Excellence Award, in 2022 she was honored with the MAA’s prestigious Alder Award that recognizes distinguished teaching by early career faculty.  Professor Keough is known for her empathic support for students and how she helps them to be successful in the wide range of classes she teaches.  By involving her students in setting goals and norms for how they will work together, she builds a welcoming and collaborative classroom culture in which students hold considerable authority and work together to decide whether or not mathematical arguments are valid.  Beyond the classroom, Professor Keough has worked with many students on research projects, having now mentored nearly 50 different undergraduate students during her first 6 years at GVSU.  Indeed, in 2022, she was a co-principal investigator for the GVSU REU.

David Clark began his career at GVSU in 2014 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.  A recipient of multiple teaching awards, his most recent award is a Pew Teaching Excellence Award from GVSU.  Professor Clark is known for putting students at the center of his classroom, always engaging them actively in their own learning, and for using “grading for growth,” an approach that sets clear standards and goals for students, that offers them multiple attempts to meet the standards, and that focuses on learning and growth instead of points and letter grades.  He also serves the mathematics department as one of its Advising and Engagement Coordinators, a role in which he regularly interacts with many different students in the Department.  Professor Clark has a national reputation for his innovative work with grading and assessment, one that will soon include a book on the subject:  he and Professor Talbert (featured below!) are co-authors of the forthcoming book Grading for Growth and collaborate on a blog by the same name.

Robert Talbert joined the GVSU Mathematics Department in 2011 and was promoted to Professor in 2017.  His most recent teaching-related award is the GVSU Pew Teaching and Learning Enrichment Award, a prize that recognizes faculty who “contribute to the Grand Valley Teaching Community in ways beyond classroom instruction”.  Among the many ways he has made such contributions, Professor Talbert has helped other faculty use flipped learning through his book Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty; by making hundreds of screencasts for faculty and their students; by leading GVSU faculty learning communities on active learning classrooms and other topics; and by playing a leadership role in changing how faculty think about grading and assessment.  He and Professor Clark are co-authors of the forthcoming Grading For Growth book. He also writes at three different blogs and is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop facilitator.