The 2024-25 Outstanding Teaching Awards: Martha Yip
Each Wednesday, UKNow is highlighting one of the winners of the University of Kentucky’s 2024-25 Outstanding Teaching Awards, given by the Office for Faculty Advancement with the Office of the Provost.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 7, 2024) — Martha Yip, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, is one of nine winners who received a 2024-25 Outstanding Teaching Award this past spring.
The awards identify and recognize individuals who demonstrate special dedication to student achievement and who are successful in their teaching. Recipients were selected via nomination and reviewed by a selection committee based in the UK Provost’s Office for Faculty Advancement and the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching. Yip is one of three Category 1 winners, which honors regular and special title series faculty members.
During her time at UK, Yip has taught a variety of mathematics classes, including large introductory classes such as Calculus II and III, as well as upper division classes such as Number Theory, Matrix Algebra, Applicable Algebra, Elementary Modern Algebra, and Combinatorics and Graph Theory. In addition to advanced topics courses, she also taught a sequence of two graduate courses that prepares graduate students for a preliminary exam in combinatorics.
Uwe Nagel, Ph.D., professor and chair of the math department, nominated Yip for the award. He says her teaching prowess is “legendary” among faculty and graduate students in the department.
“[Yip] is an excellent mathematician, teacher and departmental citizen,” Nagel said. “She puts enormous effort and a lot of thoughts into her classes. She sees her task as being, in her words, ‘a mentor, a role model and a person who inspires students to test and stretch their limits.’ She fosters a growth mind set in her classes and always tries to engage her students.”
In her teaching philosophy statement, Yip says she is committed to helping students learn to the best of their abilities, creating an engaging learning environment and sharing the joy that she derives from doing mathematics.
“These days, my number one priority is not to rush through all the material in my lecture notes, but instead, to focus on increasing engagement and understanding,” Yip said in her teaching statement. “By slowing down, I can better retain the attention of my students and keep them better motivated.”
In addition to teaching, Yip has served as the department’s MathExcel director since 2022. MathExcel is a special program offered to students in Calculus I and II that provides additional recitation time and support.
Her research and mentoring abilities have also been noticed outside of the department. Since 2022, Yip is serving a three-year term as a member of the Graduate School Fellowship Committee. In 2022, she was appointed as a member of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Teaching Award Committee after having received the college’s award for Outstanding Teaching in 2021.
Yip received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo before earning her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010. She joined the UK Department of Mathematics’ faculty in 2014 as an assistant professor and became an associate professor with tenure in 2021.
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This year’s Outstanding Teaching Awards were given to six faculty and three graduate teaching assistants. Each winner received an award certificate, a commemorative engraved gift and a cash award in recognition of their teaching excellence at a campus ceremony on April 25. Read more here.