Distinguished Educator Award

Established in August 2018, the Distinguished Educator Award is given annually to a member for outstanding pedagogical contributions to computer graphics and interactive techniques at any educational level or within the context of any discipline. The award recognizes contributions in both innovative content and delivery. The award is presented annually during the award ceremony at either the North American SIGGRAPH conference or the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference at the choice of the recipient.

Current Recipient

ACM SIGGRAPH is proud to present to Edward Angel, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, the 2022 ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Educator Award.  

Angel is known for a series of textbooks and courses that introduced a top-down approach to teaching computer graphics that allows students and practitioners in computer science, engineering, science, and mathematics to create three-dimensional applications early in the course with a standard API. 

He is the Founding Director of the Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory at the University of New Mexico and is widely known for bringing computer graphics classes to the masses. 

His textbook, Interactive Computer Graphics, went into its 8th edition in 2019, the last three editions being co-written with Dave Schreiner. The textbook has more than 200 adoptions in North America alone and has been translated into other languages for worldwide use. His textbooks have been seen in the hands of students in Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa as well as in North America. Like the technology it describes, the book changes. It started with fixed-function OpenGL and went to shader- based OpenGL and more recently WebGL. 

In addition to authoring two other textbooks in the area, Angel also contributed to the compilations OpenGL Insights and WebGL Insights with chapters on teaching OpenGL and WebGL. When other teachers were afraid of what online education would do to their courses and careers, Angel embraced new ways of reaching people and taught an early Coursera-based Massive Open Online Course in computer graphics that attracted 14,500 people to sign up for it, reaching people around the world who would otherwise not have access to his instruction.

Professionals who attend SIGGRAPH conferences know that his courses are a regular and consistent – and always popular – offering in the schedule. Some of his lectures were selected to be part of SIGGRAPH U and are available on YouTube. As one would expect from a distinguished educator, Angel not only teaches students directly, but he facilitates the work of other teachers, and has been involved in New Mexico Computer Science for All to bring CS and computational thinking to high school students. 

One cannot ignore his scholarly work: it’s  been disseminated through more than 75 journal articles and conference presentations as well as books and book chapters. He has taught more than 100 professional short courses to a variety of CG audiences, not only at SIGGRAPH but also at Supercomputing and IEEE Visualization. The body of work he has produced impacts our collective ability to teach computer graphics and affects the individuals who populate our professions. His work and impact span pre-college, college, and post-college. He has made his mark through his unique blend of in-person teaching, online teaching, and textbooks. It is with great pride that SIGGRAPH honors Edward Angel with the Distinguished Educator Award for 2022. 

Contributions

Contributions considered for this award are broad.

Criteria

Nomination Procedure

Nominations for the Distinguished Educator Award may be submitted by contacting the Distinguished Educator Award Chair by January 31 each year. Self-nominations are allowed. Nominations may also arise from an archive of past nominations maintained by the awards chair and culled yearly by the committee. The awardee will be selected by the Distinguished Educator Award Committee based on nominations received from members of the SIGGRAPH community.

Requirements