Five faculty members have been awarded a Harvard College Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching, in fields ranging from biophysics to cultural studies. Claudine Gay, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, announced the recipients on May 2. They are:

• Fiery Cushman, professor of psychology
• Philip Deloria, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History
• Sean Eddy, Ellmore C. Patterson Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology
• Zhiming Kuang, Gordon McKay Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science
• Mara Prentiss, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics

“I am so pleased to recognize these five colleagues for their contributions to undergraduate teaching and their support and mentorship of students, as well as their work in graduate education and research,” Gay said. “Their dedication, passion, and innovation in teaching has had a profound impact on our students’ lives across a wide range of disciplines within the arts and sciences.”

Launched in 1997 with a gift from John and Frances Loeb, the Harvard College Professors are selected for their distinguished contributions to undergraduate teaching. Awardees will hold the title for five years and receive support of their choosing: a research fund, a summer salary, or a semester of paid leave.

He notes a contrast between his research, where results are often prolonged and uncertain, and his teaching, in which he often sees immediate results. Putting effort into teaching — finding the best way to present the material, meeting with students for assistance and advice outside of class — is sure to deliver rewarding results, according to Cushman.

“By investing in those things, you get to see immediate impact and change in students’ performance,” Cushman said. “It gives me a nice balance to have a garden that I can work in where I know if I put time in, I’m going to get fruits out.”

Deloria started his career as a middle school band and orchestra teacher. He says that experience gives him insight into the positive impact a good teacher can have on a student’s life.

“If we as teachers are recognizing that we actually have those opportunities to work with students and to shape and change their lives for the good and the positive, how exciting is that?”

In teaching, Eddy believes in learning by doing, and organizes his course around biological data analysis problems, a new one each week, which require students to use code and critical thinking skills to solve.

“I don’t think you learn anything by listening to somebody else talk,” Eddy said. “You have to do it, and you have to be interested in it. The idea is that the problem has to be interesting and it has to be engaging so that it doesn’t feel like grunt work.”

“It is most rewarding to see the enthusiasm with which students apply what they learn in class to problems they are interested in,” Kuang said.

He dedicates most of his research to better understanding moist turbulence, which produces much of the clouds and rainfall, and shapes many of the aspects of the climate system. He researches the response of moist turbulence to “perturbations” such as the rising carbon dioxide concentration, and is currently working to find principled ways of using data-driven methods to improve climate theories and models.

“Teaching Harvard undergraduates has been a great privilege,” Kuang said. “Their amazing creativity and energy is what makes teaching fun, and I learn so much from them. I learn also from the many devoted teachers around me, who inspire me to continue to improve.”

Prentiss is glad when students ask questions that make her think differently about a scientific concept, saying those interactions help her keep learning.

“I think that teaching undergrads actually makes us better researchers,” Prentiss said. “It keeps researchers from going into tunnel vision, it keeps us looking at problems from new perspectives.”