Scholarship Celebration Honors Faculty

Five NMU faculty members were honored Dec. 2 for their scholarly or creative activities, teaching and innovative use of technology.

Award recipients are (beginning second from left): Adam Prus (Psychology), excellence in scholarship; Carol Bell (Mathematics and Computer Science), technology innovation; David Wood (English); Ken Culp (Mathematics and Computer Science), technology innovation; and Lisa Flood (Nursing), excellence in teaching. They are flanked at left by NMU President Les Wong and at right by Terry Seethoff and Susan Koch (Academic Affairs). Portions of Koch's remarks about each of the award winners (listed alphabetically) follows:

Bell specializes in technology and teacher preparation, specifically the visualization of mathematical concepts. Her project, "Algebra for All: Technology Integration into High School Teaching," provides technology innovations that enhance the way algebra is taught to children. She shares material with K-12 teachers via workshops and webinars focused on how technology can improve motivation and application. Bell has developed a network of teachers to share online resources and provide feedback and support She also integrates technology into her NMU courses.

Culp has served as an adjunct instructor at NMU since 2001. Because students in his beginning statistics classes have a hard time visualizing computations and probability distributions, he developed "NMU Stat-Help," which gives students a variety of options for inserting values and obtaining a visual representation of the data. Culp has made his program easily accessible to students, with both a downloadable and a Web-based application.

Flood began her career at her alma mater in 1989, teaching clinical adult medical surgical nursing courses with a research specialization in diabetes and simulations. Her classroom and clinical expertise applies to one of the most demanding areas in health care: medical/surgical nursing. Flood is able to pull together complex subject matter and make it understandable for students. A letter from a recent graduate describes how he diagnosed a patient situation, took appropriate action and saved a life. He said he knew what to do because of a case scenario Flood used in class.

Prus joined NMU in 2006 and was promoted to associate professor in 2009. He has received several research grants from the National Institutes of Health and has authored numerous research articles in refereed journals dealing primarily with the issue of schizophrenia. His grants have created opportunities for students to serve paid internships in his lab, gain valuable research training and co-author scholarly papers. Several of his students have been placed in prominent doctoral programs.

Wood teaches upper-level and graduate courses related to Shakespeare and Milton, as well as lower-level British literature surveys and mythology. He leads a dozen students every summer to Ottawa and Stratford, Ont., as part of a special topics Canadian Studies class, which includes attending plays at the renowned Shakespeare Festival. Wood is an active researcher and writer, recently publishing a book of literary criticism on William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney and John Milton titled Time, Narrative, and Emotion in Early Modern England. He also directs NMU's Honors Program for high academic achievers.