Each year, awards for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education are given to professors in the School of Arts and Sciences to recognize their outstanding achievements in and beyond the classroom, their engagement with their students and pedagogic communities, and their overall commitment to the undergraduate education mission. Each year, the theme that inevitably shines through in each nomination is the students’ understanding that these instructors “genuinely want us to learn.” We are indebted to these instructors and are grateful for their untiring support of our students and stewardship of the future.
To read the full citation please scroll down or click on a name.
Career Achievement Award: Louis D. Matzel
Associate Professor: Shu-Chan Hsu
Assistant Professor: Jack Bouchard, Jenny Wang
Teaching Professor: Maryam Borjian
Assistant Teaching Professor: Marina Gelfand
Career Achievement Award
Louis D. Matzel, Psychology
Professor Louis Matzel joined the Psychology department at Rutgers, New Brunswick in 1990 as an Assistant Professor, served as graduate director 2001–2005, was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2007, and retired at the end of the 2023–24 academic year. Over these 34 years, Professor Matzel demonstrated exceptional dedication to training undergraduates in research, facilitating their appreciation of the nuts and bolts of hypothesis testing, enlisting them as co-authors on numerous publications, and mentoring over 130 undergraduate students’ research including projects funded by Federal NIH grants.
For the last 12 years, Professor Matzel has served as Chair of the department’s honors program. During this time, he has overseen the graduation of over 245 Psychology majors with honors across behavioral neuroscience and clinical, social, and cognitive psychology. Many of these students earn competitive SAS-wide Henry Rutgers Awards and move on to graduate and medical schools, as well as other professional certifications. Each year, Lou works together with departmental staff to organize a Poster Session for the Honors Students and leads the full honors committee in determining which students will receive the distinction of graduating with honors and receive other named awards. Lou has a well-earned reputation for being objective and fair and has served with distinction as the chair of the honors committee, making it one of the most popular service options for department faculty.
In addition, for over two decades, Professor Matzel has overseen the running of Psychology’s Conditioning and Learning undergraduate teaching laboratories, providing instruction in research methods and analyses in addition to his normal full teaching load. This oversight included not only constant syllabus review and training of Teaching Assistants, but also working with IACUC to maintain approved protocols for animal housing, handling, and treatment. More recently, this Lab course was renamed Learning Processes at Professor Matzel’s request, given changes in the field and emphasis on more than just Pavlovian and Skinnerian learning protocols.
The centerpiece of his classroom teaching has been Learning Processes, where, as one student put it, “Professor Matzel has taught us that our bodies are constantly learning, making associations, forming expectations, and preparing for those expectations without us even being consciously aware of it and I think that's pretty rad.” Another student noted, “He is too good of an instructor for anybody to possibly fail his course.” Reflecting what we hope a broad liberal arts education will do for all of our students, one reported that “I took this course alongside a philosophy course on metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and AI, and it was interesting to see how, as the course went along, it overlapped with questions that computer scientists and philosophers are trying to answer about learning.” Finally, one summed it up like this: “He has made me genuinely eager to learn in this class. The lectures are amazing, and this class has become one of my favorites. His teaching methods are something that genuinely engages you and makes you think, rather than simply pursuing a grade.”
For his lifetime of excellent contributions to undergraduate education and to learning, we are proud to present Professor Lou Matzel with the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
Associate Professor
Shu-Chan Hsu, Cell Biology and Neuroscience
Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Neuroscience Shu-Chan Hsu has distinguished herself through her outstanding pedagogical contributions and commitment to student mentorship.
In addition to serving as the CBN Undergraduate Director and advisor from 2006 to 2019, Professor Hsu teaches a flagship introductory course, Fundamentals of Neurobiology. Professor Hsu redesigned this course in 2023 to address two challenges typical of introductory science courses—the broad subject areas covered and the diverse range of prerequisite knowledge among the students. The redesigned course “applies neuroscience to study neuroscience” and features a course structure that enhances student learning and provides a wealth of learning resources to empower autonomous student study. It builds in spaced repetitions to bolster long-term retention of knowledge. Course materials are summarized and reviewed in different formats including in-person lectures and reviews, animated lecture videos, and study guides. Each lecture also has clear learning objectives and summary flowcharts to connect lecture details into a comprehensive “big picture.” Complex topics are explained step-by-step via animation or composed into “stories” to facilitate contextual learning.
