Faculty members honored for excellence in teaching

UB faculty members Yu-Ping Chang and Sahn-Wook Huh received the Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award from the UB undergraduate Student Association in a ceremony on May 2.

The annual award recognizes outstanding professors for their commitment to students and the quality of their teaching. Students nominate faculty who have inspired, excited or positively affected them from across the university.

The honor is named for Milton Plesur, a UB history professor who died in 1987. He was a beloved teacher, author and scholar of popular culture and the American presidency, whose humor captivated his students.

Chang, associate dean for research and scholarship in the School of Nursing, teaches courses on psychiatric mental health and addictions nursing, and mentors students on various research projects. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Her research focuses on mental health, substance abuse, prescription medication use in older adults, and family caregiving and medication management for individuals with dementia.

She has published numerous journal articles in the field of mental health and addictions. She is currently studying prescription opioid misuse and complex co-existing health conditions in chronic pain patients, the effect of behavioral interventions such as motivational interviewing and mindfulness-based stress reduction on substance abuse and mental health, and the physical and psychosocial well-being in family caregivers of people with dementia.

Chang earned a doctorate in nursing from Saint Louis University, and both a master’s degree in psychiatric and mental health nursing and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan.

Huh, associate professor of finance in the School of Management, is a member of the American Finance Association, Western Finance Association, Financial Management Association, Korea-America Finance Association and Korea-America Economic Association. He has several years of experience in private sector banking and with the Korean Ministry of Finance.

His research interests include foreign exchange economics, behavioral finance, asset pricing, market microstructure and empirical corporate finance. He has been published in numerous academic journals, including Management Science, Review of Financial Studies and Review of Asset Pricing Studies.

Huh holds a doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles, as well as an MBA from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University in Korea.