Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Laura Brown has announced that faculty members Kora Bättig von Wittelsbach, Antonio DiTommaso, Michel Louge and Mark Wysocki have been chosen for the 2011 Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Awards. They will be honored May 28 at a trustee-faculty dinner recognizing university-wide teaching and advising awardees and newly tenured faculty.

Bättig von Wittelsbach, a senior lecturer in Romance studies, joined Cornell in 1992. Her extensive nomination file shows that she devotes a great deal of her time to advising students and helping them through their undergraduate academic careers. Her record of university service includes serving as a reader for the Fulbright Committee and for the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships, as a faculty fellow in the Language House and as a faculty adviser for a number of student groups. As one of her advisees states, "Kora is an invaluable asset to Cornell."

DiTommaso, associate professor of crop and soil sciences, joined Cornell in 1999. He studies the basic biological/ecological principles governing agricultural and environmental weed population dynamics that ultimately lead to the development and implementation of safe, effective, sustainable and economically viable weed management strategies.

DiTommaso was on the committee that created the new undergraduate major of agricultural science, and is its director of undergraduate studies. He's received the Burgett Distinguished Advisor Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS); the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Weed Science Society of America; and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He also has been named in three different years by a CALS student as "the most influential person in her/her undergraduate career."

Louge, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, joined Cornell in 1985 and teaches courses in fluid-thermal sciences and mechanical synthesis. A member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, he is an industrial consultant on gas-solid flows and associate editor of the journal Mechanics Research Communications. His administrative posts at Cornell have included associate director for undergraduate programs in mechanical engineering.

His research group performs laboratory and field experiments, creates numerical simulations, models fluid mechanics and heat transfer, and develops new instrumentation for geophysical and industrial applications. Louge currently collaborates with the Université de Rennes and the University of Nottingham, and his research sponsors have included the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, Electricité de France, the International Fine Particle Research Institute and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund.

Wysocki, M.S. '89, a senior lecturer in earth and atmospheric sciences, emphasizes the practical applications of meteorological concepts in his teaching. His research on air pollution includes evaluating environmental impact statements and studying effects on human health. Other research interests include weather forecasting and analysis.

He is director of undergraduate studies in atmospheric sciences, adviser to the Cornell student chapter of the American Meteorological Society, and a faculty adviser to the Dean's Student Advisory Council. He has been lauded as a teacher, mentor and adviser; one of his nominators described him as setting "an impossibly high standard as an adviser, certainly beyond my reach."

The Carpenter Award recipients will receive $5,000 each. The awards, which underscore of the importance of undergraduate advising, were established by Stephen Ashley, CALS '62, JGSM '64, and Cornell trustee, to honor his adviser, the late Professor Kendall S. Carpenter, who taught business management from 1954 to 1967.