Wyoming Excellence

The state’s Excellence in Higher Education Endowment funds Wyoming Excellence Chairs across the university, upping the impact of high-quality teaching, outreach and research.

 

By Micaela Myers

 

If professors were superheroes, the University of Wyoming X Team would include its 19 Wyoming Excellence Chairs. In 2006, the Wyoming State Legislature established the Excellence in Higher Education Endowment. The lion’s share of the $105 million endowment was designated for UW to establish endowed faculty positions and to expand university instruction and research in disciplines related to the economic and social challenges facing Wyoming. 

“The idea was to bring in, reward and retain some of the premier scholars in their fields,” says Interim Provost Anne Alexander. 

In addition to key areas identified by the Legislature, the funds allow UW to recruit faculty members with established reputations in other areas of distinction identified in the university’s academic plan — including business, arts and humanities, mathematics, cultural studies, health care, economics and law. These state-funded endowed faculty positions come with discretionary funds to advance teaching and scholarship across the university. 

“The funds allow the excellence chairs to up their game a little more each year,” Alexander says. “For example, they can hire graduate assistants to aid their research, they can travel for fieldwork and conferences or fund students to do so, and they can acquire databases and equipment to give them an edge in their scholarship.” 

UWyo Magazine sat down with several Wyoming Excellence Chairs to discover how the funds are being used to improve outreach, service, teaching and research.

 

Mohammad Piri, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Petroleum Engineering
Mohammad Piri exemplifies the high-level faculty members UW can attract and retain with named and endowed positions. Lured away from Princeton in 2005, Piri currently serves as a Wyoming Excellence Chair, the Thomas and Shelley Botts Endowed Chair in Unconventional Reservoirs and the Alchemy Sciences Endowed Chair in Petroleum Engineering. In the past 20 years, he has led the creation of three world-class research facilities: the Encana Three-Phase Flow and Computed Tomography Research Laboratory, the Hess Digital Rock Physics Laboratory and the Center of Innovation for Flow through Porous Media (COIFPM). COIFPM — one of the world’s largest and most advanced multiscale experimental research facilities — is located in UW’s High Bay Research Facility, a state-of-the-art center dedicated to the development of improved understanding of multi-scale physics of flow and transport in porous media. This research has applications in energy and the environment such as maximizing recovery from unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.

“We are one of a select few labs in the world that can replicate reservoir and production conditions while viewing what’s happening at multiple scales,” Piri says.

Not only does Piri’s large and successful research group attract top students and scientists from around the globe, but his work also helps to diversify Wyoming’s economy through two spinoff companies that commercialize the technologies: Piri Technologies and Digital Pore Solutions. He also works closely with the state’s oil and gas operators. One of his projects, the Wyoming Gas Injection Initiative, is implementing multiple enhanced oil recovery projects with operators in the state to enhance well productivity and recovery.

“We’ve helped create real successes for oil companies across the globe,” Piri says. “That’s why they’ve brought us $100 million over the years. We answer important questions at atomic, nano, micro and macro scales, which enhance understanding that translates to production gains at the wellhead. The state of Wyoming and outstanding corporate partners built COIFPM. I’m ecstatic to see our world-class team and UW technology innovation continue to shine as we partner with top companies here at home.”

Another project with Thermo Fisher Scientific is budgeted at $80 million, with goals to develop, adopt and expand cutting-edge experimental and computational porous media technologies in support of strategic economic development initiatives.

“Certainly, in oil and gas — and I think in renewables, too — the word is getting out,” he says. “If you want next-level solutions and market-leading breakthroughs, the action is in Wyoming.”

 

John Koprowski, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Environment and Natural Resources 
John Koprowski joined UW as a Wyoming Excellence Chair and dean of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources in 2020 after serving as director of the University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment. 

“The excellence chair was a really big part of my decision-making process,” he says. “The excellence chair dollars provide opportunities that expand impact and allow you to invest and explore.”

For example, he can hire a specialist to teach a course or a graduate student to start a research project, or he can use the funds to design an online certificate program to benefit Wyoming residents. Without those funds, faculty are in a time-consuming loop of trying to obtain short-term grants. 

“With an endowed administrative position, you can say, ‘This is a good idea that this faculty member or student group just pitched to me, and I’m going to make it happen,’” Koprowski says. “Endowed positions help with recruitment, they help with retaining the very best in Wyoming, and they allow creativity to be unleashed.”

The impacts ripple across the university and state. 

Koprowski’s research focuses on wildlife conservation with a focus on community-based conservation and international work.

“To me, that’s really about working on issues where I can have an impact and in systems that allow me to work with local communities to come up with sustainable solutions,” he says. 

Koprowski also enjoys immersing students in experiential learning opportunities, including study-abroad courses to Mongolia and Nepal. 

“I think Wyoming really punches above its weight,” he says. “We have a very large number of endowed positions compared to many other universities. When you provide funds like this, you’re saying, ‘We want you here, and we trust you to use these funds as multipliers.’ I’m so honored to be an excellence chair and work for people in the state. Wyoming Excellence Chairs are a testament to the way the state values higher education.”

