MSU honors faculty members with Giles Distinguished Professor, Grisham Master Teacher accolades

Contact: Carl Smith

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Four Mississippi State faculty members received two of the university’s most prestigious teaching accolades Thursday [Aug. 27].

Lesley Strawderman is MSU’s latest William L. Giles Distinguished Professor, and Iva Ballard, Peter Summerlin and Benjamin Tkach have received Grisham Master Teacher honors.

“Teaching excellence and excellent teachers are at the very heart of what we do at Mississippi State,” said MSU President Mark E. Keenum. “It’s the people who make our university such a special place to be, and that’s certainly true for all four of the outstanding members of our faculty we are recognizing today.”

The William L. Giles Distinguished Professor distinction is one of the highest honors the university can bestow upon a faculty member in recognition of outstanding research, teaching and service. The title is conferred only on an MSU faculty member who has attained national or international recognition.

Strawderman is a professor of industrial and systems engineering, MSU’s International Paper Company Endowed Chair and associate director of the university’s Athlete Engineering Institute. The 2021 Grisham Master Teacher Award recipient and Bagley College of Engineering Academy of Distinguished Teachers inductee has taught 14 different courses to approximately 5,000 students. Her research has brought in more than $25 million for studying human factors in engineering, safety and other topics from organizations including the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army, NASA and other public and private entities. At MSU’s Athlete Engineering Institute, she helps oversee research strategy and development, external stakeholder engagement and personnel management.

First presented in 1993, the Grisham Master Teacher honor is a tribute to classroom and instruction excellence—named for the MSU accounting alumnus and internationally recognized best-selling author who provided funds to endow the award.

Ballard is an instructor II of quantitative analysis in the Department of Marketing, Quantitative Analysis and Supply Chain Logistics within the College of Business. Since joining the department in 2013, she has been noted by her peers for her student-centered orientation as a professor with an appreciation for the scholarship of teaching. In addition to her teaching at MSU, she also has represented the COB as a member of the Faculty Senate and Disability Resource Center Advisory Board, among other service activities.

Summerlin is an associate professor and graduate coordinator in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In addition to teaching a variety of classes in his discipline, he is responsible for managing MLA degree recruitment and admissions, student advising, curriculum oversight and other graduate program tasks. Outside the classroom, his community-engaged and design-build educational collaborations—including the Mississippi Delta Design Series, Freedom Markers Project and others—embody MSU’s land-grant mission by merging service learning, civic engagement and applied design thinking.

Tkach is an associate professor of political science in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Political Science and Public Administration and co-director of the university’s Food and Agriculture as Competitive Statecraft Collaboratory. He has received numerous teaching accolades and distinctions since joining the university in 2018, including Best Undergraduate Teacher, A&S Teacher of the Year, Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College Mentor of the Year and the Zacharias Early Career Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award.

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