Two earn awards for non-tenure track teaching

Carloye-and-Olsen
Carloye, left, and Olsen

PULLMAN, Wash. – Clinical assistant professors Lisa Carloye and Karl Olsen will receive the annual President’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Non-tenure Track Faculty at the Celebrating Excellence Recognition Banquet on March 25.

These awards are part of the annual WSU Showcase celebration of faculty and staff achievement. Reservations for the banquet will be accepted through March 18 at http://formtool.wsu.edu/events/Signup/index.castle?formid=1.

Award selection criteria include: igniting a passion for learning; employing innovative mentoring and teaching techniques; valuing and responding to diversity; increasing students’ intellectual growth, critical thinking and integrated views; and organizing/conducting new courses or revitalizing existing ones. Learn more about the award at https://faculty.wsu.edu/awards/presidents-distinguished-teaching-award-for-non-tenure-track-faculty/.

Carloye has taught in the College of Arts and Sciences since 2005 and in the School of Biological Sciences since 2011.

She designed a new course that integrates life and physical sciences with mathematics in an experiential setting. The course aids students who have limited preparation for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) majors. She participated in Global Campus workshops about e-learning and serves as a critical resource for the online biology major.

She incorporates inquiry into her teaching, thus cultivating her students’ thinking and analytical skills. She uses popular science literature to encourage student engagement and makes assignments that are completed in group exercises in class.

Carloye’s teaching has been recognized in the past by awards such as the Eric W. Bell Learning Communities Excellence Award (2012), Common Reading Excellence Award (2010) and Honors College Faculty Award (2008).

Olsen joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2009 after completing his Ph.D. at WSU.

He established a virtual computer lab for Civil Engineering 303 to provide students with consistent and reliable computing experience. His Integrated Design Experience Course receives rave reviews from industry and from accreditors for the way in which he blends research, design, industry and societal concerns.

He explains difficult concepts well and demonstrates how those concepts apply to the curriculum and to the real world. He strives to answer the question, “Why are we learning this?”

Olsen received the 2014 Reid Miller outstanding teaching-nontenure track faculty award from the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture. Learn more about him at http://www.ce.wsu.edu/faculty_staff/Profiles/olsen.htm.

In addition to the banquet, the Showcase celebrations include the Distinguished Faculty Address (March 24), the Academic Showcase display of research, scholarship and creative work (March 25) and other events. Find a schedule at https://showcase.wsu.edu/schedule/.