2024: Catherine Herne (Physics and Astronomy)
Catherine Herne, Associate Professor of Physics & Astronomy, is the 2024 faculty Mentor of the Year.
Catherine’s mentorship is admired for its breadth and depth alike. She supervises a heavy load of undergraduate Physics students on research – 21 students in just the past 3 years, for example. Many of them have presented their work at regional conferences or coauthored publications with her. That volume of students and quality of output is remarkable.
Even more impressive, though, is that Catherine provides those students individual supervision, always with an eye for how to support their growth as budding scholars. Her recent student Liliana Kershner admired Dr. Herne’s skill at “weaving students’ research interests with reasonable expectations and enough guidance to be helpful without being overbearing” and noted that “she spends many hours in the lab mentoring students, going above and beyond what is expected” or typical.
Similarly, her colleague Stacie Nunes (Associate Dean of Science & Engineering) marveled at the amount of one-on-one attention Catherine gives students and her enthusiasm to mentor students beyond just the project. “The time Catherine spends working with students means she gets to know them in a way that goes far beyond what is possible in the classroom”, for example, by “discussing their career goals regularly and helping them find ways to achieve them.”
