Adams Earns 2019 A&WMA Lyman A. Ripperton Environmental Educator Award
Professor Peter Adams was recently named the 2019 Lyman A. Ripperton Environmental Educator award winner by the Air and Waste Management Association (A&WMA). The award is presented annually to an educator who has inspired students to achieve excellence while teaching with rigor, humor, humility, and pride. “The recipients of this award are representative of the educators we would have chosen if we had a choice. They are known by the accomplishments of their students,” according to the A&WMA award selection committee.Adams’ reputation in the classroom spans engineering, science, and policy. CEE department head Dave Dzombak says that Adams “has demonstrated excellence in teaching first-year undergraduates to senior PhD students, in settings from seminars to large classes. As an example, he worked with two colleagues from the humanities and social sciences at Carnegie Mellon to develop an innovative seminar class for first-year students on the societal grand challenge of climate change. The course has inspired a number of students to pursue majors and minors in environmental engineering and science.”
Adams has taught in both the College of Engineering and the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at CMU. He’s a Fulbright Scholar and has published 80 articles in peer-reviewed science, engineering, and policy analysis journals. Adams was also a contributing author to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Adams’ research is focused on modeling the physical and chemical processes affecting atmospheric aerosols and he is globally recognized as an expert in connecting detailed treatments of fine particle physics and chemistry to cloud processes in climate and air quality models. Currently, he is working to identify the role of aerosols in air quality degradation and global climate change and has made major contributions to the areas of particle and precursor gas emissions from sources and their transformations in the atmosphere, and impacts of atmospheric particles on global climate change.
Adams brings his knowledge and curiosity into the classroom—creating a learning environment that blends scientific rigor and high expectations with compassion and humor. Adams’ past students have gone on to become air quality research and practice leaders in academia, industry, and government.
Adams will be recognized on June 27, 2019 at the A&WMA 12th Annual Conference and Exhibition in Quebec City.
CEE congratulates Professor Adams for recognition of his achievements and impact as an educator with this prestigious award!