Two Madison campus faculty win System teaching awards
The UW System has announced that Jan B. Heide and Donald Passman are winners of Wisconsin Power and Light Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Awards. The awards recognize faculty and staff instructors at UW institutions within the WP&L service area.
Jan B. Heide
Associate Professor of Marketing
Specializing in helping students develop problem-solving skills, Heide is a “madman” in the classroom, according to former graduate student Lisa Menendez. Now working for Borden in Columbus, Ohio, Menendez remembers Heide as “the most alive and dynamic professor I have had in undergraduate or graduate school. His lectures are not lectures at all, but discussions, not only between himself and the students, but, more interestingly, between students.”
Outside the classroom, Heide has contributed to the art and science of teaching by participating in the Business Scholars Program, giving workshops on teaching undergraduates for the school’s teaching assistants and acting as faculty advisor to the undergraduate honorary marketing society and the School of Business Graduate Marketing Network. He won the school’s Larson Excellence in Teaching Award last year and has served on the Teaching Academy’s task force on new teacher preparation.
Donald Passman
Richard Brauer Professor of Mathematics
Passman’s ability to clearly explain complex mathematical ideas, his sense of humor and his decided resemblance to Santa Claus have made him a mathematics legend, according to mathematics department chair Richard Brualdi.
He also notes Passman is the world’s foremost authority on group rings, a fundamental mathematical tool. “Passman has been the mathematician most responsible for significant advances in research on group rings over the past 15 years. In addition to his brilliant insights and important new concepts, he has a remarkable gift for presenting his discoveries in a readily understandable form,” says Brualdi.
With courses ranging from “bread-and-butter” calculus to advanced graduate seminars, Passman pioneered the department’s instructional use of calculators and computers.