Toback Receives 2011 Honors Teacher-Scholar Award

Dr. David Toback, professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, is one of two campus-wide recipients of the 2011 Honors Teacher/Scholar Award, presented by Texas A&M Honors and Undergraduate Research.

Toback, who previously was honored for teaching excellence in 2008 by being named to a three-year appointment as the Thaman Professor for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence, will be recognized next week along with fellow recipient Dr. Karen-Beth Scholthof at Texas A&M’s annual Honors Recognition Ceremony, scheduled for Thursday (May 12) from 1 – 3 p.m. at the College Station Hilton Hotel and Conference Center.

Honors Teacher/Scholar Awards recognize Honors faculty members who demonstrate excellence in both teaching in Honors education and academic scholarship. Recipients of the award receive a grant of $4,000 to be used for any purpose that enhances their research or teaching.

Toback, who joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2000, received his bachelor of science in physics from M.I.T. in 1991 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1997. His research is focused on the search for new fundamental particles at the world’s highest energy particle accelerators, the Fermilab Tevatron (located outside Chicago) and Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (in Geneva, Switzerland). The search for new particles is in part motivated by the tantalizing possibilities offered by the theory of Supersymmetry (SUSY), which helps explain many of the mysteries of particle physics, including the earliest moments in the Universe after the Big Bang and the existence of the dark matter that pervades the Universe today.

Toback has received numerous awards for his teaching and research, including the Texas A&M University System’s Student-Led Award for Teaching Excellence (Fall 2008, Spring 2010), the Arthur J. and Wilhelmina D. Thaman Professor for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence (2008), The Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching at both the university (2007) and college levels (2004), and the Center for Teaching Excellence’s Montague Scholarship Award (2002).

A division of Texas A&M Undergraduate Studies, Honors and Undergraduate Research provides high-impact educational experiences and challenges motivated students in all academic disciplines to graduate from an enriched, demanding curriculum. Opportunities for Honors study at Texas A&M were initiated in the mid-1960s in what was then known as the School of Arts and Sciences. Subsequently, the Colleges of Liberal Arts, Science, and Geosciences co-sponsored an Honors Program, and by 1968 all of the academic units — by then known as colleges versus schools — had joined in the endeavor.

In recent years, the growth of Honors study opportunities has been dramatic. For the 2010-11 academic year, more than 300 sections of Honors courses were offered, and in the fall 2010 semester alone, approximately 3,000 students engaged in Honors study at Texas A&M.
Students participating in the University Honors Program may also take advantage of optional structured honors courses and study sequences offered in several academic colleges: the Mays Business School Honors Program, the Engineering Scholars Program (ESP) in the Dwight Look College of Engineering, and the Honors Plan in the College of Liberal Arts. Additionally, there are departmental Honors Study Sequences available for majors in Aerospace Engineering, Agricultural Economics, Bioenvironmental Sciences, Communication, English, History, Mathematics, Political Science and Psychology.

For further information on the Honors faculty awards and the Honors Recognition Ceremony, contact Honors and Undergraduate Research at (979) 845-1957 or honors@tamu.edu.

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Contact: Kyle Mox, (979) 845-1957 or kemox@tamu.edu or Dr. David Toback, (979) 845-7717 or toback@physics.tamu.edu