Nancy Ares, who joined the Warner School faculty in 2003, is dedicated to mentoring future educational leaders and shaping the Warner experience. Colleagues credit her revision of the foundational research methods course with helping to increase the number of Ed.D. students at the Warner School. Ares says her teaching philosophy is grounded in a strong sense of social justice and the belief that learning is an active process, one most effective when it engages students both as individuals and as members of larger, often diverse, communities. “She teaches with both a heart for justice and an intellect for groundbreaking justice-based work in empirical evidence,” says Lisa Perhamus, a Ph.D. candidate at the Warner School.

Robert Bambara has supervised 25 Ph.D. students and six M.D./Ph.D. combined degree candidates through their dissertations since joining the Rochester faculty in 1977. Many of those former students now hold posts at higher education institutions and research centers around the globe, often describing Bambara’s guidance as pivotal to their own success. Among those is Alan Wahl ’86M (PhD), senior director of molecular oncology and immunology at Seattle Genetics.  “Bob has high standards and expectations and could draw out the best in his students. He could foster consensus on difficult concepts, thrill in our scientific discovery and, in the face of our most obvious graduate student shortcomings, let us know that he valued us as individuals and valued our potential to make great scientific contributions. Now that I direct my own staff of nearly 20 scientists, I hope some of these attitudes have stayed with me and hopefully have made me a better scientist, laboratory director, and mentor.”

Henry Kyburg Jr., who joined the Department of Philosophy as a professor in 1965, is a leading authority on philosophical problems in the study of science and mathematics. His former students can be found working across the disciplines, teaching at universities, practicing law, or working as scientists or research fellows in both private industry and educational institutions. When describing Kyburg’s influence on them, many remark on his insightful instruction and generous spirit. “He has been a strong influence for good in my intellectual life, enormously generous to me personally, and infinitely kind. And when I think of intellectual courage, he is one of a very small handful of philosophers who comes to mind,” says Marian Thalos, professor of philosophy at the University of Utah and coeditor with Kyburg of the book Probability is the Very Guide of Life: The Philosophical Uses of Chance.

A 2001 recipient of a Goergen Award for Contributions to Undergraduate Education in the College, John Tarduno is once again being recognized for his excellence in the classroom and his willingness to mentor both students and colleagues. Tarduno joined the Rochester faculty in 1993 and in the same year established the Paleomagnetic Laboratory at the University, where his team has developed techniques for extracting information from crystals that contain nanometer-sized magnetic particles. In addition to opportunities to conduct research in the lab, students in Tarduno’s classes are given unique opportunities to conduct hands-on scientific work in the field, including in the Canadian Arctic and regions of California where students study geological processes actively at work. These are experiences that many students describe as unforgettable and the highlight of their undergraduate years, including Allison Sail ’08, who says Tarduno’s field trip to the west coast made her decide to major in geology. “He has truly changed the course of my life.”