W.M. Keck Mentorship Awards 2021

The Office of Academic Affairs has established three mentorship awards through support from the W.M. Keck Foundation. These mentorship Awards have been established to recognize extraordinary mentorship activities that go above and beyond regular advising, for example by developing new mentoring initiatives, assisting those that face significant challenges or are vulnerable, or creating new pathways for growth and empowerment. The recipients receive a monetary award of $1,500 for mentoring or advising activities.

Mentoring Undergraduate Students: 

Gerald BourneTeaching Professor and Assistant Department Head
Metallurgical and Materials Engineering

Gerald Bourne is Director of the Physical Metallurgy Laboratory in Hill Hall, and is the ‘go-to’ advisor for undergraduates in MME. He advises the Colorado School of Mines Material Advantage Chapter, and coaches the ‘Brain Bowl’ team for the annual Materials Bowl competition at The Mineral, Metals & Materials Annual Meeting & Exhibition each year, giving students a chance to not only compete for the title, but also to learn about the state-of-the-art in metals and materials and to network with the international materials community. He has been the faculty friend for the Nucleus Themed Learning Community in Aspen House for the past 5 years, creating an event called Fix-It-Fridays, where he supervises and helps students repair their vehicles. He has mentored 200+students, seeking admission to 35+different national and international graduate programs, and mentors EPICS and Senior Design projects each year. Prof. Bourne can usually be found at athletic and extra-curricular events, showing his unwavering support for Mines’ students.

 

Mentoring Graduate Students: 

Stephen PankavichAssociate Professor
Applied Mathematics and Statistics (AMS)

Dr. Stephen Pankavich has established himself as a very successful graduate student advisor and mentor in the AMS department.  He is one of the most highly sought-after AMS graduate advisors due, in no small part, to the care that he gives to each and every one of his students. His efforts in his role as Graduate Director and as a principal investigator for the NSF Enriched Doctoral Training Grant will have a lasting impact on the AMS graduate programs. He has been instrumental in creating a strong community of graduate students within AMS where graduate students study together, collaborate on research, participate in group meetings, organize their own graduate colloquium series, and spend time together outside of the classroom. Steve provided doctoral students with amazing summer internship opportunities and created workshops and programs to help them jumpstart their graduate education during the crucial first year. In addition, Steve has helped to cultivate a graduate student community and culture of inclusion within the department. 

 

Mentoring Faculty and Staff: 

Debra CarneyTeaching Professor and Assistant Department Head
Mike Mikucki, Teaching Associate Professor
Mike Nicholas
Teaching Professor
Applied Mathematics and Statistics (AMS)

Dr. Debra Carney and Dr. Mike Nicholas both joined the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics (AMS) in 2012 and Dr. Mike Mikucki joined the department in the fall of 2015. They all jumped into various faculty mentoring roles and quickly recognized the benefit of building a community centered around teaching and learning. In Fall 2016 they co-created the AMS Professional Learning Community (PLC), a mentoring group which provides support for teachers in the department through bi-monthly meetings. Participants in these meetings discuss readings, review literature, share current teaching projects, and practice teaching techniques. All instructors in the department are invited to their lunchtime meetings. Outside of the AMS PLC, all three faculty members have regularly served as the course coordinator for a large multi-section course at Mines and as a faculty mentor in the AMS Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow program. Each of the postdocs they have mentored has moved on to academic positions. They have greatly distinguished themselves in the area of mentoring as they shared their broad range of educational experience with postdocs and faculty.