The revamped course had a notable increase in the SIRS course quality rating from below 4.0 in the past to 4.6 and an instructor quality rating of 4.77 in Fall 2023. Students say Professor Hsu makes this challenging course both manageable and enjoyable: “Professor Hsu has been an incredibly engaging professor, and her liveliness and enthusiasm for the subject have made 8:30 am lectures not only tolerable but enjoyable!” Another student concludes, “Professor Shu-Chan Hsu was arguably the best professor I've had at Rutgers, and hands down… the best practice exams. In total, students have access to over five hundred self-assessment questions with feedback to facilitate effective self-directed study.”
Professor Hsu’s steadfast commitment to student support and mentorship is exemplified by her instrumental role in redefining the CBN department’s advising infrastructure and curriculum worksheet to promote student retention and timely graduation through 4-year course planning. Moreover, Professor Hsu established communication platforms on Sakai, and subsequently Canvas, to foster ongoing interaction with 300–400 students annually. She also introduced CBN Senior exit surveys to collect valuable student feedback on departmental academic and research programs.
Although she has transitioned out of her formal academic advising role, Professor Hsu continues to coordinate the CBN undergraduate research program. She teaches the CBN Honors Seminar, which is a capstone course mentoring students in scientific communication. Redesigned in 2019 to fulfill the SAS Core WCd goal, Professor Hsu deconstructs the Honors thesis into individual manageable sections, and guides students through each phase of thesis writing and presentation development following an iterative process of “instruction, practice, and feedback.” The revised course has excellent instructor and course quality ratings of 5.0. Students report, “I love how we go through a different aspect of the thesis each week. This kept me on time with all of my writing, which was beneficial for me as I tend to struggle to stay on track! I also love that we got to do a mini thesis presentation as that was immensely helpful for my final defense.”
Professor Hsu's methodical approach to course instruction, coupled with her compassionate mentorship, not only enhances comprehension but also fosters inclusivity and ignites student interest. The transformative impact of Professor Hsu's courses inspires a culture of curiosity and critical thinking. Through her instruction and mentorship, Professor Hsu has made a lasting impression on the academic journeys of innumerable undergraduate students, and we are proud to present her with the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
Assistant Professor
Jack Bouchard, History
Assistant Professor Jack Bouchard is an environmental historian with wide expertise in different regions of the early modern world. With breathtaking range and quality, his courses illuminate the deep history of a subject vitally important in the present.
In only seven semesters at Rutgers, Professor Bouchard has developed three new courses that build connections between the humanities and STEM fields: The Seas Around Us; Living on the Edge; and an interdisciplinary SAS Honors course, Searching for the Anthropocene. He has developed his own versions of the department's required first-year methods course that brilliantly introduce students to different historical approaches or “ways of knowing.” Finally, Professor Bouchard has developed his own syllabi for three more long standing courses: one on the history of food as an intimate feature of human interaction with the environment; another popular course on early modern global expansion; and one of the department’s largest surveys, with around 100 students, World History I.
Professor Bouchard's syllabi have been held up as models in the department's graduate pedagogy course. Their content attests to Professor Bouchard's intellectual rigor and creativity, as he connects phenomena across time and space to trace thematic patterns and illustrate the interplay between the local and the global, the past and the present. For instance, his course Living on the Edge, which explores societies’ interaction with extreme environments, is innovatively organized not by chronology or geography, but by ecoregions (steppes, deserts, polar regions, mountains, swamps and islands).
In peer faculty evaluations, Professor Bouchard has received the highest praise for his sophisticated content, engaging methods, and talent for involving substantive student contributions to create a true learning community. For example, in The Age of European Global Expansion, one class meeting opens with a mini-lecture on the 17th-century Dutch East India Company as the world's first “multinational corporation” that his peer evaluators called a “tour-de-force of global teaching.” Professor Bouchard then displays a series of images and poses open-ended questions that invite students to interpret them as documents and compare them to received wisdom. This is followed by a second mini-lecture on maps and historiography that his peer evaluators lauded as “virtually a seminar unto itself,” of graduate-level sophistication but presented in an “utterly accessible and even entertaining way.” Finally, the meeting concludes with student presentations of their original research on a historical map in a fine example of peer-to-peer learning.
Professor Bouchard's students are as enthusiastic as his colleagues, earning outstanding SIRS scores and equally strong narrative comments. Many describe Professor Bouchard as the best instructor they have had at Rutgers, often noting that he does a “phenomenal job of encouraging intellectual growth.” One describes Professor Bouchard as, “an absolute rock star! His passion and energy for his work are contagious and will inspire and motivate you to learn more." Another says, “This might be the only class in my college career where I enjoyed the midterm and am looking forward to the final. ...Dr. Bouchard was such a treat to my life and I’m eternally grateful for the knowledge I’ve gained. I am 100% a better human.” Illustrating his ability to captivate even the initially reluctant, one student confessed, “I was not very interested in this course at first and was taking it only to fulfill a requirement. However, Professor Bouchard is easily one of the best professors I have had... and quickly made this class my favorite to show up to every week. ...[It] genuinely inspired me to complete my work for this class and others with a higher standard in mind.”
