Jason Slinker Earns Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award
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Jason Slinker, an assistant professor of physics at UT Dallas, has earned a 2014 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Texas System Board of Regents.
Slinker credits his undergraduate and graduate advisors for inspiring his enthusiasm to work with students. His mentor, Dr. Dwight E. Neuenschwander, who chairs the physics department at Southern Nazarene University, was a coach for the U.S. team in the International Physics Olympiad, and has been involved for many years with the national Society of Physics Students organization.
“We would do physics circuses together, which is where I learned some of the demonstrations that I now do in class and our students do in the community,” said Slinker, who is faculty advisor for the Society of Physics Students (SPS) at UT Dallas, a group of about 20 students.
Under Slinker’s guidance, a group of SPS students won a research grant in 2012 from Sigma Pi Sigma to create testing equipment for light-emitting diodes. The chapter won another honor from the national SPS organization, the 2013 Marsh W. White Outreach Award, and used the funds to sponsor a model rocket contest for the UT Dallas community.
Slinker’s research combines biology, chemistry and physics, and includes DNA electrochemistry and the manufacturing of nanocircuits with DNA. He teaches introductory mechanics courses in physics, as well as a capstone laboratory class on physical measurements.