Senior Laboratory Lecturer in Chemistry Maryellen Nerz-Stormes has received the 2016 Undergraduate Teaching Award from the American Chemical Society's Philadelphia section.
From the nominating materials:
Maryellen pours everything into her students, creating a rich teaching experience whether she is in her main element — the laboratory course — or stepping into the lecture sequence to replace a colleague on sabbatical leave. She enables students to taste what it means to think and work as a synthetic organic chemist, whether they are a post-baccalaureate student headed to medical school within the year, or a potential undergraduate chemistry major...
When I see former students, Maryellen is the first faculty memeber they ask me about, and regardless of what they are doing now, they consider their time with her to have been a critical part of their education...
Why is she so beloved? To quote a student profile of Maryellen, “She seriously wants every student to succeed.” Her colleagues would add that she wants them all to succeed with a challenging curriculum, one that asks them to do far more than a standard series of classic syntheses, but pushes them to develop key laboratory skills and helps them learn to think like chemists, troubleshooting their own syntheses, planning their experiemental time.
At Bryn Mawr, Nerz-Stormes has received the Rosalyn R. Schwartz Teaching Award in 2000 and the Christain and Mary Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2007.