Cox Faculty Award for Creative Scholarship and Teaching
Ross Carlson
Montana State University has awarded the Cox Faculty Award for Creative Scholarship and Teaching to Ross Carlson, professor of chemical and biological engineering in the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering. Nominees for this award must have a demonstrable union of superior research with excellence in upper division/graduate instruction. The award carries a $2,000 honorarium.
Carlson has a substantial record in research and teaching. Currently, he collaborates on several projects with nearly $7 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Air Force. He recently sent experiments to space aboard the International Space Station.
His classes are known for being highly interactive and challenging. He often uses demonstrations, such as using an ice cube to boil water, to drive home important thermodynamic concepts. Undergraduates from his laboratory have gone on to win prestigious awards, including a Schwarzman Fellowship, multiple NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, a Linus Pauling Fellowship, and a Goldwater Scholarship, and multiple Rhodes Scholar finalists.
“He not only has a substantial record in research and teaching along with excellence in upper-level and graduate-division classes, but he also has a sustained record in those initiatives,” wrote Abigail Richards, head of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, in her nomination letter.