Dr. Liudong Xing Awarded 2014 TofY Award

Professor Liudong Xing of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department has been honored with the Leo M. Sullivan Teacher of the Year award for 2014. The award was presented at a Faculty Federation banquet on December 3, 2014.

Dr. Xing is one of the ECE department’s top teachers and scholars who has compiled her outstanding record in teaching and advising while sustaining an active research program. Moreover, as a recipient of the 2010 Scholar of the Year award, she has given new meaning to the term teacher/scholar and has defined a new paradigm for faculty roles in state universities with growing research programs.

Dr. Xing is committed to student learning – from freshman through advanced graduate students. Her instructional style is to engage the students, not an easy thing to do in engineering courses. Her teaching evaluation by students have always been high. Here are some comments students wrote on her course evaluations.

“Amazing Teacher! I like the method of her teaching. It guarantees our understanding of the materials during class time. The amount of homework, the project and hand on problems are very reasonable and helpful. Thank you for all the effort.”

“This course is very useful. It provides me a general view of a computer system! And the explanations of class topics are very clear! Easy to remember!”

“Very great class. I am learning a lot. I wish I could take some of my future classes with Dr. Xing”

“Excellent Professor. Knows in depth knowledge about the topic. Very fair grades.”

Dr. Xing has successfully incorporated her active research program into the classroom and into graduate and undergraduate advising. Since joining UMass Dartmouth in 2002, she has graduated 6 PhD students and 33 MS students. She has also actively mentored undergraduate students as part of her NSF-funded research in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. The number of students alone don’t tell the complete story though. She has co-authored 37 refereed journal papers and 53 refereed conference papers with her graduate students since 2002. Three of these papers have won either first or second place awards at the conferences to which they were submitted. Additionally, Dr. Xing has been an active advisor and mentor to two student organizations in the ECE Department, the student branch of IEEE (professional society) and IEEE-HKN (the honor society for electrical and computer engineering students).