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The University of Portland’s Portland magazine has won a national Silver Award from CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) in its annual Circle of Excellence awards. Portland won second place in the “Magazines, Alumni/General Interest 3x Per Year category.

In announcing the award, CASE’s statement about Portland reads: “After Portland magazine’s two-year hiatus following the death of beloved, longstanding editor Brian Doyle, editor Jessica Murphy Moo put the wheels in motion again with new designer Darsey Landoe (using partial redesigns from Zehno). They had an audience eager to receive Portland again, and expectations were high in terms of both content and design. Portland magazine has a strong and unique brand; it is more literary and heartfelt than many alumni magazines. The brand was also very much attached to the previous editor. So the team needed to figure out how to continue to give the audience what they wanted—authentic, deeply human stories—with a new editor at the helm. This first year of the redesigned magazine offers great stories—a balance of personal essay and reporting. A New York Times writer described his work with the Compton Cowboys, and the founder of a nonprofit named Girls Build told a personal story about her work to encourage girls to consider careers in the trades. The editor wrote about an archeological dig in Mallorca, Spain, and an alumnus wrote about his summer answering phones at the White House. The tradition of spiritual writing continues as well. The elements of the Portland magazine tradition are there. In the first year of the redesigned magazine, the team delivered the authentic, deeply human storytelling our readers wanted and expected.”

Please congratulate Jessica Murphy Moo for her outstanding vision and leadership in continuing Portland magazine’s reign as one of the top university magazines in the U.S. and beyond.

Following a wide-ranging national search, Herbert A. Medina, currently dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, has been appointed to the role of Provost effective July 1. The search for Thomas Greene’s successor attracted more than 300 applicants.

Medina has served as dean and professor of mathematics since 2018. His leadership of CAS has been marked by devotion to student well-being and success, dedication to faculty support and development, and unwavering commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. He has been a champion of experiential learning, directed the study and development of new academic programs, and has already played an important role in faculty and staff searches at the University.

An exemplary teacher-scholar, Medina is rightly beloved by his students and has earned widespread recognition for his research in functional analysis, wavelets, and polynomial approximations. He is deeply committed to the University’s Catholic and Holy Cross mission and its call for all community members to be engaged in the work of social justice, radical hospitality, and advancement of the Catholic intellectual tradition. As a leader and a colleague, Medina’s style is communicative, transparent, collaborative, compassionate, and humbly confident.

Prior to joining UP, Medina enjoyed a highly successful 26-year career as a professor and administrative leader at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He was associate dean of LMU’s Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering before his appointment as CAS dean at UP. He holds a B.S. in mathematics and computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.

For more information contact the president’s office at x7105 or simek@up.edu.

Mathematics professor Aaron Wootton has been awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award for the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Pacific Northwest Section. Winners of the section award are automatically nominated for the national MAA Deborah & Franklin Tepper Haimo Award, given to nominees who are widely recognized as extraordinarily successful in their teaching, who have had an influence in their teaching beyond their own institution, and who foster curiosity and generate excitement about mathematics in their students. The Pacific Northwest Section includes all institutions of higher education in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and the Northwest, Nunavut, and Yukon territories.

Wootton has been teaching math classes spanning the entire undergraduate curriculum for 21 years. The success of his teaching comes down to his willingness to listen carefully to his students and colleagues and adapt his teaching methods accordingly. He teaches classes offering students multiple formats to help in their learning, creating a safe and comfortable learning environment, and by regularly communicating with them to learn about their individual needs and concerns. For example, he requires that every student picks up each of their tests from his office in person. Though these meetings take up a tremendous amount of time (200+ meetings per semester), every minute is time well spent as it allows him to build an honest and trusting relationship with his students, and it provides him with the opportunity to identify and help students who are struggling.

Outside of the classroom, to pique student interest in mathematics, Wootton created a course in cryptography and drafted an accompanying 200-page textbook. Nationally, Aaron is recognized as the founder and series editor of the book series Foundations for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (FURM, published by Springer Verlag). To date, FURM has released one volume with two further volumes in press. He is a member of the Mathematics Calculus Consortium, a group of educators ranging from high school teachers to faculty from world-renowned research universities. Since joining the Consortium, he has been involved in the completion of four new edition textbooks, all of which are published by Wiley, and are strong sellers throughout the world.