Interim president honors Professor Chen

Pitt-Bradford honored Dr. Yong-Zhuo Chen, professor of mathematics, during its Honors Convocation on Friday.

Lawrence Feick, interim president of Pitt-Bradford, presented Chen with the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, Scholarship and Service.

“In 30 years at Pitt-Bradford, Dr. Chen has consistently performed admirably,” Feick said. “Students routinely give him strong assessments of his teaching, despite his teaching rigorous and technical classes. On top of that, he is a prolific scholar, advancing the frontiers of mathematics.

“In addition, he devotes time to his duties as chair of the Division of Physical and Computational Sciences and the mathematics community. In summary, he is a superb contributor in the key faculty responsibility areas of teaching, research and service.”

Dr. Stephen Hardin, vice president and dean of academic affairs, nominated Chen for the honor.

“Because of his unimposing nature, I believe that Dr. Chen does not always get the recognition and attention that he rightly deserves,” Hardin wrote. “Dr. Chen truly is excellent in all three areas of responsibility as a faculty member - teaching, scholarship and service.”

Hardin noted that Chen has continued to teach an overload of classes even as chair of his division and has developed a number of new courses for the university.

As a scholar, Chen has published 37 articles in peer-reviewed journals since he started teaching at Pitt-Bradford in 1989 and has 422 Google Scholar citations, showing the esteem in which his mathematical colleagues hold him.

He has served on the editorial boards of several mathematical journals and refereed papers for dozens of more publications.

Chen also has served as a faculty consultant and reviewer for the College Board's Advanced Placement Calculus program, and he has received the AP National Conference Scholarship from the College Board to support his engagement with that organization.

Since 2005, Chen has served as a division chair. During that time, he has overseen the development of new majors in engineering technology, petroleum technology and environmental science and worked on the university's transition from a computer science major to the computer information systems and technology major.

Additionally, he has served the university on many campus committees. He has also serves as an external evaluator for the mathematics program at the University of Pittsburgh's Greensburg campus.

Chen was born in China and obtained his Master of Science degree in mathematics from Shanghai Normal University before coming to the United States and earning his doctorate in mathematics at Pitt in 1988. He served as an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio for one year before coming to Pitt-Bradford in 1989.

Chen and his wife live in Bradford and enjoy walking on trails for exercise and relaxing. They have two children.