November 6, 2003

Two receive Alumni Association awards

The Northwestern Alumni Association recently honored two outstanding faculty members — Peter F. Hayes and Barry L. Nelson — with its Excellence in Teaching Awards.

Hayes is Theodore Zev Weiss – Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor in Holocaust Studies and professor of history and German at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Nelson is James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences and director of the Master of Engineering Management program at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Hayes holds the first endowed chair in Holocaust studies at Northwestern. He has earned an international reputation for his scholarship on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

He regularly teaches courses that are among Northwestern’s most popular, such as European Civilization Since 1750; Modern Germany 1918–45; and the History of the Holocaust.

Hayes, who has studied extensively in Germany, has been the distinguished scholar-in-residence at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Among his publications is the prize-winning “Industry and Ideology: I. G. Farben in the Nazi Era,” the definitive study of the largest economic entity during the Nazi era.

A recipient of the Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award and Faculty Service Award, Hayes is also on the academic committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and served a term on the academic advisory board of the concentration camp memorials at Buchenwald and Dora.

Nelson teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in an area in which he is an internationally recognized expert: the design and analysis of computer simulation experiments on models of stochastic systems. In lay terms, his field uses computer models to design and improve manufacturing, service and business systems whose performance depends on events that cannot be predicted with certainty.

Nelson received the department of industrial engineering and management sciences’ Graduate Teaching Award five of his first six years at Northwestern. He has also received the McCormick School’s Teacher of the Year Award.

A professor at Ohio State University before he came to Northwest-ern in 1995, he received teaching awards from the industrial engineering department, the engineering school and the entire university.

Nelson’s research has been funded by the Transportation Cooperative Research Program, the National Science Foundation, General Motors Research and Development Center and JGC Corporation of Japan.