UW-Sheboygan faculty, staff honored with awards

The University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan recently honored several faculty and staff with awards for their commitment to academics and students on the UW-Sheboygan campus. The following faculty/staff received awards during the recent Honors Convocation ceremony on May 3:

Dean’s Recognition Award
UW-Sheboygan Dean Dr. Al Hardersen presented his 2011 Dean’s Recognition Award to Student Success Center Coordinator and student advisor Becky Mullane. Each year, the Dean’s Recognition Award is presented to a staff or faculty member who has served the campus in an extraordinary way. Mullane was honored for her service on the campus Appointments Committee, ad hoc Marketing Committee, Steering Committee, and UW Colleges Institutional Senate and Institutional Senate Steering Committee during 2010 – 2011. Mullane also introduced StudyBlue, a computerized note-taking program to UW-Sheboygan students this year and developed a testing program within the Student Success Center that assists students and community members.

Barrett P. Scherff Instructional Academic Staff Recognition Award
The Barrett P. Scherff Instructional Academic Staff Recognition Award was presented to four UW-Sheboygan instructional academic staff members who went above and beyond their contractual obligations inside and outside the classroom to help make lasting contributions to the education of UW-Sheboygan students and the local community. For the first time ever, a team of instructors was recognized with the annual honor, including. members of the HAWKES Math Instruction Team -- Developmental Math Coordinator Janette Miller, and math instructional academic staff members Synde Kraus, John Harms and Tim Heidenreiter.

This group of instructors was honored for their collaborative work in implementing the new HAWKES math instruction program. During the Spring 2011 semester, UW Sheboygan launched the first semester of a year-long study to determine if the comprehensive, intelligent computer software, called the Hawke’s Learning System, used in conjunction with personalized instruction, would positively impact student success, transition, and retention rates in specific math courses. The UW-Sheboygan HAWKES instruction team taught four sections of Elementary Algebra and two sections of Introduction to College Algebra using the software, impacting approximately 150 students.

2011 Teaching Award
Each year, the campus is asked to vote for an instructor who has demonstrated excellence in the classroom and who has made lasting contributions to both the campus and the community to receive the annual UW-Sheboygan Teaching Award. This year, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dr. James Kabrhel was selected due to his commitment to quality teaching and his efforts to ensure that students excel and reach their educational goals.

Kabrhel is known and respected as by his students as “extremely intelligent.” As one student put it, “Those who speak English and Science should be considered bilingual because science is a foreign language of its own!” Another student stated in her nomination that Kabrhel made learning realistic. “There are few instructors in my educational career that have stood out as vibrantly as he,” she said.

Kabrhel holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and a B.S. in Chemistry with Distinction from Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA. He also coordinates the annual “Cool Chemistry” event in the UW-Sheboygan Fine Arts Theatre.