Two from Madison campus earn System teaching awards

George Mejicano and Catherine Middlecamp have won two of the 2003 Alliant Energy Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Awards. The annual awards of $3,500 each go to four outstanding teachers from UW System campuses within the Alliant service area.

Mejicano is associate professor of medicine and assistant dean of continuing medical education. Middlecamp is a distinguished faculty associate of chemistry, and director of the Chemistry Learning Center. Both are fellows with the Teaching Academy, and both have presented at Teaching Academy meetings.

As assistant dean, Mejicano views his role as enabling him to “provide professional and continuing education opportunities for medical practitioners at many levels — students, faculty and staff, and practicing doctors — as well as to measure the impact of instruction in a more systematic way,” UW System President Katharine C. Lyall said while presenting the awards on Oct. 17.

Middlecamp’s ability to guide students to a deep understanding of chemistry as it relates to their daily lives is evidenced by her five-credit Chemistry 108 course for non-science majors, Lyall said. With Omie Baldwin, Middlecamp teaches Environmental Chemistry and Ethnicity. Focused on uranium and American Indians, the science course meets the ethnic studies requirement.

The other two System recipients are Elizabeth Frieders, associate professor of biology at UW-Platteville; and Karen McLeer, associate professor of English, UW-Richland.

The awards program represents a partnership that began in 1991 between the UW System, and the Wisconsin Power and Light Foundation, which is now part of Alliant Energy.

They are given in honor of James R. Underkofler, a longtime senior executive with the company, who retired in 1990. The awards pay tribute to Underkofler’s interest in encouraging and promoting undergraduate teaching excellence.