By every measure, Professor Bouchard has distinguished himself as a teacher of the highest caliber, well-deserving of the SAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
Assistant Professor
Jenny Wang, Psychology
Assistant Professor Jenny Wang joined the Psychology faculty in Fall 2020, the first semester of entirely online instruction during the pandemic. While many of our faculty struggled with online instruction, Professor Wang flourished. She took to heart the admonition to adopt new approaches instead of trying to adapt a traditional lecture format to the online environment. In her large asynchronous 300-level course, Infant and Child Development, with an enrollment of 192 students, she created short recorded lectures and multiple smaller-stakes assignments to promote student engagement.
As classes returned to in-person instruction, Professor Wang participated in the Summer 2022 Teaching Excellence Network Course Transformation Institute and the SAS Strategic Curriculum Development Program to build on her pandemic experience and develop two versions of Infant and Child Development—an in-person “flipped classroom” version and an asynchronous online version.
Professor Wang’s in-person “flipped” course design integrates active and interactive learning with small group discussions. In addition to providing students with more flexibility than traditional lectures, this format gives students the opportunity to engage in deeper conversations with their peers and the instructor, even with a class size of 150. To promote critical thinking, Professor Wang initiates student conversations and debates surrounding topics with social and educational implications (e.g., How to harness educational media? Do infants know anything about morality?). Students report that they felt that the classroom was “a safe space to share our thoughts,” and that this approach “helped me learn more course material and understand the assignments better.”
One student summed up their experience this way: “the standard model of class instruction desperately needed an update. This class did precisely that and I appreciate it immensely! ... I find that the capacity to ask meaningful questions and identify the axioms and fault lines between ideas takes more time than a simple Google search to settle. The exposure and access to a professor that has life experience that I am able to utilize as a resource for my own intellectual development is wonderful…for those that are planning to pursue post–grad degrees, it is an intellectual buffet… I wish more professors were as experimental and practical in their instructional methods...” Others added, “I love how she would go over the quizzes and allow us to learn from our mistakes” and “I don't know how you remembered my name in such a big class–you're honestly such a good professor and an even better human!”
In addition to teaching in the classroom, Professor Wang has also supervised 40 undergraduate Psychology students in research, including 5 Honors students (3 of whom were named Henry Rutgers Scholars), 2 SUPER students, and 3 Project RISE participants. Three of the students she supervised were awarded Aresty Fellowships, 4 students were awarded Cooper Summer Research Fellowships, and 7 students were awarded Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Research Fellowships. Many of these students’ research efforts have culminated in poster or oral presentations at professional conferences, or even in peer-reviewed journal articles. Other students report outstanding experiences in her lab, adding that it “was my home for 3 years and I cannot stress enough how special it was to be part of the team.”
Professor Wang’s commitment to undergraduate teaching and her pursuit of innovative teaching methods is exceptional. It is my pleasure to present Professor Jenny Wang with the SAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
Teaching Professor
Maryam Borjian, African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures
Professor Maryam Borjian’s work at Rutgers interweaves exemplary teaching and targeted public outreach efforts. She has a remarkable impact on her students who routinely describe her as “passionate,” “kind,” and as having “a wealth of knowledge and experience.”
Since joining AMESALL in 2010, Professor Borjian has designed and taught a series of regional and global sociolinguistic courses: Language and Globalization, Introduction to Discourse Analysis, and Language and Society in AMESA. These fully subscribed trans-disciplinary Core Curriculum courses attract students from a wide range of majors and with backgrounds in virtually every continent of the world. In Professor Borjian’s hands, this becomes a critical feature of her courses. As one student writes, “She made an effort to learn the lingual backgrounds of everyone in the class and utilized the diversity in the class to make each lesson more engaging and personal. We each became experts in different languages and were able to learn together democratically. Lessons I learned in class were immediately applicable outside of class.”
