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Provost's Awards for Excellence

2019-2020 Awardees

2019-2020 Awardees Wen Cheng, Matthew S. Povich, and Sarah Lorenzen

Excellence in Teaching

Wen Cheng received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University. His research focuses on highway safety, statistical modeling, machine learning, traffic operation and highway geometric design. He won the nationally recognized “2008 Young Researcher Award” presented by TRB Committee on Safety Data, Analysis, and Evaluation due to his research related to safety performance ranking. He also received the 2013 National James M. Robbins Excellence in Teaching Award from the Civil Engineering honor society. Recently, he received the 2015 Outstanding Research Award and the 2018 Outstanding Teaching Award from Cal Poly Pomona College of Engineering, and 2020 Provost’s Excellence in Teaching Award from Cal Poly Pomona. He served as the editors for a large number of conferences, journals and magazines. He also published numerous journal papers covering transportation engineering, environment, public health and applied statistics and mathematics.

Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activities

Matthew S. Povich is an Associate Professor who joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Cal Poly Pomona in 2012. He maintains a highly productive research program in astronomy, using data from both space- and ground-based telescopes to study the most active star-forming nebulae in our Milky Way Galaxy. He is recognized as one of the world’s experts in the study of young stellar objects, massive stars, and ionized nebulae. He works with numerous research collaborators across the country and internationally and serves as lead scientist for the Milky Way Project, an online citizen science platform that has engaged >50,000 volunteers from >100 countries to catalog thousands of nebulae in infrared survey images. Dr. Povich has authored 59 articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, garnering 4100+ literature citations. The stunning imagery produced by his work has been featured in numerous press releases. His research grants have brought >$900,000 in funding to CPP, including the first NSF CAREER grant awarded to our university. Dr. Povich’s research group has involved over 20 undergraduates, a research associate, and a postdoctoral research fellow. His students have contributed to nine journal articles, including four as lead author, and have presented at fifteen (inter)national conference presentations. Alumni of his research group frequently proceed to graduate study at top-ranked Ph.D. programs in astrophysics, including Caltech and Ohio State.

Excellence in Service

Sarah Lorenzen, Professor in the Department of Architecture, successfully served as the Director of the neutra VDL Research Studio and Residences (VDL) from 2007-2020. Under her supervision, VDL went from being a house in disrepair to becoming a prominent cultural space in Los Angeles. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2017. Her fundraising and grant procurement efforts led to a ten-fold increase in Neutra House’s yearly revenues. Ms. Lorenzen also oversaw the restoration of the house and worked with well know mid-century furniture and lighting manufacturers to refurnish the house to match the original interiors. Ms. Lorenzen developed an Architecture class where she teaches students about Richard Neutra's architecture and the history of VDL, and trains them to be docents for weekend tours. The house is also used for other educational activities in art, design, preservation, and landscape architecture. Ms. Lorenzen has organized countless community social, cultural and educational activities connected to the Neutra House: guided tours, an artist-in-residence exhibition program, and performances such as concerts, recitals, book presentations, and round table discussions. Ms. Lorenzen stepped down as resident director of VDL in March.