 

Leslie Rush, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Literacy Education 
The Legislature directed that no fewer than four excellence chairs must reside in the College of Education. That number includes two literacy chairs, Leslie Rush (who recently retired) in adolescent literacy and Cindy Brock in elementary literacy. 

Rush joined UW in 2002, and her trajectory took her from an assistant professor to associate dean and then excellence chair in 2023. As a former director of the Wyoming School–University Partnership and with her long history in the state, Rush brought with her strong connections for outreach: “My passion has always been high school and middle school kids who are struggling with literacy. In the past, they often didn’t get the support that they needed to bring them up to grade level. The opportunity to work with teachers around the state was a key thing for me.”

Both Rush and Brock are based within UW’s Literacy Research Center and Clinic. When schools contact the center for assistance, a needs assessment is performed, which includes data collection and interviews. Once gaps are identified, they come up with a tailored assistance plan. The excellence chair funding allows them to assist the districts without having to secure grants. 

The other key aspects of these positions are excellence in teaching and research. Rush teaches graduate literacy education and coordinates two graduate literacy programs — a distance reading endorsement certificate for classroom teachers and a master’s degree in literacy.

Rush’s research focuses on disciplinary literacy. For example, the disciplines of science and English have their own vocabulary and ways of reading and writing: “If secondary-level teachers make explicit some of those discipline-specific nuances, they can increase student learning. My group studies language arts disciplinary literacy, where very little research had previously been conducted.”

Along with Brock and Associate Professor Todd Reynolds, Rush edited a new book titled “Literacy Innovations in Rural Contexts,” which features stories from Wyoming teachers excelling in literacy education approaches. 

“The way the Wyoming excellence positions are designed to serve the state really appeals to educators who care,” she says. “That’s where the magic happens — when it’s that perfect match of research skills, teaching skills and a passion for service.”

 

David Finoff, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Economics 
David Finoff arrived at UW from England as a rugby player in 1990 and quickly fell in love with the state. Gaining a stellar education, he stayed on for his doctorate. After a stint on the faculty at the University of Central Florida, he returned to UW and became an award-winning educator. In 2021, Finoff was named an excellence chair and a McMurry Fellow. 

“The combination of Wyoming Excellence Chair and McMurry Fellow is so special to me, as it honors the place and people I hold dearly,” he says. “Mick and Susie McMurry and their family created a Wyoming legacy like no other through providing immense economic opportunities, their deep belief in community service and infrastructure, and their incredible philanthropy throughout this state.”

The two honors allow Finoff to increase his impact in teaching, research and outreach. 

“When teaching ECON 1000, I integrated the use of AI and open-source statistical tools to provide the students with a working knowledge of gathering data, presenting it in a useful fashion and interpreting it,” he says.

Students also gain a solid foundation applying cutting-edge software and computational tools on real-world problems.
“When I teach graduate students, my goals are to train them to have a working knowledge of the most important concepts and tools of dynamic optimization and to give them an opportunity to immediately apply these concepts to specific problems,” Finoff says.

His research program focuses on developing public policies to improve social welfare while taking into account the interactions between human and natural systems. Recent projects include the management of Wyoming’s natural resources such as water stored in reservoirs and management of grizzly bears, wolves and elk in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, optimal endangered species listing and delisting decisions, the management of wild game species facing threats of brucellosis and chronic wasting disease, and the management of forests facing the threat of mountain pine beetle outbreaks. Being a Wyoming Excellence Chair and McMurry Fellow helps cover research-related costs including student salaries, travel to conferences and more. 

Finoff works closely with industry and speaks at many events. He is also coach of UW’s men’s rugby team, and so he travels around the region recruiting top high school students. 

“I think Wyoming Excellence Chairs provide an incredible amount of value to the institution and state, creating opportunities that would not exist without them,” Finoff says.

 

Kevin Monteith, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Environment and Natural Resources 
Kevin Monteith joined UW in 2015 and holds an appointment in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and a joint appointment in the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and the Department of Zoology and Physiology.

“I fell in love with Wyoming — the open space, the public lands and resources, the wildlife and people, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, which is top-notch,” Monteith says.

In 2021, he was named a Wyoming Excellence Chair. This exemplifies how the chairs not only help recruit top-level candidates but also reward and retain rising stars at the university.

“It’s an honor, and I am humbled,” Monteith says. “The support has helped broaden our impact within the state, including additional outreach and engagement. We speak at schools and produce lesson plans to engage K–12 students, and we communicate our science and research to the public across multiple formats with the vision to engage and inspire.”

His research group, the Monteith Shop, works to address important, timely and complicated questions in natural resource management. The scientists work hand-in-hand with natural resource agencies to address questions that have direct links to land and wildlife population management. The research not only informs strategies for wildlife conservation but also advances scientific understanding.

To further provide students with hands-on experience in the field, the Monteith Shop partnered with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to launch the Wyoming Wildlife Fellowship Program in 2021. The program is known for producing career-ready graduates.

“Being named an excellence chair is a simple-yet-profound acknowledgment that you are valued and provides vital extra support,” Monteith says. “I think the university and the state of Wyoming should be proud that this is set in place. It yields the potential to attract and retain really good people.”