Professor Borjian seamlessly integrates scholarship and instruction, placing questions of cultural and social diversities at the center of the learning process. While employing multiple strategies to engage students, her courses successfully introduce undergraduates to new ways of reading and seeing the world and provides them with critical interdisciplinary and cross-cultural competencies on issues of linguistic pluralism and inclusion. As one student notes, “She strongly encouraged my intellectual growth through always trying to make us think deeply about our own culture, and bringing direct examples from our differing personal cultures to the material we were learning in class.” Her courses are devoted to helping students gain a crucial epistemic base about what it means to be an accountable global citizen in contemporary times. As one student reports, “This course has opened my perspective to many scarcely acknowledged aspects of our shared world… Without a doubt, what I've learned here I will take with me for the rest of my life.” Another says, “[Her] teaching made me fall in love with the intricacies of a world I did not feel I had a place in.” While many students report having signed up for the class to meet a Core Curriculum requirement, it is evident that they often leave Professor Borjian’s courses with unexpected newfound interests and understandings, demonstrating the positive impact of these requirements. A typical comment comes from one pre-med student: “I learned something new every day and I loved analyzing the creation, usage, and globalization of languages.”
Professor Borjian invites her undergraduates to be publicly engaged, providing them opportunities to participate in relevant conferences and other scholarly events taking place at Rutgers and its vicinity as presenters, as members of the audience, and in delivering logistical support. She has a strong record of advising and mentoring students with several resulting in publications. As one student writes, “Professor Borjian...is an inspiration to many of her students and made me want to grow in my professional career.”
Professor Borjian’s teaching is often collaborative, inviting scholars and colleagues to her classroom to share their expertise and engage her students in a wide-ranging exploration of issues and approaches. This same collaborative spirit is evident in her edited volume on Language and Globalization with contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field. The book was inspired directly, both in content and its autoethnographic pedagogic approach, by Professor Borjian’s experiences teaching. It has become a popular text that continues to be adopted at other colleges and universities, expanding her impact beyond Rutgers.
We are pleased to present Professor Borjian with the SAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
Assistant Teaching Professor
Marina Gelfand, Psychology
Professor Marina Gelfand’s teaching accomplishments are exceptional, both in the quality of instruction she provides, as well as the varied learning opportunities she has created for undergraduate students in Psychology.
In the 10 years she has been teaching at Rutgers, Professor Gelfand has taught over 70 courses enrolling over 8,800 students. Her courses include a required course in Social Psychology; an interdisciplinary online course, Psychosocial Foundations of Health and Medicine, that she co-developed with faculty in Sociology to meet the needs of pre-med students preparing for MCATS; a course in Forensic Psychology that she created; and a highly successful department internship course.
Professor Gelfand’s excellence in teaching is evident in many ways. Over the last five years, 90 percent of her SIRS scores were 4.5 or above. Her courses are among the first classes to be filled during registration. Student comments indicate that Professor Gelfand is not only a very effective instructor, but she has had a positive impact on students’ personal and career development. Students frequently describe her as passionate, dedicated, kind and caring, engaging, communicative, encouraging, as well as “a great teacher,” and “the best professor I've had at Rutgers.” It is notable that some of her highest SIRS ratings and most enthusiastic comments are from her course in Forensic Psychology with enrollments of 350–400 students, demonstrating that large class size is not a barrier to excellent teaching.
It is also notable that during the Covid pandemic, Professor Gelfand continued to effectively teach asynchronous remote courses, as well as synchronous class sessions for up to 400 students. She changed the way she taught her large 400-student course to engage students over Zoom using the Chat tool, live experiments during class, Top Hat/clicker questions, and videos and documentaries thus creating a “flipped-and-blended” classroom. This helped students to remain engaged when they were often feeling “Zoomed-out.” Participation was extremely high with more than 350 students attending each Zoom class.
Perhaps Professor Gelfand’s most valuable contribution to the department has been her coordination of the undergraduate internship program in Psychology which serves over 115 students each semester, including summer. Running the program includes working with over 30 new and existing sites, matching applicants with sites, conducting site visits, and leading a writing-intensive internship seminar in which she provides detailed feedback on student work and internship performance. Students are placed in prisons; day care settings; elementary, middle, and high schools; inpatient units; hospitals; psychiatry clinics; private practice psychology clinics; neuropsychology clinics; and homes for the aged, among other locations. These internship students have an outstanding record of being accepted to highly competitive Ph.D. and Psy.D. graduate programs and others have moved straight from the internship into full or part-time work at the internship settings. Professor Gelfand holds graduate school information sessions for students that students have found extremely useful. On the department’s senior survey, many students report that their “internship with Professor Gelfand” was the most positive aspect of their experience as a psychology major.
As evident by this lengthy list of teaching and mentoring accomplishments, Professor Gelfand is an ideal candidate for the SAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
