Carnegie Mellon University Website Home Page
 
Skip navigation and jump directly to page content
Doherty Award
Ryan Award
Nomination Process
Past Winners
Academic Advising Award
Lazarus Award
Gelfand Award
College Teaching Awards
Wimmer Faculty Fellows
Graduate Student Awards
Contacts

The William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching

2013 Ryan Award Recipient

mackeyJohn F. Mackey

Teaching Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences

John F. Mackey barely graduated from high school, and went to a state college that was required to take all Ohio graduates. He did extraordinarily well, but decided to go to the University of Hawaii to learn more about Polynesian and Asian culture, as well as to learn surfing and develop a deeper understanding of math. Although people said he would never get a job, he was able to secure a John Wesley Young instructorship at Dartmouth, where he taught for four years. He moved on to be a preceptor of math at Harvard from 2000-2003. Needing bigger challenges and cheaper real estate, he moved to Pittsburgh, Pa, to see how many John Nashes could be produced at CMU during his career.
The William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching is given annually to a full-time faculty member at Carnegie Mellon who has demonstrated unusual devotion and effectiveness in teaching undergraduate or graduate students.

The award is intended to recognize excellence in teaching in several dimensions:

  • outstanding classroom teaching
  • creation of challenging and innovative courses
  • creation or use of new and innovative teaching methods and course materials
  • effective supervision of research or creative projects
  • effective supervision of undergraduate honors students and graduate students

Purpose