Boetticher named Piper Award nominee

Diana Cotter

The Signal

Gary D. Boetticher, associate professor of computer science, software engineering and computer information systems, has been nominated to represent UHCL in competition for the Minnie Stevens Piper Award, which honors college and university professors across the state of Texas.

“I am extremely excited about this nomination,” Boetticher said. “I teach because I thoroughly enjoy helping others learn to succeed. I seek to inspire others to help them make the world a better place.”

Oil businessman Randall Gordon Piper and his wife, Minnie Stevens Piper, established the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation in 1950. The foundation was incorporated in the state of Texas as a non profit, charitable corporation.

Every fall semester, students nominate their favorite professors. The UHCL Piper Award Committee, composed of four students and four faculty members representing each of UHCL’s four schools, selects 10 finalists from the pool of candidates. The committee then votes to choose one nominee using a specific criteria. The nominee then goes on to compete against other nominees at the state-level competition.

“The candidates’ files are carefully vetted for evidence of teaching excellence,” said Keith Parsons, member of the 2010-2011 UHCL Piper Award committee and former 2009-2010 UHCL Piper Award nominee. “Other criteria such as an excellent record of research and service also go into the decision.”

Boetticher obtained his Ph.D. in computer science at West Virginia University and has been a UHCL faculty member since 2000. He has been nominated nine times for the Piper Award and has been a finalist six times, but this is the first time he has been selected to represent the university at the state level.

“I find it rare that a professor would give so much of his time outside his posted hours to help us succeed; this is above and beyond,” said Richard Albrecht, computer science major. “Through my university career, I’ve been fortunate to have been taught by many fine professors, but with Dr. Boetticher, I feel that I’ve been taught by the best.”

Boetticher has written two books, several papers and presented at numerous workshops. He has earned two Best Paper Awards from The 8th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. In the Spring 2010 semester he was awarded the Instructional Innovation Award for a paper entitled, “How to Teach Like Harvard” at UHCL, which describes how he integrates YouTube videos in his teaching.

“Excellent teaching involves engaging students in the learning process,” Boetticher said. “I also try to capture a student’s imagination by making my teaching innovative.”

One of his more popular classes is Financial Data Mining.

“Students enroll in degrees or classes with the intent of learning how to make more money,” Boetticher said. “In Financial Data Mining, students apply mathematical models to the stock market and learn how to have their money work for them.”

Besides Financial Data Mining, Boetticher also teaches Database Management Systems, Data Mining, Bioinformatics, Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering Tools.

“As a division chair, I carefully read the student evaluations for every faculty member every year,” said Kwok-Bun Yue, division chair of computing and mathematics and former UHCL Piper Award recipient. “Dr. Boetticher’s student evaluations are consistently excellent.”

In several of his classes where there is a lot of content, Boetticher has shown initiative in reaching out to his students.

“Dr. Boetticher goes out of his way to help students learn with his well-written notes and YouTube videos,” said Dawood Moazzem, a graduated computer science major.

Since 2009, Boetticher has produced or sponsored more than 60 YouTube videos, gaining local and international recognition.

“In about 15 months, these videos have been viewed more than 150,500 times in 154 countries including remote places such as Bangladesh, Bhutan and Haiti,” Boetticher said. “There have been students who transferred to UHCL as a result of watching these videos.”

These videos have managed to percolate to the top in searches. If you go to YouTube and search on UHCL, Boetticher’s videos occupy the first 25 spots.

The Minnie Stevens Award committee, located in San Antonio, will announce the names of the 2010-2011 10 Piper Award recipients. Each recipient receives a certificate of merit, a gold pin and a $5,000 cash honorarium.

“Boetticher is the kind of professor that UHCL wants others to see as a role model, both on campus and in the state of Texas,” said David Rachita, interim dean of students.