Three University of Rochester professors will be honored in October as the recipients of the 2020 Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
A virtual ceremony will take place October 23 to honor Tanya Bakhmetyeva, associate professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Rudi Fasan, a professor in the Department of Chemistry; and Scott Seidman, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Bakhmetyeva ’06 (PhD) was born and raised in Moscow, Russia, and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in medieval Scandanavian history from Moscow State University in 1996. She earned her doctorate in modern European history at Rochester in 2006. She taught in the Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program from 2005 to 2011 before joining the Anthony Institute, where she also serves as associate academic director. Mother of the Church: Sophia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France received the 2018 Harry C. Koenig Book Prize for best Catholic biography.
Fasan joined the chemistry department in 2008 after earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Padua (Italy) and a PhD from the University of Zurich (Switzerland). The Italy native also completed a postdoctoral experience at the California Institute of Technology. In August 2019, he was appointed the Andrew S. Kende Endowed Professor in Synthetic Organic Chemistry. His lab focuses on novel strategies to synthesize and discover biologically active molecules. The group develops chemical agents that are useful for probing cell signaling pathways and for controlling biomolecular interactions implicated in cancer, HIV, and other diseases.
Seidman has been a member of the Department of Biomedical Engineering since its creation in 2000. The Brooklyn native earned his bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins in 1987 and his master’s degree and PhD from Case Western Reserve in 1993. His research interests include embedded systems for health care, medical device innovation, and assistive devices, as well as in neuroengineering, which touches on electronics, computing, physiology, and biomedical engineering. Seidman also teaches the undergraduate Senior Design sequence with colleague Amy Lerner, associate professor of biomedical engineering.
Established in 1997 by University Trustee and Board Chair Emeritus Robert Goergen ’60 and his wife, Pamela, the annual awards recognize distinctive teaching accomplishments of faculty in Arts, Sciences & Engineering.
Nominations come from students, faculty, staff members, and administrators. The winners are chosen by Jeffrey Runner, dean of the College; Gloria Culver, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences; and Wendi Heinzelman, dean of the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences.
