2 faculty won Tina and David Bellet Teaching Excellence Awards

University of Pittsburgh faculty members Bridget Keown and Ben Rottman are the recipients of the 2024 Tina and David Bellet Teaching Excellence Awards, presented annually to outstanding and innovative undergraduate instructors in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.

The honor was established in 1998 with a gift from David Bellet (A&S ’67) and his wife, Tina, and endowed in 2008 through the family's further generosity. Students and faculty can submit nominations in the fall. Awardees selected by a committee each receive a cash prize of $10,000.

Keown, an assistant teaching professor in Pitt’s Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program, is leading a initiative to foster an interdisciplinary program in gender and science at Pitt. Her current research examines the history of kinship among gay and lesbian groups during the AIDS outbreak in the U.S. and Ireland. While earning her PhD at Northwestern University, she focused on the experience and treatment of war-related trauma among British and Irish women during World War I and the Irish War of Independence as well as the construction of history through trauma.

Rottman is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and a research scientist studying causal learning, reasoning, judgment and medical decision-making in Pitt’s Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC). In September, he received a Course Transformation Award from the discipline-Based Science Education Research Center to adapt a large-enrollment Research Methods course to offer students more active learning. Rottman and other LRDC scientists recently contributed to a special edition of the Journal of Cognitive Research that focused on the development and retention of medical expertise.