The UCSC Committee on Teaching has awarded the 2022-23 Distinguished Teaching Award to Alegra Eroy-Reveles, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. She was honored for the positive impact she has had on her students, colleagues, and department.
Glenn Millhauser, professor and chair of chemistry and biochemistry, said Eroy-Reveles has been a key player in the redesign of the introductory chemistry curriculum.
“Alegra uniquely sensed the challenges brought by introductory chemistry and identified key pinch points that were causing student failure,” Millhauser wrote in nominating her for the award. “She developed novel active learning techniques, reevaluated the curriculum, and led efforts within the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department to develop fundamentally new approaches. Her concepts of how to slowly ramp up the needed mathematical components have played a major role in the full redesign of general chemistry and have also garnered considerable attention in other disciplines in the physical sciences, providing models for broader curricular reform.”
Eroy-Reveles worked with Millhauser to develop the new Chemistry Learning Center, which provides a vibrant, collegial space in the Physical Sciences Building for engaging students and fostering student success. She is also squarely focused on closing equity gaps in the physical sciences, Millhauser said.
“Her strategies on curricular design and chemistry learning are sure to provide pathways to success for our underrepresented students,” he said.
Eroy-Reveles grew up in Watsonville and earned her Ph.D. in bioinorganic chemistry at UC Santa Cruz. After a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF, she was an assistant professor at San Francisco State University before joining the UCSC faculty in 2018. She is currently working with colleagues at other UC campuses as a co-principal investigator of a project funded by the National Science Foundation with the goal of increasing the number of Latinx teaching-focused faculty in STEM.
“Notably, she’s earned outstanding teaching awards at both SFSU and UCSC,” Millhauser said. “She is truly a remarkable scholar and teacher who is exerting profound influence on promoting educational equity.”
The annual Distinguished Teaching Award recognizes outstanding teaching at UCSC and is open to all faculty, teaching professors, and Unit 18 lecturers. The award acknowledges pedagogical contributions that include but also go beyond any one course, and it seeks to recognize an instructor who has made significant contributions to educational equity within and beyond UC Santa Cruz.
