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The University of Colorado Board of Regents has bestowed its highest faculty honor, the designation of distinguished professor, on Margaret Tolbert, a chemistry professor. Two other CU professors also gained this distinction.

Distinguished professors are CU faculty members who are leaders in their fields and are recognized for their outstanding contributions in teaching, research and distinguished scholarship or creative work.

To date, 56 professors across the CU system hold the title. 
President Bruce D. Benson reviewed recommendations from colleagues and deans and recommended all three for the award to the CU Board of Regents during their September meeting on the Denver campus.

“These professors exemplify the best of what CU faculty can be,” Benson said. “They are active scholars, engaged teachers and exceptional researchers. Our students are the beneficiaries of the professional excellence they demonstrate every day.”

Tolbert, a CIRES Fellow and a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (in the Analytical, Environmental and Atmospheric Chemistry Division) earned several awards in recent years, including the Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology from the American Chemical Society, the Hazel Barnes Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and two NASA Group Achievement Awards.

Tolbert is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Her research analyzes atmospheric chemistry, planetary atmospheres, and chemistry related to polar and global ozone depletion.

Tolbert is best known for her research on polar stratospheric clouds, or PSCs, which form 12 miles to 20 miles above Earth’s poles each winter and provide surfaces where chemical reactions linked to stratospheric ozone destruction occur. In 2004 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for her work on PSCs and sulfuric acid aerosols and their implications for the Antarctic ozone hole.

In 1987, early in her career, Tolbert received the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her pioneering work linking chemical reactions on the surfaces of PSCs to the formation and activity of ozone-gobbling chlorine molecules in the atmosphere. Tolbert received the prize for authoring the best paper of the year in the prestigious journal Science.

Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, endorsed Tolbert, citing her outstanding record as a chemist, her plethora of national honors, and testaments from her students and peers describing Dr. Tolbert’s contributions to her field. “I’m not sure what more we would reasonably expect to see in a nominee’s record as an educator. Her record is outstanding,” Gleeson said. 
The other two recipients of this award are Engineering Professor Zoya Popovic and Education Dean Lorrie A. Shepard, both of whom teach at CU-Boulder and were nominated by an academic committee of their peers.

CU is a premier public research university with four campuses. More than 57,000 students are pursuing academic degrees at CU. The National Science Foundation ranks CU eighth among public institutions in federal research expenditures in engineering and science.

Academic prestige is marked by the university’s four Nobel laureates, seven MacArthur “genius” Fellows, 18 alumni astronauts and 19 Rhodes Scholars.

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