Editorials

Berkeley resident Daryl Preston, a teacher of physics to both undergraduate students and to other university professors, has been named the outstanding professor for 2000 at CSU Hayward. 

The university’s Academic Senate chose Preston as recipient of the $1,000 George and Miriam Phillips “Outstanding Professor” award from this year’s nominees. 

In addition to many commendations for teaching excellence from his students and peers, Preston also has gotten recognition for workshops he gives to other physics professors who come to Cal State Hayward from throughout the United States. 

For the workshops, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Preston develops and demonstrates a series of experiments that other professors can replicate and use in student laboratories at their academic institutions. 

Last year the featured experiment was an “atom trap,” created with an elaborate configuration of laser beams, mirrors and a glass chamber that slows and cools gaseous rubidium atoms. The experiment replicated work that won the Nobel Prize in 1997, and Preston’s adaptation can be used by undergraduate physics students. 

Faculty taking his instruction have come from such prestigious schools as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, University of Washington, University of Colorado, Rutgers, the University of Chicago, Vasar, and Reed College. His workshops also have included physics professors from other CSU schools. 

Preston has taught physics and astronomy since joining the university faculty in 1970, when he completed his doctorate from the University of Kansas. 

In addition to his work in physics, Preston developed an astronomy course of 29 lectures that were recorded and are now available on tape and on the university’s television cable channel. 

In 1998 he was elected as a fellow in the American Physical Society “for advancing and disseminating the art of experimental physics as taught to undergraduates by developing experiments, publishing books, and directing faculty workshops on laboratory for undergraduates.” There are six APS fellows in the CSU system. 

In 1975 he was named “Outstanding Faculty Lecturer” by Pi Kappa Delta, the professional society for speech majors. During the 1998-99 academic year, 98 percent of his students gave his class a rating of outstanding or good in their course evaluations. 

One-hundred percent of his students ranked Preston as “outstanding.” Since 1974, he has served as faculty adviser to Cal State Hayward’s chapter of the Society of Physics Students. 

Preston was co-author of “Experiments in Physics – A Laboratory Manual,” with Morton Sternheim and Joseph Kane and “The Art of Experimental Physics” with Eric Dietz. He also wrote “Experiments in Physics – A Laboratory Manual for Scientists and Engineers” and “Experiments in Physics with Computers.” 

He is a graduate of Austin College, where he earned a bachelor of arts in 1961. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1970. 

Preston is a resident of Berkeley, where he lives with his wife Jane and two cats.