2013 Medal Winners | francais

PRESS RELEASE / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The 2013 CAP Medal for Excellence in Teaching Undergraduate Physics

is awarded to

Mona Berciu

"I am honoured to be awarded this Medal from the Canadian Association of Physicists. I am grateful to all those who worked on my behalf to make this happen, and to all my students for being such a delight to interact with." winner citation

The Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) is pleased to announce that the 2013 CAP Medal for Excellence in Teaching Undergraduate Physics is awarded to Mona Berciu, University of British Columbia, in recognition of for her exceptional ability to communicate knowledge and understanding and lead students to high academic achievement in physics through her own example, for her leading role in the Welcome Women (WOW) initiative to recruit female students and for her efforts to generally improve the quality of physics teaching through such work as undertaken by the Carl Weiman Science Education Initiative. announcement

Mona Berciu teaches at the University of British Columbia. Her undergraduate education was at the University of Bucharest, and she took her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Toronto. She was appointed in 2002 at UBC and now holds the position of Associate Professor.Mona is a very gifted teacher who lectures with great clarity and without notes, and, although she has an active research program, she spends countless hours outside of class explaining ideas and mentoring students. She has the ability to teach quite advanced physics to classes composed of students with diverse backgrounds without reducing the intellectual content of the subject. She is much respected by her students and has inspired many of them to go on to careers in physics. She is the main organizer of the Welcome Women initiative at UBC that encourages young women to enroll in Physics programs, and is departmental director of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative in which capacity she is taking a leadership role in the department’s efforts to optimize students’ learning in Physics. nominator citation

The CAP Medal for Excellence in Teaching honours faculty members who have a comprehensive knowledge and deep understanding of their subject and who possess an exceptional ability to communicate their knowledge and understanding in such a way as to lead their students to high academic achievement in physics. This medal was introduced in 1996 and has been awarded annually since.

Dr. Berciu is unable to attend the 2013 CAP Congress. She will be presented with her medal at the earliest appropriate opportunity. medal description

The Canadian Association of Physicists, founded in 1945, is a professional association representing over 1600 individual physicists and physics students in Canada, the U.S. and overseas, as well as a number of Corporate, Institutional, and Departmental Members. In addition to its learned activities, the CAP also undertakes a number of activities intended to encourage students to pursue a career in physics. cap description

joint description

- 30 -

For more information, please contact: Canadian Association of Physicists Tel: (613) 562-5614 Fax: (613) 562-5615 E-mail: cap@uottawa.ca