The Hatch Prize is intended to recognize aspects of teaching such as “increased learning by students, unusual motivation and stimulation of students to seek greater learning, evidence of unusual concern for students, development of innovative methods, introduction and inventiveness of new courses, noteworthy expertise in a given field of study, effectiveness of presentation and other exemplary contributions to university education.” Dr. Clement has excelled at all of these. I have known students who switched their major to history on the basis of taking a single class with her. One student said to me, “I had no idea that history could be like this!” I replied, “Neither did I!” She is my lodestar when it comes to teaching—she exemplifies the best that the university has to offer.

Dr. Asnaani’s model for working alongside communities is embodied in her approach as an advisor to graduate, undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students. She is committed to mentoring and advising students from underrepresented communities and will be serving on a panel on mentoring minority students at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. Additionally, she creates space during lab meetings for professional and research development, which is essential for first-generation students unaware of navigating higher academia. Overall, Dr. Asnaani sets an exceptional model to learn from her ambition and drive in her academic and research work.

Professor Tabitha Benney is a valued instructor in our department and contributes to the intellectual life of our students in so many ways. As a scholar-teacher, she is a perfect example of how our students benefit from taking courses at a research university with faculty who treat them with respect, care and consideration as individuals. She has transformed our students’ lives, she represents our programs and our vocation with integrity, and she continues to innovate in her approach to every course she offers. Our department, our students, our college, our university and our communities are incredibly fortunate to have her teaching, mentoring and professional activities here at the University of Utah.

Physics can be a challenging subject. Professor Tabitha Buehler is committed to breaking down these barriers. Her approach is evidence-based and responsive; she designs curriculum and methodology based on literature, assesses learning effectiveness in real-time and makes changes to advance her approach. A major element of her success lies in purposeful effort to promote a supportive and inclusive learning environment for her students. All of her classes, including her introductory sections with up to 200 students each, are welcoming and low-pressure. She is clear about her expectations and her students have opportunities to engage with questions and other feedback in multiple ways. Dr. Buehler has inspired thousands to look to the stars; on our campus she is among the brightest.

Tim is one of the most creative teachers I know. Every year he uses the famous chocolate factory episode of “I Love Lucy” to illustrate how cells make and process proteins. I guarantee that students remember how proteins are processed long after that first day of medical school! His teaching blends a caring student-centric attitude with the goal of helping students learn to think critically. He has the perfect balance between ease and focus, humor and seriousness. Not surprisingly, this approach has proven to be extremely popular with students and faculty. He is a fantastic case-based learning facilitator and his groups never want to give him up, to the point where I’ve seen actual petitions to keep him as facilitator. His teaching evaluations for his didactic teaching and facilitation are consistently outstanding.

Dr. Hackford-Peer doesn’t just bring students to our college through her teaching wizardry, she connects with them every step of the way—before, during and after her courses. That’s profound for students. It’s the very thing we say we’d like to offer here at the University of Utah: a small-college, life-changing, learning experience at a research institution. What happens in her classrooms spills to our hallways, lounge, and adjacent courses taught by colleagues. She connects us all. Her magical ability to teach theory that links to real-world insights primes our students to enter other courses ready to roll. She sends students off to other scholar-teachers ready to hear more, learn more, push more, do more—all because they’ve come through Dr. Hackford-Peer and gained her exquisite preparation of their minds through her listening, prompting and teacherly intelligence.

Anyone who has taken a class from Professor Sigman can testify to his unique ability to make chemistry exciting and fun. I would not hesitate to rank the two classes I took from him amongst the hardest of my undergraduate career, but they were also the most joyful and engaging. Professor Sigman fosters an environment in which students are supportive of one another rather than competitive. His classes are filled with jokes, laughter, and students working collaboratively through problems on the board. He keeps his classes relevant by filling them with examples from current scientific literature, and he keeps them entertaining by occasionally uncorking chemicals that (quite literally) smell like goat. As a result of his efforts and his presence, students are more engaged in Professor Sigman’s classes.

