Five Faculty and Staff and a Department Honored on Founders Day

Akron, Ohio, May 8, 2008 ― The University of Akron honored five faculty and staff and one department at its annual Founders Day celebration May 2.

Dr. Parizad Dejbord of Akron (44313), associate professor of Spanish and director of Spanish Graduate Studies, received the Outstanding Teacher Award.

Outstanding Researcher Awards were presented to Dr. Steven Chuang of Hudson, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Dr. Philip Allen of Richfield, professor in the Department of Psychology.

Outstanding Teacher and Outstanding Researcher awards are given by The University of Akron Alumni Association.

Shared Leadership Awards went to Alan Boettger of Akron (44319), computer support assistant, Wayne College, and Angela Brown of Akron, administrative secretary, Center for Nursing, in the staff category; and Dr. Mark Koehler of Middleburg Heights, assistant director of UA's Institute of Polymer Science, in the contract professional category.

Boettger developed an online course assessment tool for the Academic Assessment Committee at Wayne College.

Brown was nominated for her efforts to support the university's strategic initiatives for budget and efficiencies.

Koehler oversees the staff of the Institute of Polymer Science; he also is the building coordinator and computer trouble-shooter in the Goodyear Polymer Center.

The Unit Shared Leadership Award went to the Department of Learning Technologies and Scholar/Learner Services, Dr. John Savery of Akron (44313), director.

The department's staff supported faculty and students in the selection and start-up of a new learning management system within a tight time frame with outstanding results.

Dejbord, who earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan and bachelor's and master's degrees from The University of Akron, joined UA's modern languages faculty in August 1995.

Her teaching interests include language, literature and literary theory. Her research interests include 20th-century Latin American literary production; post-colonial literature; women writers; feminism; and post-structuralism and cultural studies.

Her publications and presentations focus on the notion of exile as deployed in the poetry and narrative of Cristina Peri Rossi. Her current research addresses problematic representations of woman and her body in art and poetry.

In 2008, Dejbord received the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Award, and the Outstanding Teacher Award from the UA Alumni Association.

Chuang has a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, a master's degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a diploma from the Taipei Institute of Technology.

He joined UA in 1986 as an assistant professor of chemical engineering. Promoted to professor in 1996, he was the department chair from 1997 to 2005.

Chuang has taught a wide range of courses, including chemical reaction engineering; process control, control, chemical engineering and operations labs; materials science; catalysis; process dynamics; chemical processing of advance materials; and renewable energy.

He received the Chemstress Outstanding Teacher Award from UA's College of Engineering in 1988. He has published more than 100 papers in reaction kinetics, catalysis and fuel cells, and has two U.S. patents and three pending.

Allen received his doctorate in Life-span Developmental/Experimental Psychology from Ohio State University in 1987, and completed a two-year post-doctoral research fellowship at the Center for Aging and Human Development at Duke Medical Center.

His research interests include the effect of aging on word recognition, reading, attention, perception and memory. He has taught cognitive processes, perception, engineering psychology, and research in cognitive aging.

Allen's publications have appeared in Psychology and Aging; Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences; Experimental Aging Research; Perception & Psychophysics, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance; and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.

Also honored at the event were 33 faculty and staff retirees.

UA Founders Day traces its history to 1882. It has become the academic year-end event at which the most distinguished members of the university are recognized.

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