Bob Gallup,  professor of physics and math, was named recipient of the Charles H. and Verda R. Kopke Award for Distinguished Teaching during Southwestern College Commencement exercises May 10. The Kopkes established the award in order to honor outstanding faculty members. 

“This is a tremendous honor,” Gallup says.  “This institution prizes teaching.  The faculty here, as a group, is amazing.  To be recognized is a humbling experience.” 


“I think that it’s great that the Kopke award went to Bob Gallup,” says Andy Sheppard, SC dean of faculty.    “He is a truly gifted teacher with a special talent for making challenging material readily accessible to his students.”

Gallup was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Fresno, Calif.  He received his bachelor of science degree from California State University, Fresno.  He was the valedictorian of the school of natural sciences.  He attended graduate school at the University of California at Davis and earned a Ph.D in physics.

Gallup spent three years as a lecturer of physics for pre-med students at UC-Davis upon receiving his doctorate.  He says that he would lecture to 200-250 students.
“I would look out into the hall and I saw students that I recognized but I didn’t know the names,” Gallup says. 

While searching for a teaching job in 1993, he discovered Southwestern College.

“When I was searching, I hoped places like this existed,” Gallup says.  “I found my passion for teaching here.”

Using sequences from his documentary film "Dream People of the Amazon," Lansburgh’s presentation focuses on the Achuar, indigenous people who live in a part of the Amazon rain forest that has hardly changed in a thousand years. The Achuar had no contact with the outside world until the early 1970s. Then they learned that the outside world wanted the oil under their territory, and that oil operations would destroy their forest and their very existence.

According to Lansburgh, the presentation emphasizes a powerful message of hope from the Achuar. To defend their right to live as their ancestors did in an unspoiled part of the greatest rain forest on earth, the Achuar have developed ingenious and effective strategies to deal with the modern world, he says. For more than 10 years, the Achuar have kept the oil companies out.

“‘David & Goliath in the Amazon’ is a success story of strong indigenous people still living in a healthy rain forest, people who have practical wisdom to share with all of us,” Lansburgh says.

Lansburgh’s presentation is in conjunction with an upcoming trip to be taken by George Gangwere, professor of physics at Southwestern, and 19 SC students.  The group will spend 12 days in Ecuador learning about the rain forest and two indigenous people, the Achuar of the Amazon and the Otavalenos of the Andes Mountains. Seven of the students will also be traveling to the Galapagos Islands. The group has been meeting once a week during the fall semester and will earn one credit hour.

Here are the latest updates from some of them:

• Josef Felver (2008) entered the doctoral program in physics at Washington State University in the fall of 2008.
• Will Neely (2010) participated during the summer of 2008 in the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in the Physics Department at Kansas State University.
• Andrea Schneider (2009) participated in an internship at General Electric’s Strother Field facility during the summer of 2008.
• Cassi Reimer (2010) participated in an internship at the Kansas Cosmosphere during the summer of 2008.
• Jeffery Rahm (2000) married Michele Breedlove on July 26, 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin.