The Patty Feist Teaching Award
The Patty Feist Teaching Award was established as a CU Foundation non-endowed fund by Patty Feist in 2010. Patty ran the organic chemistry labs at the University of Colorado as the Laboratory Coordinator from 1985 to 2010. During this 25 year time period, she ran all facets of the organic chem teaching labs, from developing and incorporating new experiments, to acquiring and maintaining instruments, to writing the handbook that covers all student lab techniques, to authoring the Orgchem web site, to doing the daily prep necessary for students to perform the lab experiments.
Each year, a teaching assistant in the Organic Chemistry Teaching Labs who has shown dedication to teaching the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory courses is awarded the Patty Feist Teaching Award. The recipient is chosen by a committee headed by the director or coordinator of the organic chemistry teaching labs. Additional members of the committee will be selected from faculty members and/or lab staff in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Student input derived from the student evaluations of TA's may be considered, with the recognition that the best teacher is not necessarily the most popular TA.
Qualities to be considered in the selection for this award are the TA who has shown some of the following:
- Excites students' curiosity about science
- Provides input on improvements for current labs to the teaching staff and/or gives suggestions for new labs
- Works diligently to encourage students to write good lab reports or to think scientifically
- Has shown great improvement in teaching ability
- Goes above and beyond in teaching organic chemistry laboratory courses
Recipients:
- 2024: Austin Bargmann
- 2023: Kyle Fisch
- 2022: Shaofeng Huang
- 2021: Shea O’Sullivan
- 2020: Sara Robertson
- 2019: Yiming Hu
- 2018: Will Yi
- 2017: Thomas Carey
- 2016: Jessica Burl
- 2015: Ryan McCaffrey
- 2014: Patrick Chaffey
- 2013: Mike Springer
- 2012: Jeff Gazaille
- 2011: Tao Gong
- 2010: Carina Zyzniewski