Father James L. Shilts, C.S.C./Doris and Gene Leonard Teaching Award
This award, bestowed annually on a faculty member in the College of Science, is named in honor of Father James Shilts, C.S.C., who taught in the Department of Physics from 1961 until his death in 1982, and was endowed in 1984 by Dr. Eugene T. Leonard III in memory of his parents Dr. Eugene and Doris Leonard. Dr. Leonard III was a member of the Science Advisory Council from 1976 until 1991. The award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated sustained excellence in teaching.
The 2024 recipients are:
Annette Pilkington, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics
and
Molly Walsh, Ph.D., Department of ACMS
Pilkington is a professor of the practice in the Department of Mathematics. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1991 and joined as faculty in 2006. She was promoted to associate professor in 2012 and to full professor in 2018. Pilkington is recognized as a pedagogical innovator, bringing the “flipped” style of teaching to Calculus II in 2016 and creating a Math in Sports course first taught in 2014. She has left a lasting impact on the Mathematics department, serving as course coordinator for over 40 courses since 2010. She has provided generous support and mentoring to numerous colleagues, including training graduate teaching assistants through the Mathematics Department graduate teaching seminar.
Walsh is a teaching professor in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics (ACMS). She earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1991. She joined the faculty at Notre Dame in 2016 as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 2021. Walsh has coordinated several multi-section statistics courses, earning glowing praise from her students. She has completely redesigned two of these courses, focusing on pedagogical innovations to better serve broad student populations in large classroom settings. Walsh is a noted mentor of her fellow faculty and postdocs and taught the Graduate Teaching Seminar required of all ACMS graduate students from 2017 to 2021.