Amit Savkar, Associate Professor in Residence, has been named a Teaching Fellow by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL).

The nominees for this award are limited to full-time faculty with 5 years continuous service at the University. The individuals considered for this recognition show a commitment to teaching, demonstrated knowledge of educational pedagogy, and an interest in fostering innovative teaching practices at the University.

This year, up to two Teaching Fellows will be honored and each will be awarded a stipend of $5,000.

Separately, Marianne Cavanaugh has been awarded this year’s CETL Outstanding Adjunct.

The nominees for this award are limited to adjunct faculty with teaching service to the University. The individuals considered for this recognition show a commitment to teaching, demonstrated knowledge of educational pedagogy, and an interest in fostering innovative teaching practices at the University.

It is intended that up to two such Outstanding Adjuncts will be honored and each awarded a stipend of $2,500.

The awards were presented at the CETL Reception on April 26.

Professors [dump script=”PersonLink.php?LastName=Gan&FirstName= Guojun”] and [dump script=”PersonLink.php?LastName=Valdez&FirstName=Emiliano”] have been awarded a one-year grant from the Society of Actuaries to support their project “Regression Modeling for the Valuation of Large Variable Annuity (VA) Portfolios” starting in 2016. They will investigate the potential use of GB2 (generalized beta of the second kind) distributions with four parameters to model the fair market values of VA guarantees. The findings from this project can help insurance companies to reduce significantly the processing time of the Monte Carlo simulation model commonly used in practice for VA valuation.