To: The OSU Community
From: Edward Feser, Provost and Executive Vice President
March 23, 2018
OSU community members,
I am delighted to announce that we have selected Edward Brook, Joey Spatafora and Janet Tate as Oregon State University’s 2018 Distinguished Professor honorees.
The university has presented the Distinguished Professor award annually since 1988 to active OSU faculty members who have achieved extraordinary national and/or international stature for their contributions in research and creative work, education, outreach and engagement, and service.
Professors Brook, Spatafora and Tate each make extraordinary contributions to our university, Oregon and beyond through their scholarship and teaching, and are outstanding examples of OSU’s highest academic honor.
Professor Brook is one of the most recognized and highly regarded climate scientists in the world. He enjoys an international reputation for his work developing geochemical measurement techniques, and the insights they convey about the Earth’s ancient past. Graduate students in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences awarded Brook with the college’s Jack Dymond Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2013, recognizing him for providing mentorship to many students in addition to his own advisees.
Professor Spatafora has developed a world-class research program focused on molecular systematics and population genetics of fungi. He has also curated the mycological (fungal) collection, which contains nearly 100,000 specimens, in the university’s Botany Herbarium. His teaching at Oregon State has earned him three teaching awards: The Fred Horne Award for Excellence in Teaching Science, the OSU Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, and the Outstanding University Honors College Professor award.
Professor Tate’s research focuses on creating new semiconductors with transparent circuits with electrical and optical properties that help solve problems such as the efficient conversion of solar energy and efficient light emission. Her research stimulated the invention of the transparent oxide transistor, the enabling technology for the Retina 5K display now found in many Apple products. Tate’s contributions in the classroom earned her the Frederick H. Horne Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching Science in 2002 and two OSU Mortar Board top professor awards.
For more information regarding the 2018 Distinguished Professors, please visit the OSU news release on the award recipients here.
Professors Brook, Spatafora and Tate will give lectures as a part of Recognizing Excellence events planned for May 10 and 11. Times and locations of these lectures will be announced soon. I hope you will attend.
Please join me in congratulating Professors Brook, Spatafora and Tate for their Distinguished Professor honors.
Sincerely,
Edward Feser
Provost and Executive Vice President