Dr. Laird H. Kramer, Ph.D. will be the recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Award on Saturday, March 28, 2015, during the FIU Alumni Association’s fourteenth annual Torch Awards Gala. The award highlights a faculty member who has made a lasting impression on the lives of FIU alumni. For more than two decades, Dr. Kramer has done just that by demonstrating singular devotion and loyalty to the Florida International University community and student body.
Currently a professor in the Department of Physics, Dr. Kramer is also the Director of the STEM Transformation Institute at FIU. His approach centers on active student engagement, starting with the unique modeling instruction platform he implemented in the physics department more than 10 years ago, which grew the number of physics majors from about 30 in 2000 to nearly 200 in 2014. In 2010, Dr. Kramer led an effort to recruit and educate a new generation of science and mathematics teachers and simultaneously acquired a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) for FIU. His most recent accomplishments include the award and launch of FIUteach, a $1.45 million UTeach replication grant that will lead to training over 60 science and mathematics teachers annually at FIU, and the award of his second HHMI grant, a $1.5 million project that will implement active learning across sciences and mathematics courses for all STEM majors. He is also the founder of the Physics Education Research Group, a university engagement initiative that pursues new methods in teaching. He was named the driving force behind FIU joining the National Science and Mathematics Teacher Imperative, which is operated by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities.
This year, the FIU Alumni Association will be hosting the prestigious gala at the luxurious Fontainebleau Miami Beach Hotel, located on 4441 Collins Avenue in Miami, Fla.
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About FIU:
Florida International University is recognized as a Carnegie engaged university. It is a public research university with colleges and schools that offer more than 180 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations, architecture, law and medicine. As one of South Florida’s anchor institutions, FIU contributes $9.8 billion each year to the local economy. FIU is Worlds Ahead in finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time. FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission. FIU has awarded over 200,000 degrees and enrolls more than 54,000 students in two campuses and three centers including FIU Downtown on Brickell, FIU@I-75, and the Miami Beach Urban Studios. FIU also supports artistic and cultural engagement through its three museums: the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, the Wolfsonian-FIU, and the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. FIU is a member of Conference USA and has over 400 student-athletes participating in 18 sports. For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu/.
About the FIU Alumni Association:
The Florida International University Alumni Associationis a membership-based organization with over 20,000 dues paying members governed by a volunteer board of directors and currently serves a total alumni base of over 200,000, represented in every state and in more than 30 countries around the world. The mission is to serve the community of FIU alumni, students, family and friends by providing lifelong connections to FIU. The organization strives to provide opportunities to support FIU’s key strategic initiatives, which includes the revitalization and expansion of financial resources, achieving academic excellence, enhancing research and creative initiatives, and engaging the community of FIU. For more information about the FIU Alumni Association, visit FIUalumni.com.