Maintaining an unparalleled record of teaching excellence at all instructional levels over his 44-year tenure as an NPRE faculty member, Prof. Roy A. Axford has been selected for the 2010 Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
To qualify as a candidate for the Campus Award, Axford first was selected for this year’s College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award.
Since starting his career at Illinois, following faculty positions at Texas A&M and Northwestern universities, Axford has established and maintained a first-rate teaching record in nuclear science and technology. He has accomplished this through dedication to developing courses at the upper division undergraduate and graduate levels. He has taught nearly all of NPRE’s 400-level courses over the years and initiated and developed many of them. Also to his credit, Axford played the central role in shaping NPRE’s undergraduate curriculum a few years ago, developing and first teaching several of the new and revised courses.
Axford’s dedication to his students is demonstrated through the teaching course load he continually requests. He always teaches a minimum of two – and frequently three – upper division undergraduate and graduate level courses each semester, and routinely is available to provide students help and answer questions. His mentoring style is to set and expect high intellectual standards, but with meaningful personal involvement in his students’ learning processes.
Axford has been equally committed to “teaching” through the research and advanced development of undergraduate and graduate students. He has produced 53 PhDs, and continues to keep in touch and advise them as they progress in their careers. His dedication to the mentoring of individual students at each stage of their professional developments is extraordinary. Axford is legendary in the vast web of his PhD students who have gone on to conduct research in support of our government’s long-standing policy of developing and maintaining a credible nuclear deterrence capability.
This latest award adds to a long list of achievements Axford has accumulated. Numerous times he has been honored with the American Nuclear Society Student Chapter Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. He’s also received the College of Engineering Rose Award for Teaching Excellence (2008), the Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award (2004); and the College of Engineering Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence (1985). Twice before he was a finalist for the Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1979, 1981).
Axford’s dedication to his craft is also reflected in his Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) scores, which are consistently at the top of the NPRE Department and the College of Engineering. He is always included on the “Teachers Ranked as Excellent List.”
There is a quote that past and present NPRE students share: “Take any course that Axford teaches, and whatever else you need for your degree.” In fact, students hold him in such high esteem that the T-shirt for this academic year’s ANS group was designed with an etching of Axford’s image on the front.
Axford said it best himself when he was interviewed for NPRE’s 50th Anniversary video in 2008: “Students are very sensitive to faculty whom (the students) can respect for knowing something. It’s the knowledge that draws their interest.”
“Teaching and research are coupled together. One way to attract good research students is to pay attention to the teaching function. You get perceived as doing teaching right and you don’t have any problems attracting research students.”