Three CNS Faculty Receive UT President’s Associates Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Awards

John Chisholm, Jonathan Perry and Ann Thjis from the College of Natural Sciences have been named recipients of the annual President’s Associates Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Awards for the 2025-2026 academic year. The award honors exceptional faculty who teach courses in the core curriculum, including the signature courses, and are dedicated to curriculum reform and educational innovation. 

John Chisholm, an assistant professor of astronomy, aims to make science accessible to students from all majors, especially as one of the courses he teaches is an introductory astronomy course. He received a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Geneva. He has taught at UT since 2020, where he received a CNS Teaching Excellence Award in 2025. Chisholm’s research focuses on how galaxies grow and shape their surroundings over time. He is especially interested in how the first galaxies influenced the universe.

Jonathan Perry, an associate professor of instruction in physics, serves as an associate chair for foundational physics and a faculty associate for innovative scholarship in STEMx. He earned a master’s degree at Baylor University and a doctorate in physics at Texas A&M University. He came to UT in 2019, where he received a CNS Teaching Excellence Award in 2023. Perry has conducted research on physics education and is currently exploring how informal experiences impact identity and career skill development in physics.

Ann Thjis, an assistant professor of instruction, teaches Introductory Biology I, Introductory Biology II, and Ecology. She is also a provost’s teaching fellow and a faculty associate for instructor development in STEMx. She delights in teaching her students the elegance and interconnectedness of the natural world, in evolutionary and ecological time, and to help students in becoming critical and quantitative thinkers. An interdisciplinary scientist, she received an undergraduate degree in biology and engineering and a master’s degree in environmental engineering in Belgium. After earning a doctorate from UT in ecology, evolution, and behavior, she joined the faculty at UT’s Biology Instructional Office in 2017, where she received a CNS Teaching Excellence Award in 2021.

The awards are made possible by contributions from the President’s Associates, friends of the university who are committed to the quality of education at UT. Each awardee will receive $5000.