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UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

UT Tyler Professors Recognized for Outstanding Teaching

August 31, 2020

Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303

The University of Texas at Tyler announced that Dr. Michael Gangone and Jessica Coleman have been honored as two of the best educators in the UT System.

The UT Tyler faculty members received the 2020 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award. They are among 27 honorees from the system’s 14 academic and health institutions who were recognized and will each receive $25,000, a medallion and a certificate in appreciation of their impact on students.

“We appreciate the Board of Regents for honoring these professors and for recognizing their excellent contributions to student success at UT Tyler,” said Dr. Amir Mirmiran, UT Tyler provost.

Gangone, an associate professor of civil engineering, has a strong passion for engineering education. His expertise and interests include innovative bridge research and design methods as well as the development of structural health monitoring and condition assessment techniques for highway bridges and other structural systems. In total, he has more than 50 publications in the area of structural monitoring, innovative bridge design and engineering education pedagogy.

He has also been recognized with the White Fellowship in Teaching and the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Nominee for UT Tyler (2018), the UT Tyler College of Engineering Most Outstanding Teaching Award (2017), the Alpha Chi Outstanding Faculty Award in the UT Tyler College of Engineering 2013) and is a six-time recipient of the UT Tyler Department of Civil Engineering Outstanding Faculty Award, which is voted on by students.

Coleman, lecturer in biology, has been part of the Department of Biology since 2008. Her primary focus is teaching freshman the basic concepts of science and laying the foundation for biological knowledge. She uses a variety of teaching strategies to enhance student learning, which include team-based learning and college and career readiness.

In her spare time, Coleman engages in field research while involving undergraduates to help them learn proper research techniques. She encourages her students to take an active role in learning science by using a hands-on approach.

A member of the prestigious UT System, The University of Texas at Tyler focuses on student success and innovative research in the more than 80 undergraduate and graduate degree programs offered to nearly 10,000 students. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News and World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.