UNO Alumni Association issues teaching awards to 9 faculty

The UNO Alumni Association marked the 12th year of its Alumni Outstanding Teaching Awards program when it presented the honor to nine faculty members at the UNO Faculty Honors Convocation Breakfast Thursday, April 10.

Association President Lee Denker presented the awards, established in 1997 to honor distinguished teaching in the classroom. Peer committees in each college chose recipients, each of whom received a $1,000 award. Denker also presented recipients with commemorative tablets during the convocation breakfast in the Milo Bail Student Center.

With the 2008 awards the association has issued $104,000 in AOTAs since the program’s start in 1997. Biographies of each recipient follow.

2008 UNO Alumni Outstanding Teaching Awards

Pauline Brennan, criminal justice, College of Public Affairs and Community Service

Steven Bullock, political science, College of Arts & Sciences

Scott Copple, accounting, College of Business Administration

Michele Desmarais, religious studies, College of Arts & Sciences

Bill Mahoney, computer science, College of Information Science and Technology

Juliette Parnell, foreign languages, College of Arts & Sciences

Roger Sash, computer & electronics engineering, College of Engineering

Karen Weber, communication, College of Communication, Fine Arts & Media

Saundra Wetig, teacher education, College of Education

Pauline Brennan

Dr. Pauline K. Brennan is an assistant professor in UNO’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Her areas of research include court processing, correctional issues and adult-female offenders and victims. She is author of “Women Sentenced to Jail in New York City,” published in 2002 by LFB Scholarly Publishing; “Sentencing Female Misdemeanants: An Examination of the Direct and Indirect Effects of Race/Ethnicity,” published in the March 2006 issue of Justice Quarterly; and, “Cultural Considerations and Challenges to Service Delivery for Sudanese Victims of Domestic Violence: Insights from Service Providers and Actors in the Criminal Justice System,” published in a 2007 issue of International Review of Victimology. Brennan teaches undergraduate and graduate students. She began teaching at UNO in 2004. Brennan received her B.A. (1988), M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1999) in criminal justice from the State University of New York at Albany.

Steven Bullock

Dr. Steven Bullock is an assistant political science professor in UNO’s College of Arts and Sciences. His primary areas of specialty include the American founding, constitutional law, and the intersection of sport and American culture. He also has focused his teaching efforts in recent years on developing innovative graduate courses for K-12 teachers. In addition, Bullock heads UNO’s Dual Enrollment program, which has a current enrollment of approximately 2,000 students. The program allows talented high school juniors and seniors to enroll in UNO courses while simultaneously encouraging these students to interact with various components of the university. He was a lecturer at UNO from 1997 until 2003, when he joined its faculty. Bullock earned his bachelor’s degree from Midland Lutheran College (1993), his master’s degree from UNO (1996) and his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (2001).

Scott Copple

Dr. Sumner (Scott) E. Copple III is an associate professor in UNO’s College of Business Administration. He teaches several federal income tax courses. Two of the graduate tax classes he teaches (tax research/estate and gift tax) are such technical, complex topics that adequate textbooks are not available and Copple prepares much of the materials for these classes by himself. His research interests include real estate transactions, stock redemptions, corporate separations, partnerships, and closely held corporations. His research has been published in numerous journals and publications. A member of the Nebraska State Bar Association, Copple has contributed to a number of accounting and college-wide committees and councils and is the internship coordinator for accounting student interns. He was selected by accounting students to be awarded 2003 Outstanding Graduate Accounting Teacher. Copple has taught at UNO since 1990. He earned his BS in business administration (1978) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his J.D. (1981) from the College of William and Mary's Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He earned his LL.M (1982) from the University of Denver School of Law’s Graduate Tax Program.

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Michele Desmarais

Dr. Michele Desmarais is an assistant professor of philosophy and religion whose primary focus are Sanskrit and Indian thought, particularly Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) and Buddhism. She teaches courses on Eastern Religious Traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and world religions for the religious studies program at UNO. She also teaches courses on the Sanskrit language. Desmarais also is a member of the Native American studies faculty at UNO. Her book, “Changing Minds: Mind, Consciousness and Identity in Patanjali's Yoga-sutra and Cognitive Neuroscience” is being published in March by Motilal Banarsidass, a noted publisher in the field of Indology. Desmarais earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology (1986) from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. She earned an M.A. in religious studies (1992) and a Ph.D. in Asian studies (2001), both from the University of British Columbia.

Bill Mahoney

Dr. William R. Mahoney is a research fellow and graduate faculty member at UNO’s Peter Kiewit Institute. He regularly teaches in the areas of operating systems, programming languages and compilers, and low-level hardware design. His primary research interests include language compilers, hardware and instruction set design, and code generation and optimization. Prior to the Kiewit Institute Mahoney worked for more than 20 years in the computer design industry, specifically in the areas of embedded computing and real-time operating systems. During this time he also was a part-time UNO faculty member. Mahoney received his B.A. (computer science) and B.S. (cinema and photography) degrees (1981) from Southern Illinois University, his M.A. (math/computer science, 1991) from UNO, and his Ph.D. (computer science, 1994) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Juliette Parnell

Dr. Juliette Parnell is an associate professor of French in UNO’s foreign languages program. She teaches beginning, intermediate and advanced French classes. Her specialty topics are French civilization, contemporary France, French films and business French. She produced a CD-ROM for the beginning French textbook “Voilà” in 2006. Her other teaching interests focus on business French and writing at the advanced level. Parnell also has been an AP French reader and consultant since 2005. Her research has been on 19th century French women and politics. Parnell earned a B.A. in history (1976) from Paris I and at B.A. in English (1978) at Paris VII in France. She then moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies in French at UCLA, where she earned an M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1991).

Roger Sash

Roger Sash, an associate professor at UNO, has been engaged in the electronics engineering technology program and its follow-on programs of computer engineering and electronics engineering for more than 30 years. Sash has been instrumental in establishing and supervising effective retention programs for freshman students and has introduced educational robots into his classes to increase student enthusiasm. He is part of a joint computer and electronics engineering department/UNO College of Education research team working on NSF grants to develop a national K-12 curriculum in engineering education. Sash is the lead faculty member in assembling student work and writing the self-studies for the ABET accreditation of the department’s undergraduate programs. Sash earned his B.S. (1967) in electrical engineering from Iowa State University and an M.S. (1980) in electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Karen Weber

Karen Weber serves as a lecturer and academic advisor in UNO’s School of Communication. Her primary teaching focus includes journalism news editorial and public relations. Among the courses she teaches: media writing, news writing and reporting, magazine article writing, reporting of public affairs, critical writing for the mass media and public relations writing. Weber also serves as the faculty advisor for the UNO chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) and MAV Solutions, the student-run public relations firm. Weber earned a B.S. in journalism (1976) and an M.A. in communication (1991) from UNO.

Saundra Wetig

Dr. Saundra Wetig is an associate professor of teacher education in UNO’s College of Education. Her primary focuses are pre-service teacher education, elementary social studies, and developing teacher leaders. Wetig currently is engaged in collaborative research that focuses on assessing pre-service teacher candidates' knowledge and skills in the area of assessment literacy. Wetig earned her B.S. (elementary education, 1991), M.S. (special education, 1995) and Ed.D. (educational administration and leadership, 2001) from Kansas State University.

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