UNO Alumni
Association to issue teaching awards to 9 faculty
The
UNO Alumni Association marks the 12th year of its Alumni Outstanding Teaching
Awards program when it presents the honor to nine faculty members at the UNO
Faculty Honors Convocation Breakfast Thursday, April 10.
Association
President Lee Denker will present the awards, established in 1997 to honor
distinguished teaching in the classroom. Peer committees in each college choose
recipients, each of whom receives a $1,000 award. Denker will present
recipients with commemorative tablets during the convocation breakfast in the
Milo Bail Student Center. With the 2008 awards the association will have 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.
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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).
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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.
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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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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