Math Instructor is Back in the Limelight

Dr. Paul Stanford, a senior lecturer in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, is beaming once again after learning he’s been named among the UT System Board of Regents best teachers for 2009.

The Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, which Stanford received in the category of contingent faculty, carries a $15,000 stipend.

Nominees are selected through a rigorous campus-based process beginning with deans and department chairs, relying heavily on student and peer faculty evaluations within academic departments, and then progresses through various stages of evaluation up through the university, resulting in a recommendation from the campus president. The selection committee evaluates annual reviews, evidence of continuous improvement, commitment to high quality undergraduate education, and other factors.

“We’re very proud of our faculty and contingent faculty, and this award demonstrates that our students appreciate the quality of their instructors,” said Dr. Myron Salamon, dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. “Dr. Stanford has been consistently highly regarded by his students and by his colleagues.”

In fact, Stanford was most recently honored in May by President David E. Daniel with the President’s Outstanding Teaching Award for non-tenured-track faculty.

“I am delighted with the acknowledgement by so many people at every level, and for the credit this brings to my department, school and University,” Stanford said. “I am grateful to the regents for instigating this award, and to all the thousands of students I have had over the years. I have learned from them as they have learned from me.”

Stanford teaches college algebra, applied calculus, matrices and vectors, calculus and linear algebra.

“I thank all my students for the kind words they have given me on evaluations,” Stanford said. “I read them all.”

Stanford, who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Leicester in England, said he plans to use some of the award money to visit his family in England and to pay for his visit there last year.

Stanford reflected, “The award is generous enough that there will be a residue, and I will probably follow the advice from Erasmus: When I get a little money, I buy books; and if there is any left, I buy food and clothes.”