Levine named Outstanding Teacher

At the UMass Amherst College of Natural Science and Mathematics (NSM) fall convocation ceremony, Associate Professor Brian Levine accepted the NSM Outstanding Teacher Award for his distinguished graduate and undergraduate teaching and mentoring.

 “Brian’s excellence as a classroom teacher is exceeded only by his success as an educator outside the classroom,” says Department Chair Andrew Barto.  “He has been an incredibly effective mentor for both graduate and undergraduate students, introducing students with a broad range of abilities and skills to self-education via research, and inculcating many of them with a thirst for continued education.”

Levine has an ongoing active program where undergraduate students are exposed to research. Many of his undergraduate researchers have stayed on at UMass Amherst for a Master’s degree, just in order to work with him.

Levine is always eager to offer new courses that expose students to emerging technologies, relating to topics as diverse as mobile computing, security and related topics (e.g., privacy), ubiquitous computing, and gaming. As one example, Levine is teaching a new course this fall on Digital Forensics.

The NSM Outstanding Teacher Award is coordinated by the campus’ Center for Teaching. The purpose of the award is to honor individual faculty members for their teaching accomplishments.