Five faculty members from the College of Sciences and Mathematics were recognized for outstanding academic achievement at the 2014 Faculty Awards ceremony. Debbie Folkerts, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and Stuart Loch, associate professor in the Department of Physics received the Gerald and Emily Leischuck Endowed Presidential Awards for Excellence in Teaching. The awards honor two full-time, tenured faculty members who have demonstrated effective and innovative teaching methods and a continuing commitment to student success through advising and mentoring both inside and outside the classroom. Stephen Dobson, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, received the Research and Creative Scholarship Award while Allen Landers, professor in the Department of Physics, received the Award for Excellence in Faculty Outreach. Peter Johnson, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, was recognized as a 2014 Alumni Professor, which awards a five-year, non-renewable professorship sponsored by the Auburn Alumni Association. The awards were presented by Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Timothy Boosinger and are the highest honors the university gives to faculty. To read more about the 2014 Faculty Award winners, visit the website. 

If Natasha Narayanan’s performance at the 2014 Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society is any indication of what lies ahead in her academic and professional career, she is headed toward a consummate future. Narayanan, a COSAM sophomore and Honors College student majoring in biochemistry, gave an oral presentation titled, “Streamlined Chemical Synthesis of Tricyclic Nucleic Acid Analogues for Antisense Technology” during the undergraduate symposium portion of the conference. In recognition of both her research and eloquence, Narayanan’s talk was selected as the best oral presentation in the organic chemistry division out of 60 total presenters. To read the full story, visit the website.

The Auburn University Museum of Natural History will host an open house, on Saturday, Nov. 8, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The open house will provide an opportunity for the community to meet the curators and explore the more than 1 million specimens found in the museum’s eight collections. On display will be bone cast replicas of the “Auburn Dinosaur,” which is an Appalachiosaurus that was discovered in Montgomery County in 1982 by Auburn Professor David King of the Department of Geology and Geography. Giveaways and live-animal demonstrations will also be included in the event. The Museum of Natural History is located in the Biodiversity Learning Center, which is between Rouse Life Sciences Building and M. White Smith Hall, and is accessible from Mell Street. Sponsored by the College of Sciences and Mathematics, the museum is not ordinarily open to the public. For more information on the museum, visit the website.