Maine Perspective Front Page
Kornfield Named Maine Professor of the Year
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has named Professor Irving Kornfield as its 1998 Maine Professor of the Year, an award given annually in recognition of college faculty members who excel as teachers, and influence the lives and careers of their students.
This is the third Carnegie award presented to UMaine faculty. UMaine civil engineering professors Dana Humphrey and Habib Dagher were named Maine Professor of the Year in 1994 and 1995 respectively.
Kornfield has been on the UMaine faculty since 1977 and holds the rank of professor in the UMaine School of Marine Sciences. He teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in evolution and marine ecology in both the School of Marine Sciences and Department of Biological Sciences. His thriving research activity focuses on evolutionary biology.
Kornfield also worked with the Maine Warden Service to develop UMaine's wildlife DNA forensic facility. In 1997, he was recognized as UMaine's Distinguished Maine Professor.
"Professor Irv Kornfield is the only person I know who comes to a lecture on evolution for honor students carrying a human skull and a peacock feather, and uses them both to excellent effect to illustrate his points," says Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Doug Gelinas. "He truly is the kind of faculty member that typifies a university at its best: an excellent research scientist who involves students in his work, and who is also one of the best classroom teachers around. His lectures are always interesting, always clear, always thought-provoking, and never, ever routine. The University of Maine can be proud to count him as one of its finest teacher-scholars."
The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) established the Professors of the Year program in 1981. CASE works in cooperation with the Carnegie Foundation and higher education associations to administer the award. Nominees are from public or private higher education institutions.
Bruce Sidell, director of the School of Marine Sciences, points out that Kornfield's work makes a difference to Maine people.
"Our students are beneficiaries of the enthusiasm and the excellence of his instruction," says Sidell. "His vital research program takes him to the far reaches of the globe in pursuit of understanding evolutionary biology, but he equally devotes his expertise to critical marine issues in Maine, such as population structures of some of the Gulf of Maine's most important commercial fisheries, lobster and haddock."