Professor & Vice Chair, Neil Garg, has been awarded the 2015 Gold Shield Faculty Prize.
The prize is awarded each year to recognize exceptional mid-career full professors who have demonstrated extraordinary accomplishments in undergraduate teaching, service to the University, and research or creative activitity.
From UCLA Newsroom (by Stuart Wolpert):
Chemistry professor Neil Garg honored with Gold Shield Faculty Prize
Neil Garg, professor and vice chair for education in UCLA’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has won the 2015 Gold Shield Faculty Prize, sponsored by Gold Shield, Alumnae of UCLA. The prize provides a $30,000 award in recognition of outstanding scholarship, teaching and service by an exceptional mid-career faculty member.
Chemistry professor Neil Garg’s teaching innovations enable
students
to master extraordinarily difficult concepts.
Photo by Coral von Zumwalt.
“We are delighted to award the prize to professor Garg in recognition of his commitment to excellence and innovation in research, teaching and service to UCLA,” said Tanis Harris, chair of the Gold Shield selection committee. “He inspires students to have confidence in their ability. He makes organic chemistry relevant.”
Professor Garg with (from left) Rosemary Plue, Tanis Harris and Lynn Dines,
members of Gold Shield, Alumnae of UCLA. Photo by Wendy Soderburg.
Garg also won UCLA’s prestigious 2014 Eby Award for the Art of Teaching and UCLA’s 2012-2013 BruinWalk.com’s Professor of the Year, among other honors for his teaching and research. In his award-winning research, his research group develops new chemical transformations that enable the synthesis of important organic molecules, such as pharmaceuticals and bioactive molecules found in nature that are often referred to as “natural products.” His laboratory develops synthetic strategies and methods to enable the synthesis of such molecules.
Garg recently shared secrets of his successful teaching techniques at the 2015 TEDxUCLA; a video of his talk will be posted this summer. In his extremely popular organic chemistry class, Garg emphasizes the creativity and problem-solving that organic chemistry requires, and its relevance in students’ lives.
Read the full
UCLA Newsroom
article here.
UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty who have been awarded the Gold Shield Faculty Prize are Prof. Mike Jung (1986; inaugural award winner), Prof. Ric Kaner (2002), and Professor and Dean Robin Garrell (2009).
