Each year, Colorado State University celebrates the teaching, research and service achievements of CSU students, alumni and friends, academic faculty, administrative professionals and classified staff. Click on the name of the award to see more information on this year’s teaching honorees, and scroll down to see even more outstanding members of the Ram Family honored with 2017 Celebrate! Colorado State Awards on April 18.
Kim Hoke, an associate professor in the Department of Biology who has done groundbreaking work in the evolution of animal behavior, has been named a Monfort Professor, one of CSU’s highest honors.
The designation comes with $75,000 a year over the next two years to support her internationally recognized research, which involves integrating behavior, neuroanatomy and genomics of amphibians and fishes.
Beyond her research accomplishments, which have garnered her two major grants from the National Science Foundation (including a prestigious CAREER award) and publication in top journals like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hoke has also been recognized for excellence in teaching and mentoring. In addition to innovations in teaching, she has been instrumental in designing capstone courses in the department and has a strong undergraduate mentoring program for students in her laboratory, according to her nomination materials.
“My high regard and enthusiasm for Dr. Hoke as a scientific colleague and fellow faculty member has no bounds,” department head Michael Antolin wrote in his recommendation letter. “Her interdisciplinary research takes a familiar endeavor, the observation of animal behavior, and brings it to the highest level and cutting-edge scientific achievement. But even more, this is not a lone journey. Dr. Hoke is dedicated to bringing her younger colleagues with her in mentoring of students in classes and in her lab.”
Antolin, who nominated Hoke for the honor, and College of Natural Sciences Dean Jan Nerger also lauded Hoke’s service and outreach contributions in their recommendation letters.
“Of particular note is her dedication to interdisciplinary teams across campus, serving on multiple NSF panels, and organizing three international conferences,” Nerger wrote. “The intent of the Monfort Professorship is to support our ‘rising star’ faculty in their research and teaching careers. In my opinion, Dr. Hoke is just that … a rising star. Her trajectory is steep and heading toward the distinction of University Distinguished Professor.”
Hoke won the Research Excellence Award from the Office of the Vice President for Research in 2015 for a paper published in Nature, and this year she was named a Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Fellow by the Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst,
Germany, to support her upcoming sabbatical.
Hoke intends to use the Monfort funding to extend her research on genetic and developmental contributions to behavioral diversity in Trinidadian guppies.
Congratulations to Dr. Hoke, our other award winners in the College of Natural Sciences, and all of the awardees across campus!
Story originally posted on SOURCE: http://source.colostate.edu/celebrate-awards/#1492196894292-1d607da5-424b
