Clinical Associate Professor Yeow Siow receives Excellence in Teaching award
Clinical Associate Professor Yeow Siow received a 2024-2025 Award for Excellence in Teaching, one the most prestigious UIC teaching awards.
Each year, UIC honors some of its most dedicated and outstanding teachers with this award. The winners, who receive a $5,000 salary increase, are selected by past award recipients from nominations made by departments and colleges.
“Dr. Siow’s contributions to teaching and learning at UIC are exceptional,” MIE Professor and Department Head Houshang Darabi said. “He’s an excellent and committed teacher, who has brought teaching and learning to a new level in the MIE department and UIC by caring for the students, incorporating research methods in classroom teaching, and working with various teaching and learning entities at UIC.”
His effort in curriculum development has led to the publication of peer-reviewed papers and a successful revision of the MIE undergraduate curriculum, and he continuously updates the content of a lab-based course, ME250, to keep it relevant to the job market. He completely overhauled ME308, a required core course in the ME curriculum, by developing video lecture content, flipping the classroom, and implementing a new assessment and grading system.
Siow has been actively engaged in education research that has yielded many peer-reviewed, conference presentations, and evidence-based teaching and learning practices.
He has served in multiple university-level committees that led to the launch of CATE. He organized engineering education workshops for the College of Engineering, created a successful and continuously running Community of Practice series in the department, and chaired the 2024 ASEE IL-IN Section Conference. In addition, he was handpicked to serve on many high-impact committees at the College and University levels during COVID-19 to help establish guidelines for remote teaching and assessment.
Since 2013, Siow has served as the academic advisor to approximately 27 undergraduate students each semester, which earned him three College of Engineering advising awards.
“Student comments are overwhelmingly positive, noting how much he cares about his students’ success, dedication to their learning, and innovation in teaching methods,” Houshang said.
Siow earned his BS, MS, and PhD in mechanical engineering from Michigan Technological University. After finishing his graduate work, he joined Navistar’s thermal-fluids systems group as a senior engineer.
He joins his MIE peers who have previously won this award, including Darabi in 2017, Michael Scott in 2012, Ahmed Shabana in 2002, and Mun Choi in 1999.