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Press Releases | |
March 23, 1998
Contact:
Shellfish Scientist Wins Teaching Excellence Award
Jane Finalborgo
Joe Dionisio
(516) 287 8313
Fax: (516) 283 4081
Stephen T. Tettelbach, associate professor of marine science at Southampton College, will receive the 1998 David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, Long Island University has announced.
Dr. Tettelbach, along with six other award winners from the C.W. Post and Brooklyn campuses will be honored at a reception and awards ceremony Monday, March 30 at 4 p.m. in the Gold Coast Room at C.W. Post.
Past president of the National Shellfisheries Association, Dr. Tettelbach has received numerous grants and contracts for his work. Following the advice a friend gave him many years ago "never to study something that you can't eat," he has focused his research on bay scallops for more than 20 years.
He often involves and employs his students in his research, particularly in projects in East End waters aimed at restoring bay scallops following their near complete disappearance in the mid 1980s due to brown tide algal blooms. He has developed an extensive network of friendships with eastern Long Island baymen that takes his commitment to his research beyond the purely scientific level.
Dr. Tettelbach knew he wanted to be a marine scientist from the time he was eight years old. After completing his bachelor's degree in Biology at the University of Miami and his Master's in Fisheries Biology at the University of Washington, he returned home to Connecticut as a marine microbiologist, where he worked alongside his future wife, Lisa.
After earning his Ph.D. in Ecology at the University of Connecticut, he joined the faculty at Southampton College where he teaches aquaculture, fisheries biology, microbiology, tropical marine biology and ichthyology.
More at home in a wetsuit than a business suit, Tettelbach takes every opportunity to get his students out of the formal classroom and into the field where they can learn by doing and where they can reconnect with what got them interested in biology in the first place.
In the classroom, he keeps the atmosphere informal and wherever possible includes discussions of his own research and experiences so that students can relate to the material on a more personal level.
An avid underwater photographer, shell collector and SCUBA diver, he is the faculty advisor to the Southampton Submersibles dive club.
"My position as a faculty member at Southampton College provides an ideal mix of opportunities to do research and to work with a terrific group of students," he said.
Winners of the Newton Awards were selected by a committee of their peers following nomination and support from faculty, students and alumni. The award is named for David Newton, a former executive vice president of Long Island University.
The other 1988 winners are Michelle K. Bazil, assistant professor of pharmacology at the Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Science; Katherine Cecelia Hill-Miller, Professor of English at C.W. Post; Lorene Hiris, associate professor of finance at C.W. Post; Mary C. Trotto, associate professor of health, physical education and movement science at C.W. Post; Corazon Van Derveer, associate professor of nursing at Brooklyn; and Sylvia Yudice Walters, assistant professor of speech at Brooklyn.