Four educators receive Chancellors Club Teaching Professorships

LAWRENCE — KU Endowment has announced the recipients of the 2021 Chancellors Club Teaching Professorships. The honorees are health care educators at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita and KU School of Nursing and professors of geophysics and chemistry at KU’s Lawrence campus.  

The recipients are Scott Moser, associate dean of curriculum at KU School of Medicine-Wichita; Cynthia Teel, associate dean for academic affairs at the KU School of Nursing; Mikhail Barybin, professor of chemistry, KU Lawrence campus; and George Tsoflias, professor of applied geophysics, KU Lawrence campus.  

Each will receive an annual $10,000 honorarium for each of the next five years. 

Scott Moser, M.D. 

As an educator, Scott Moser has brought his own creative style to Wichita educational programs. He joined the KU School of Medicine-Wichita faculty in 1998 and was chosen as vice chair for education in the Department of Family and Community Medicine-Wichita in 2005. In 2015, he became associate dean for curriculum at KU School of Medicine-Wichita. He infuses a practical, case-based approach into family-medicine education and has developed and overseen the recruitment, training and mentoring of a group of part-time and retired physicians as coaches for students in Wichita. He has been the primary driver in the development of the department’s Objective Structured Clinical Examination, which evaluates students in a clinical setting. 

Career highlights: 

• Moser was instrumental in initiating the new ACE Curriculum (Active-learning, Competency-based, Excellence-driven) for medical students on the Wichita campus.
• He is the founding faculty adviser for the KU School of Medicine-Wichita’s JayDoc Community Clinic, the student-led outreach free clinic on the Wichita campus.  
• He has earned several teaching awards, including the Chancellors Club Distinguished Teaching Award and the Ruth Bohan Teaching Professor Award. In 2013 he was voted a Wichita Health Care Hero by The Wichita Business Journal.  

Cynthia Teel, Ph.D., RN, FAAN 

Cynthia Teel joined the KU School of Nursing faculty in 1993 as an assistant professor, teaching multiple courses in adult nursing, nursing role development, theory, geriatrics, research and synthesis at all levels from bachelor’s to doctorate over 24 years. Under Teel’s leadership as associate dean for graduate studies, the graduate programs in nursing developed into successful online programs with an outstanding national reputation. In 2016, Teel was appointed as associate dean for academic affairs with responsibility for all academic programs. 

Career highlights:  

• Since the inception of the KU School of Nursing in Salina, Teel has worked with a team to develop the framework and processes for joint teaching and learning using iTV technology, maintaining consistency in the curriculum and developing faculty skills in teaching.  
• She has created and implemented the predoctoral rural health immersion experience and assisted with the development of the postdoctoral fellowship in rural health nursing education, spearheading the nursing school’s continued commitment to rural health in Kansas.  
• She successfully secured the Kansas Board of Regents Nursing Initiative grant — which supports faculty and nursing lab supplies — six times, with awards ranging from $21,000 to $280,000.  

Mikhail (Misha) Barybin, Ph.D. 

Misha Barybin is known for his engaging teaching and selfless mentoring. In his nomination letter, Department of Chemistry Chair Robert Dunn notes that “Professor Barybin’s excellence as an educator flows from the sincere care he has for the success and well-being of his students” and “his continued mentorship of students long after they have left his classroom.” Since joining the KU faculty in 2001, Barybin has taught courses from freshman General Chemistry to advanced graduate-level classes. He is a passionate proponent of interdisciplinary education as exemplified by his honors freshman seminars Chemistry in the Context of Nanotech Revolution and Exploring Parallels between Chemistry and Music as well as by his recent University Scholars Seminar course Nuclear Chemistry in the Modern Society.

Career highlights: 

• Barybin has developed innovative teaching approaches, including combining undergraduate and graduate cohorts in a unique hybrid class on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. 
• His research program at the interface of organometallic and materials branches of chemistry has been funded by the National Science Foundation since 2006. 
• He holds multiple accolades for teaching and mentoring at KU and served as an Honors Faculty Fellow from 2013 to 2020.

George Tsoflias, Ph.D. 
Since he joined the faculty in 2003, George Tsoflias has excelled in developing core classes, innovating experiential learning opportunities and mentoring undergraduate and graduate research in the Department of Geology at KU. Both student and peer evaluations reflect his thoughtfulness and enthusiasm as a teacher and mentor. He has taken his teaching to the international level by developing the successful study-abroad geology course Greece: Natural Environment and Civilizations, immersing students to the study of geologic processes, culture and diversity. 

Career highlights:

• Tsoflias has coached KU’s teams in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists’ Imperial Barrel Award Program for eight years. The IBA competition pits geoscience students from universities around the world in the evaluation of the resource potential of selected geological basins. Under his guidance, the KU team was recognized for “Technical Innovation Excellence” at the 2021 Global Final competition. 
• Through his research program, he has trained students broadly across the geosciences in the areas of environment and energy. He and his students and collaborators have published 43 major peer-reviewed papers, 54 expanded abstracts and conference transactions, and 155 conference abstracts and presentations. 
• He has actively participated in the Emerging Scholars program, McNair Scholars program and CLAS Faculty Mentor program.