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Patterson receives Outstanding Faculty Award
January 27, 2010 — via Virginia Institute of Marine Science
By David Malmquist and Erin Zagursky
Dr. Mark Patterson, a professor in the College of William and Mary's School of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has received the state's highest honor for professors from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).
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Dr. Mark Patterson, a professor in the College of William and Mary's School of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has received the state's highest honor for professors from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).
The award recognizes the finest among Virginia's college faculty for their demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and public service.
Patterson also received the OFA's sole "Teaching with Technology" award this year. According to SCHEV, the award is given to a professor with a "record of superior accomplishment in the use of innovative educational/instructional technologies" for instruction.
Patterson is accomplished both as a teacher and a scholar. An underwater explorer, inventor, and entrepreneur, Patterson has served VIMS and William & Mary for 16 years.
Patterson says he was "very honored to be recognized by the selection committee for my research and teaching using technology I helped create, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs)."
"It's been a privilege to work with W&M students who energetically embrace new tools like AUVs," he adds. "They put them to uses I never would have thought possible."
Professor Mark PattersonAn expert in both biology and electronics, Patterson leads an internationally renowned laboratory on autonomous systems at VIMS, where he developed one of the world's first free-swimming robots—an AUV named Fetch. This "taxicab for sensors," as Patterson calls it, is helping to revolutionize oceanography—and to defend our nation's ports.
Patterson involves students in all aspects of AUV development and research, including involvement in cutting-edge studies of the health of marine ecosystems from Chesapeake Bay to Antarctica. A course that Patterson premiered at VIMS in 2005—Ocean Observing Systems: Technology and Applications—is one of only a handful of such courses currently offered in the U.S. It gives VIMS graduate students an exceptional hands-on opportunity to learn about both mobile sensors like Fetch and fixed data buoys like those that constitute the Virginia Coastal and Estuarine Observing System (VECOS).
An aquanaut with 79 days spent living underwater, Patterson has used underwater robots as a teaching tool for K-12 education, and he continually seeks out new methods and technologies to improve his teaching—from YouTube videos and webinars to the remote control of his robots over the internet.
Patterson often has undergraduates and high school students learning in his lab, and he has served as a mentor to numerous graduate students. In addition to his work at VIMS, Patterson has been heavily involved in economic development efforts in Hampton Roads. These efforts led to him being invited to witness the signing of a 2009 state bill to help fund research and development of unmanned systems in Virginia's colleges and universities.
Patterson has written 37 peer-reviewed papers, earned two U.S. patents, won several other academic awards, and received $2.4 million in extramural funding to date. In 2008, he received the Lockheed Martin Award, one of the highest honors in the field of Ocean Science & Engineering, for his sustained creativity in the field of underwater robots.
VIMS Dean and Director John Wells says the award "is extremely well deserved." "Mark embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that we encourage at VIMS," says Wells. "His use of technology in teaching has been exemplary, as has his use of technology to provide solutions to the challenges facing marine scientists and marine resources.