This year’s Teaching Award goes to Dr. Yuriy Mileyko.
Dr. Mileyko has earned high praise from students in classes from applied calculus to the graduate level. Students appreciate his clear explanations; they say he spends time showing them where the equations came from, that he is very approachable and makes it easy to ask questions, that he cares about students and wants them to succeed. A MATH 216 student writes,
Professor was nothing less than awesome. Patient, professional & approachable.
A MATH 302 student states,
Dr. Yuriy shows great passion for mathematics, & even though the course difficulty is high, his passion motivates you to learn and try your best.
And from a MATH 252A student:
Dr. Mileyko’s zest for challenging mathematics inspires students to achieve.
Of special note at this time are the extra efforts Dr. Mileyko has put into his teaching since the pandemic forced all our classes online. His lectures have involved professional-grade animation recording with formulas moving within a slide frame and seamless glue of lecture fragments. That level of work requires a tremendous investment of time and effort besides professional software engineering skills. His students uniformly reported that the transition to online instruction went smoothly.
In addition, he was an asset to other faculty members, sharing advice on both hardware and software solutions for online teaching. Yuriy is always willing to share his wide knowledge and experience about teaching-related technology, and to spend his time and efforts to make things work. He has done that on many occasions, not only in connection with the pandemic online teaching mode. He himself has routinely applied technology in his teaching; for instance, he experimented with a flipped classroom model where the students attended a prerecorded lecture as homework to prepare for a class discussion. He is not afraid to invest his efforts in improving students’ learning.
His dedication is not lost on the students. One student says,
Dr. Mileyko did a wonderful job of engaging students, which … was amazing and invigorating!
and another writes,
He was always willing to help us and gave us all the tools we needed to succeed.
Students describe him as “enthusiastic,” “amazing,” “outstanding,” and “not only a great teacher, but a great person.”
Congratulations.
