Dr. Valerie Cubon-Bell has been named one of three campus-wide recipients of the Outstanding Teaching Award presented by the University Teaching Council. Each year, honors full-time, non-tenure-track and part-time faculty members who are nominated by their students and peers for being among the most dedicated, highly effective and motivated professors at the university.
Dr. Cubon-Bell, who is an assistant professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at at Trumbull, will receive the award at 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, Oct. 12 in Trumbull’s Classroom/Administration Building. She will then be honored along with the two other award recipients at the University Teaching Council’s “Celebrating College Teaching” conference luncheon and awards ceremony on Friday, Oct. 21.
She is described by her students as “a natural-born chemist who brings a levity to dense material and manages to present even the most complex concepts in easily accessible lectures. Students have witnessed Cubon-Bell helping others in class with patience, grace and a warm smile.”
Dr. Valerie Cubon-Bell receives Outstanding Teaching Award in front of one of her classes, Oct. 12.
Dr. Cubon-Bell’s time at Princeton University and her research with NASA make her a valuable source of knowledge in the Mahoning Valley, but students say that it is her compassion and empathy that make her stand out among other brilliant minds.
Last spring, she facilitated a workshop about sports-related concussions as part of Alumni Associations’ Faculty Lecture Series.
Cubon-Bell studies the effects of sports-related concussion on the brain using non-invasive functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). She has published several key articles investigating the structural effects of sports-related concussion on deep brain white matter. Before coming to at Trumbull, she was a researcher at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute where she investigated traumatic brain injury and sports-related concussion.
In 2015, Dr. David Hacker, Department of Geology, at Trumbull, received a similar award, Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award (DTA).