He's not of Greek extraction, nor is he particularly involved with sororities or fraternities on the UC San Diego campus. But CSE lecturer Gary Gillespie (pictured below) was awarded the Outstanding Professor Award given out by the Panhellenic Association at UC San Diego. He accepted his award at the 9th annual Panhellenic Scholarship Banquet on May 27. The Panhellenic Association is made up of all the sororities with UCSD chapters, and a majority of chapters voted to honor Gillespie after reading a convincing nomination letter. It turns out that he was nominated by one of the students who took his CSE 12 course last quarter. He was cited for continuing excellence in teaching and research, as well as his "helpfulness to the students in the Greek community." Again, the mention of the "Greek" community refers to the sororities that make up the Panhellenic Association, not students with Greek names. Indeed, the banquet underscored how universal and mainstream the so-called Greek community has become: the banquet's catered dinner was Italian fare, not Greek.
Gillespie was also singled out by Thurgood Marshall College, which put him on the college's home page in the "Featured Faculty" in the Leadership Spotlight section of the website. Gillespie is a participant in Marshall's Faculty Mentor Program for incoming transfer students. His current student, Charly Xie, was Gillespie's CSE 15L student in the Fall quarter, a CSE 12 student in the Winter, and this quarter, Xie is taking Gillespie's CSE 110 course. "My student last year, Navid Jalali Heravi, is doing really great," adds Gillespie. "He's still on the Softwrare Engineering Tools project he joined last year, and he's going to be one of my lead tutors for my CSE 12 class in Fall 2015. He's well integrated into the CSE tutor community, and it's just great to have him around and to see him frequently." Gillespie reports that Charly Xie will be interning at a San Diego startup company this summer, while Navid Jalali Heravi will be interning over the summer at Microsoft.
This fall Gillespie will be teaching his 50th instance of CSE 12, and he also continues to teach CSE 15L and CSE 110. He also runs the Tutor Training program for the CSE department.