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Professor Frank Fisher honored to receive Stevens Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher Award |
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Professor Frank Fisher honored to receive Stevens Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher Award
By Beth Kissinger,
Editor
A young, award-winning Stevens professor has just reaped another honor — as the Stevens Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher.
Dr. Frank Fisher, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of the Institute’s Nanotechnology Graduate Program, received the prestigious award at the Stevens Athletic Hall of Fame Brunch on Sept. 26 at Stevens, during Homecoming 2009. Alumni from the five most recent graduating classes chose him for the honor.
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During his acceptance speech, Fisher said he has received several awards during the past few months, but “this one means the most” because his former students selected him. Even after graduation, he said, they looked back and recognized the impact he had on them and their education.
“I’d like to thank the Alumni Association for this great honor,” he said.
Fisher, who also serves as director of Stevens’ Nanomechanics and Nanomaterials Lab, teaches Modeling and Simulation, Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology and Techniques of Surface and Nanoscale Characterization. He also advises several Senior Design teams.
His technical research interests include characterization of nanoreinforced polymer systems; multiscale modeling of nanocomposites and materials; NEMS/MEMS sensors and devices, among other areas. Fisher also has done research that has focused on important areas of education, including engineering outreach programs for K-12 students. He has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Army and the Air Force.
“It’s really an honor to be selected for the SAA Outstanding Teacher Award,” Fisher said. “I think one of the most important aspects of teaching engineering is to prepare my students to be successful practicing engineers after graduation, so it really means a lot to receive this award based on the feedback of recent Stevens graduates.”
Fisher always thought he wanted to teach, but his experience as an undergraduate teaching assistant at the University of Pittsburgh convinced him, he said in a recent interview. He taught an Algebra and Pre-Calculus class to older students in a continuing studies program and was de-lighted to have students who really wanted to learn the material for “fun,” not just for a grade.
Fisher also finds much satisfaction in working with Stevens students.
“What I enjoy most about teaching at Stevens is working with and interacting with the students,” he said. “The students are extremely bright, and what I think separates Stevens students from those at many other schools is that they are extremely hard-working. Maybe they aren’t doing extra problems ‘for fun,’ but many of them will go the extra mile to complete a project or to really understand a concept.
“It’s extremely rewarding as a teacher when you see the ‘light bulb’ go on and the students have this ‘ah ha’ moment where they now understand the concept or material. And it’s very rewarding when I hear from former students from time to time who say that they are now using some software that we covered in the class that I teach or that they are using what they learned from my class in their current jobs.”
Doing research “at the cutting edge of technology,” Fisher said, is another reason that he loves being a professor.
“I am a better researcher because of what I learn from working with students in the classroom, and I think that I am a better teacher when I can bring elements of my research (or research in general) into the classroom,” he said.
Fisher has also won the 2009 American Society of Engineering Education Ferdinand P. Beer and E. Russell Johnson Jr. Outstanding New Educator Award and the 2006 Harvey N. Davis Distinguished Teaching Assistant Professor Award from Stevens.
He joined Stevens in 2004 and previously was a post-doctoral research associate with the Biologically Inspired Materials Center at Northwestern University. He earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University in 2002, a master’s degree in learning sciences from Northwestern in 2000, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Northwestern in 1998 and bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics in 1995 from the University of Pittsburgh. He lives in Union City, N.J.
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