Dr. Diamond’s upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses receive similar praise across all sections and semesters. Students in these classes have commented that Dr. Diamond is a “phenomenal speaker” who values “our ideas, opinions, and questions,” saying she provides careful “reading of our work” and praising her capacity to support learning with “difficult dialogues.” Even when the U shifted from in-person to online teaching during the pandemic, the reviews for Dr. Diamond remained sterling. Students noted: “This course was fantastic and I think everyone should take it”; “Dr. Diamond is as hilarious as she is brilliant”; “she makes every person in the class feel seen and heard, and she tackles difficult issues with grace and excitement”; “learning from Lisa Diamond is a pleasure and a joy”; “she is knowledgeable, engaging, and passionate. I sincerely hope to be able to continue learning from her.” The fact that Professor Diamond has developed coursework that challenges students yet makes them feel supported is a testament to her thoroughness, thoughtfulness and excellence.

Professor Julio C. Facelli is an exemplary scientist, leader and educator who has advanced the principles of diversity and interdisciplinary excellence at the University of Utah over the past 37 years. He led the development of the university’s extensive and successful research computing infrastructure as a campus-wide resource. He is an exceptional educator and mentor who has measurably enhanced diversity in the field of informatics. His work has substantially grown cross-campus interdisciplinary scientific collaborations linking biomedical research with advanced computational methods.

Professor Liu has established himself as one of the top researchers in the nation and in the world. In addition, he has established a strong record of teaching and an outstanding record in PhD graduations. He has done major service as a department chair. This record of outstanding performance on all fronts surely qualifies Professor Feng Liu as a Distinguished Professor.

I consider Professor Minteer to be an exceptionally talented individual who has had a real influence and impact on how we think about electrochemistry, especially bioelectrocatalysis. In fact, I consider Professor Minteer to be among the very best in this area, not only in the United States, but indeed, worldwide. I also consider Dr. Minteer to be among the very best electrochemists of the “next generation.” In my view, what sets Professor Minteer’s work apart is the rigor and fearlessness with which she approaches both the electrochemistry AND the biology of these processes. This is refreshing since most people involved in these areas are proficient in one both not both.

Professor Moreira has an international publication record and ambitious plans for research in the field of late antique and early medieval studies. She has brought excitement into the classroom through her longstanding commitment to undergraduate and graduate students in her courses. Her exemplary leadership in the Department of History, including a five-year term as chair, has steered faculty and students through turbulent times. For all of these reasons, I very enthusiastically support her achievements as merit-worthy of the status of Distinguished Professor.

Dr. Summers is an outstanding, world-renowned research scientist that has made and will continue to make breakthrough findings in ourunderstanding of insulin action, regulation of glucose homeostasis and lipid metabolism. He is without doubt one of the top leaders in this field and his cutting-edge research program provides the framework by which other laboratories have and continue to follow.

Jon Chaika studies a branch of mathematics called ergodic theory. Ergodic theory seeks to understand the long-term behavior of a dynamical system, such as a closed physical system, using a tool from mathematics called a measure. An example of the systems he is interested in is given by a point mass traveling a polygon. This point mass travels in a straight line until it hits a side. When this happens the point mass obeys the rule of elastic collision: the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflections. When all the angles of the polygon are a rational number of degrees, a given trajectory only travels in finitely many directions. This is not true if there is at least one angle that is not a rational number of degrees. Understanding the behavior of this family of systems, especially when all the angles are rational numbers of degrees, is surprisingly connected to other areas of math, like geometric topology and algebraic geometry. Jon studies this family of systems in both the case when all the angles are rational numbers of degrees and when they are not.

Mary Elizabeth Hartnett, M.D. is a vitreoretinal surgeon and scientist. She holds the Calvin S. and JeNeal N. Hatch Presidential Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah and an adjunct professor at the University of Utah departments of Neurobiology and Pediatrics. Dr. Hartnett is the founder and director of Pediatric Retina at the John A. Moran Eye Center and principal investigator of the Retinal Angiogenesis Laboratory holding two R01s to study age-related macular degeneration and retinopathy of prematurity, leading causes of blindness worldwide.

Kobus Van der Merwe is the Jay Lepreau Professor in the School of Computing and a Director of the Flux Research Group at the University of Utah. He joined the University of Utah in 2012 after 14 years at AT&T Labs-Research. He does networking systems research in a broad range of areas including network management, control and operation, mobile and wireless networking, network evolution, network security and cloud computing. He is the PI and Director of the POWDER project (Platform for Open Wireless Data-driven Experimental Research), an NSF-funded mobile and wireless research testbed.

Kathi Mooney is a Distinguished Professor and holds the Louis S. and Janet B. Peery Presidential Endowed Chair in the College of Nursing. She is also the Co-Leader of the Cancer Control and Population Science program at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Dr. Mooney pioneered and achieved international and national distinction for her research to develop and test innovative, person-centered, home-based models of cancer care. Her research focuses on health care delivery and value-based cancer care, integrating methods from the fields of innovation, clinical oncology, clinical trials, community-based research and public policy.

