Erik Guentner won the UH Math’s Annual Departmental Teaching Award. Yuriy Mileyko presented the award on behalf of the department, and Guentner’s citation included the following:

The amount of work that Erik invests in his preparation is truly impressive. For example, when teaching Math 480, he improved the students’ experience by providing them with a curated set of online videos which covered the relevant topics and by creating a set of good and bad presentations. Not only did this help students to better review the material and learn how give a better mathematical talk, it provided a nice blueprint for the other instructors teaching that course afterwards.

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All of this hard work did not go unnoticed by the students. They do appreciate Erik’s teaching style, with one student writing “When teaching us he first writes down all the steps and explains it very well. He always asks if we have any questions while he is teaching. Always making sure we understand.” Another student provided a nice list of adjectives: “Clear, thorough, understanding, fair, wise, experienced, helpful, available/flexible, funny.”

One anecdote that didn’t make it into Mileyko’s speech: In Spring 2025, Guentner’s students were so fond of him that one day they all dressed up like him! Photo attached.