SES PhD candidate Frank (Zhaozhe) Chen received the Graduate School’s Graduate Associate Teaching Award for his exceptional service to SES classes and students. Frank has served as GTA continuously since the fall of 2020 (7 straight semesters). He has taught labs for three of our biggest general education classes, ES 1121: Dynamic Earth, ES 1100: Planet Earth, and ES 1200: Introduction to Earth Science Laboratory. These classes required tremendous effort by our GTAs during the pandemic. Through it all, Frank was instrumental in implementing and piloting the changes needed to transition to online teaching. He also helped carry out a study that helped SES learn how our virtual adaptations of field-based labs were serving our students in the pandemic. The study is now published in Frontiers in Environmental Science. 

At the upper graduate level, Frank has been a GTA for both ES 5655: Land Surface Hydrology and ES 5651: Hydrogeology. These labs require extensive preparation of instrumentation and sensors to train students in career-ready hands-on field skills. As an example, in one lab, the students run a pump test to understand the productivity of a groundwater well on campus. The lab requires assembling hundreds of feet of tubing that runs from the well near Mirror Lake to a storm drain and working with our Facilities employees to wire the pump to an outdoor electrical box. Frank rose to the occasion and worked professionally with Facilities. As a result, a very complex lab with many moving parts went perfectly. SES congratulates Frank on his well-deserved reward!