Dr. Solomon’s research includes the use of environmental tracers to evaluate groundwater flow with the aim of sustainable management of fresh-water resources. He has pioneered the use of dissolved gases including helium-3, CFCs and SF6 to evaluate groundwater ages, travel times, location, and rates of recharge of groundwater resources. He constructed and currently operates one of only a few labs in the world that measures noble gases in groundwater. His research results have been documented in more than 150 journal articles, book chapters and technical reports.

In his 12 years at the University of Utah and HCI, Dr. Tavtigian has obtained five new NIH R01 grants, renewed the R01 that he was originally awarded while at IARC, and served as Chair of the NCI Cancer Genetics Study Section. He is also a member of the Steering Committee for the Utah Genome Project and sits on three international sequence variant interpretation working groups

Not only has Dr. Carter showed a remarkable transformation himself as a person and educator, but he has made untold numbers of sources and research on diversity, equity, inclusion and pedagogy available to his students, to the larger professional community that we are a part of, and also to his colleagues. He has made all of his teaching public affairs courses think about how we approach equity, social justice, inclusion and diversity. Dr. Carter built an entire web portal just to share these resources with his colleagues and students. He has helped senior colleagues who are not comfortable with online teaching create top of the line online content and Canvas structures. This has all been voluntary and a way for Dr. Carter to give back and help others grow toward more inclusive teaching.

Besides providing individual encouragement that reaches beyond the classroom, Professor Lowey-Ball presents a safe, respectful classroom environment in which students are encouraged to discuss, interact and challenge ideas presented. Lectures are lively, organized and easy to follow, yet contain spontaneity based on student questions. Lectures, office hours, and outside conversations are extremely informative, and demonstrate how knowledgeable and accomplished Professor Lowey-Ball is as a scholar. She also promotes individual creativity, academic excellence, personal responsibility and enthusiasm of learning in her classroom. Along with an encouraging, positive classroom environment, Professor Lowey-Ball is open to feedback, self-aware of teaching her style, and therefore is continually working to be a better professor, despite her already extremely successful career.

Professor Noriega successfully crafts his courses in a way that meets students at their level of understanding, while still challenging them through the course lectures and assignments. It is fundamental to Professor Noriega’s classroom philosophy that students are provided core concepts in lecture and are then asked to apply these concepts to more challenging scenarios via homework or laboratory assignments. This technique is not designed to confuse or frustrate students, but to engage their critical thinking skills. Subsequently, students are rewarded for their correct application of the concepts rather than simply producing the correct answer. When needed, Prof. Noriega will volunteer extra time to host supplemental instruction, and provide tutorials for using software in order to support his students learning experience, regardless of their starting point.

Dr. Seegert is one of those professors who touches your life far beyond the walls of a classroom or time at university. The pandemic changed education for me drastically and I found it hard to connect with the material like I had before from behind a screen. Dr. Seegert created a course that acted as a lifeline for me amongst the chaos. Our class required us to put time and care into our community applying the theories and perspectives we’d learned. Ultimately, Dr. Seegert taught me how to approach life and its many obstacles with care, respect, intention and kindness. She asks so much of us because she was willing to do the work herself, and she knows, sometimes better than ourselves, what we are capable of.

Professor Wright became a trusted educator and dedicated mentor as soon as I began her courses, the content and structure of which are unparalleled, engaging in a series of topics and with a range of contemporary artists that give her lectures a life of their own. I never once felt that she was stuck in a rhythm or that material was being recycled. Her detailed and thoughtful presentations made my education feel relevant, applicable and intertwined with the beating heart of the world at large. She’s breaking political, social, and cultural expectations for art educators that inhibit learning, and replaces them with thoughtful opportunities to become artists who coexist with the lifeblood of humankind.

Dr. Zasowski has dedicated time and effort to making sure every undergraduate in the department has an opportunity to succeed. Dr. Zasowski came up with a flagship mentor program to provide students’ academic support, while also providing much needed academic related jobs for students. Dr. Zasowski won the Cottrell award for this program, providing funding for the first couple years. These types of improvements to the department show Dr. Zasowski’s ability to identify areas where students need more support, and then more importantly, the ability to actually do something to address issues.