Fall 2012
Around the Quads
Popkin, Yao To Receive Great Teachers Award
Cathy Popkin, the Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities and professor of Russian, Department of Slavic Languages, and David Yao, professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia Engineering, have been named the recipients of the 2012 Great Teachers Award. The awards will be presented at the Society of Columbia Graduates Awards Dinner in Low Rotunda on Wednesday, October 24.
Popkin joined Columbia’s Slavic department in 1986 and is a scholar of literary theory and 19th- and 20th-century Russian prose, specifically Chekhov. A mainstay of the Literature Humanities faculty, she is known for hosting reunions with her former Lit Hum students when they are graduating seniors. Described by one student as “one of Columbia’s prized jewels,” Popkin also is a recipient of the 2012 Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award.
Yao joined the Department of Industrial Engineering in 1983. After a three-year stay at Harvard, he returned to Columbia as a full professor in 1988. His teaching and research interests focus on the analysis, design and control of stochastic systems such as manufacturing systems, supply chains and communication networks. He has been the principal architect of several academic programs at Columbia Engineering, including the master’s program in financial engineering.
The Society of Columbia Graduates established the Great Teachers Award in 1949 to honor outstanding members of the faculty teaching in the College and Engineering. Recipients have included Jacques Barzun ’27, ’32 GSAS; Mark Van Doren ’21 GSAS; Lionel Trilling ’25, ’38 GSAS; Kathy Eden; Alan Brinkley; Andrew Delbanco; and Mark Mazower.
For further information, contact Gerald Sherwin ’55: 917-763-7061 or gs481@juno.com; or Peter Basilevsky ’67, ’72L: 212-818-9200 or pbasilevsky@ssbb.com; or visit the society’s website.