Valley native receives 2011 teaching award

Staff report

lexington, ky.

Kimberly Ward Anderson, a 1977 graduate of East Palestine High School, has been selected as the 2011 recipient of the Henry Mason Lutes Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Anderson, who is a Gill Eminent Professor in chemical engineering, received the award in April at the University of Kentucky College of Engineering’s Tau Beta Pi Awards banquet.

The annual award was established to recognize and reward outstanding teaching accomplishments.

An instructor at the University of Kentucky for 24 years, Anderson believes that “an outstanding teacher goes beyond the classroom setting and provides positive mentoring in many different ways. My overall goal as an instructor is to engage each and every students in active learning and to instill the confidence that they need to function as independent engineers and scientists.”

Anderson was awarded the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991, the Excellence Award in Undergraduate Education from the University of Kentucky in 1991, the National Institutes of Health Shannon Award in 1992, the Gill Eminent Professorship at UK in 2002, the Sarah Bennett Holmes Award for promoting women students in the UK College of Engineering, the UK Professorship Award in 2010 and was named the Outstanding Teacher in chemical engineering this year.

She is a member of several professional societies, including the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Anderson earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Youngstown State University in 1981.

She received her doctorate in chemical engineering/biomedical engineering as well as a post-doctorate fellow in bioengineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

She is the daughter of Louise Ward of New Waterford and the late Lester Ward.