Kao receives Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award

17 March 2006 — Teh-hui Kao, chair of the plant physiology program and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University Park, is this year's winner of the Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award.

The award honors faculty members for exemplary leadership that benefits graduate students and faculty in an existing graduate program at the University. The award's design acknowledges the recipient's efforts to enhance student recruitment, professional development and placement, and mentoring and promotion of faculty and students in the graduate program. The winner works to enhance his program's diversity, educational quality, resources and national visibility, and promotes professional ethics and its integration into all elements of graduate programming.

Since Kao took on the role of chair of the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program (IGDP) in Plant Physiology in 1999, his peers have noted "his dedicated and inspired leadership." The program faculty demonstrated their confidence in Kao when they unanimously re-elected him last year for a second five-year term as chair.

In addition to chairing the IGDP, Kao is co-director of the Ecological and Molecular Plant Physiology (EMPP) option in Penn State's Integrative Biosciences Graduate Degree Program. The IGDP in plant physiology and EMPP are considered sister programs, as they have many course courses in common, and the students in the two programs function as one group.

"Dr. Kao has done a terrific job keeping these two programs vibrant and growing in the face of rapidly changing science and faculty … Year after year, we have been wonderfully surprised at his skill, enthusiasm, commitment and flexibility in leading these two graduate programs, which are central to the health of plant biology on this campus," said one nominator.

Nominators say that under Kao's direction, graduate enrollments have increased, as well as the caliber of the incoming graduate students. In addition, the quality of students' educational experiences are among the best in the nation for a plant biology program, and the spirit and morale of the students and faculty are at an all-time high.

"Professor Kao has shown us what can be done with steady dedication and gentle persuasion," said his nominators, who credit Kao's influence with keeping both students and faculty fully engaged in the programs. In fact, Kao is described by nominators as being "masterful" in his ability to encourage the programs' constituents to dedicate their time and energy to all aspects of the programs.

The outstanding personal support and guidance Kao has provided for both prospective and current students is evident to his nominators, as well. In addition to being intimately involved with every step of the student recruitment, he devotes his attention to students after they arrive at Penn State through personal meetings and careful monitoring of their progress to ensure a successful experience.

"The students feel free to come to him with their problems and concerns, and he always does his best to make sure their graduate experience is as productive and educational as possible," said his nominators.

After receiving his Ph.D. in physical biochemistry from Yale University, Kao conducted research at the Roche Institute for Molecular Biology and at Cornell University before coming to Penn State in 1986. He has authored or co-authored 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and has presented his research as an invited speaker at locations across the globe.

[Karen Zitomer]