Professor Ryan Stowe has won the 2026 Taylor Award for Teaching Excellence. Professor Stowe was honored at the Taylor Teaching Award Symposium and presented a talk entitled “Stepping-stones toward coherent and useful chemistry learning“ on Friday, March 13th. His talk reflected on two long-term collaborations aimed at improving chemistry education—one reshaping organic chemistry assessments to create a more coherent curriculum, and another partnering with community groups to make chemistry learning more relevant to real-life contexts. Both stories show how instructional goals and practices evolve over time while navigating real-world constraints.
The Taylor Award for Teaching Excellence is named for Emeritus Professor James W. Taylor, who was an analytical chemistry professor with the UW–Madison Department of Chemistry from 1966-2002. In 1991, Dr. Taylor led the University Committee on Teaching Quality, Evaluation, and Rewards, which created the Teaching Academy. This academy encouraged departments to reward excellence in teaching practices. The following year, Dr. Taylor convinced the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company, now Pfizer, to sponsor Department of Chemistry teaching awards. In 2002, these awards became the endowed James W. Taylor Excellence in Teaching Awards.
Also honored at the event were the recipients of the Outstanding Chemistry Teaching Assistant (TA) Awards. The 2026 awardees are:
Niall Ellias
Leah Garman
Brandon Hacha
Claire Lundberg
Matthieu Maciejewski
Max Neumann
Yulia Podorova
Sebastian Riviera Perez
Ross Bishop
Alex Sandquist
Peter Verardi
Mingyi Xue
The TA Awards Team selects outstanding TAs representing the best teaching and service in our department for recognition each year. Nominations must be submitted to or coordinated with a team member, and each nomination is discussed at a meeting of the awards team. This year’s TA team was comprised of Mary Beth Anzovino, Stephen Block, Thomas Brunold, Amanda Buchberger, Pam Doolittle, Brian Esselman, Lea Gustin, Nick Hill, Liana Lamont, Jackie Trate, Jeremy Weaver, Mark Wendt, and Chad Wilkinson.
The Taylor Teaching Symposium was held on Friday, March 13th, at 4:30 p.m. in the Learning Studio at the Department of Chemistry, with a reception in the North Tower atrium. The event was available via live-stream link.