To be recognized by UCR’s exclusive Academy of Distinguished Teaching as a junior faculty member, one must be more than a cutting-edge researcher. One must also be an outstanding teacher. Four individuals have been recognized this year as being both. 

The 2024 recipients of the academy’s Junior Excellence in Teaching (JET) award are Mona Eskandari in Mechanical Engineering, Jonathan B. Lim in the School of Business, Analisa Flores in the Department of Statistics, and Lucy Delaney in the Department of Evolution, Ecology & Organismal Biology.

Mona Eskandari

Eskandari, an assistant professor, was first inducted into the Academy in 2021, and she was the only junior faculty member in the Bourns College of Engineering asked to join. The JET award additionally confers upon her the title of “UC Riverside Junior Faculty Distinguished Teaching Professor.”

Her biomechanics Experimental and Computational Health or bMECH laboratory joins engineering and medicine to improve lung health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, bMECH research took on fresh urgency, given that the disease affects the lungs. Her group found that ventilators can overextend certain regions of the lungs, which explains the decline in respiratory health experienced by patients the longer they spend on the machines. The research was recognized in 2022 as one of the major breakthroughs across the 10-campus UC system.

The bMECH lab is now working on a new way to diagnose lung disease. Given the direct application of the research, Eskandari views her work with students as being a critical piece in being able to improve patient outcomes.

“If I can train the next generation of engineers and scientists, hopefully together we can have a positive impact on patients’ lives,” Eskandari said. “Excellence in teaching goes hand in hand with excellence in research.”

Jonathan B. Lim

As an assistant professor of teaching, Lim is focused on finding and implementing new ways to improve classroom instruction in marketing, such as through the use of emerging technologies.

“From the beginning of each lecture to the end, my whole goal is to help students find the passion and joy to learn about marketing and study it further, both in class and on their own time,” Lim said.

To achieve these goals, Lim employs a variety of techniques, including group activities, interesting class demonstrations, and finding ways to relate material to students’ daily lives. For example, he might recruit students into a blind taste test of Pepsi and Coke, to see if they can differentiate the two, and understand the Pepsi Challenge of the 1970s.

He is currently the faculty advisor for the American Marketing Association at UCR, Design at UCR, and the School of Business Leadership Council. He also oversees the UCR chapter of Beta Gamma Sigma, the national business honor society.

Analisa Flores

Flores, an assistant professor of teaching, is interested in statistics education for undergraduate students. Her primary focus is on course and curriculum development, and her current work addresses the creation of education infrastructure for data science and statistics. She places a strong emphasis on increasing inclusion, diversity, and equity for underrepresented minority populations.

“UCR serves a diverse group of students, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to teaching,” Flores said. “Instead, I use the students’ diversity as a strength. It’s what drives my pedagogy.”

Aware that statistics can be an intimidating subject, Flores aims for students to leave her class with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to be active learners both inside and outside the classroom. She works to achieve this by creating a learning environment that is rich with resources and hands-on practice of relatable, real-world applications.

Her work is supported by several grants including $1.22 million from the National Science Foundation’s DS Pathways in the Inland Empire, $400,000 from the NSF’s REU Site program, and $1.278 million from the California Learning Lab.

Lucy Delaney

Delaney, also an assistant professor of teaching, is focused on improving how undergraduates learn biology. Popular courses she has taught include introduction to organismal biology, the cellular basis of life, and population genetics and genomics.

Her research areas include teaching with storytelling, educational television programming, and evolutionary theory in biology education.

Delaney holds a bachelor’s degree in forensic molecular biology from the City University of New York, and a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“The classic burn is that all biology is simply applied chemistry, and chemistry is simply applied physics, and physics is simply applied mathematics,” Delaney wrote on her website. “To that I say, amen, and thank you for noticing just how hard it is to understand life.”