John Gauch, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was honored by the Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center as the October 2023 Wally Cordes Chair. He was chosen because of his career-long commitment to student success through continuous improvement of teaching.

This honor is named for University Professor Emeritus Wally Cordes, who was known for his student-focused teaching. Cordes taught a large lecture class and would invite students to come to his office, rock in his rocking chair and talk about themselves.

"Gauch's commitment to student success is so strong that he gets the best out of his students," commented Richard Cassady, co-director of the TFSC. "His passion for teaching is what most people notice first. In addition, he constantly works to update his style and his course materials as computing and other forms of technology evolve."

Recipients of this honor give a talk on a teaching subject of their choosing. Gauch used the opportunity to speak about how the evolution of technology over the past 25 years has impacted him, his students and his classroom. He shared a lot about his recent experiences with generative artificial intelligence, and he encouraged the faculty in attendance to constantly change to make sure their learning objectives are being met.

Gauch joined the U of A in 2008. Previously, he taught at Northeastern University and the University of Kansas. His teaching interests include introductory programming classes, computer graphics, formal languages and computability, image processing, and computer vision. During his career, has taught over 100 programming courses to over 6,000 computer science students. He was awarded the Imhoff Teaching Award in the College of Engineering in 2015 and was inducted as a Fellow of the Teaching Academy at the U of A in 2017. He has been chair of the All University Academic Integrity Board since 2018.