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Colón, Mark honored by NAGS
Two UB faculty members have been recognized for their contributions to graduate education by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools (NAGS).
Luis A. Colón, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, is the recipient of the NAGS Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award; David M. Mark, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography, is the recipient of the NAGS Graduate Teaching Award (doctoral level).
Colón and Mark received their awards at NAGS’ annual meeting last month in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
This is the second consecutive year UB has been honored by NAGS. At last year’s annual meeting, the Graduate School received the Award for Excellence and Innovation in Graduate Education, and Steven T. Koury, research assistant professor in the Department of Biotechnical and Clinical Laboratory Sciences, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, was presented the NAGS Graduate Teaching Award (master’s level).
Founded in 1975, NAGS is one of the four regional affiliates that comprise the national Council of Graduate Schools, the only national organization in the United States dedicated solely to the advancement of graduate education and research.
NAGS includes institutions from Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, D.C., and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec.
Luis Colón has long been involved in advancing diversity and mentoring students in the chemical sciences. For many years, he has arranged for Hispanic undergraduates from his native Puerto Rico to have a summer research experience in the Department of Chemistry. Many of these students have gone on to pursue graduate study.
He also has mentored additional UB undergraduates, many from underrepresented groups, including those with disabilities.
Colón is a member of the advisory committee to the Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowship Program, which supports underrepresented students in graduate programs at UB; he also serves as a research mentor for Schomburg Fellows. He has worked with the National Science Foundation-SUNY Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and the SUNY Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, which aims to produce more PhDs among underrepresented groups.
Colón has received numerous awards in recognition of his mentoring, among them the 2009 AAAS Mentor Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Faculty Mentor of the Year Award in 2004 from the Compact for Faculty Diversity, a national initiative to produce more minority PhDs. He is one of two inaugural recipients of the Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award administered by the UB Graduate School.
A UB faculty member since 1993, Colón is an analytical chemist whose research focuses on chemical analysis at the micro/nano scales, the development of new materials for chemical separations, environmental chemistry and bioanalytical chemistry, especially developing new methodology to analyze biological samples, such as saliva and tears and their potential use in clinical diagnostics.
A UB faculty member since 1981, David Mark serves as director of the UB site of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. Mark also is project director of UB’s two NSF-funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) projects in geographic information science, which have supported more than 60 doctoral level trainees in seven academic departments.
Mark helped found the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), and served as its president in 1998. He also has chaired the UCGIS’ research, membership, and policy and legislation committees. A member of the UCGIS’ inaugural class of fellows in 2010, he received UCGIS’ Researcher of the Year Award in 2004 and its Educator of the Year Award in 2009.
Mark is best known for his work in theorizing new approaches to and conceptions of geography in the context of geographic information science. His research interests have involved digital elevation models, hierarchical data structures, navigation and wayfinding, qualitative spatial reasoning and geographic cognition.
Over the past 20 years, his work has focused on cultural and linguistic variation in geographic concepts, more recently in the context of ontology and indigenous geographies.
He has advised or co-advised 18 doctoral students and more than 40 master’s student, and has served on the PhD advisory committees of more than 100 doctoral students.
A prolific researcher, Mark has authored or co-authored nearly 240 publications and delivered nearly 250 academic presentations, almost three-quarters at professional meetings and the others as invited talks at universities and government agencies.
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