George Kudolo, PhD, CPC, FAIC, FAACC, chair and professor in the Department of Health Sciences, was named a 2020 Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation.
Dr. Kudolo received a $5,000 award, certificate and gold pin, to be presented at the foundation’s request by William L. Henrich, MD, MACP, president of UT Health San Antonio.
The Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation is a local foundation that awards excellence in teaching and provides scholarships and student loans. The Piper Professor Award was established in 1958 to recognize superior teaching at the college level and is made annually to only 10 educators across Texas, honoring their outstanding achievements in teaching.
“I was thrilled when I heard [I won the award] because it’s a highlight of a teacher’s profession to be named a Piper Professor in Texas,” said Dr. Kudolo. The award confirms that the success of his students is because of his efforts as an educator, he said.
Dr. Kudolo has won numerous other honors in his 25 years of teaching at UT Health San Antonio. In 2000, he received a UT Health San Antonio Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2005 the School of Health Professions named its annual award in his honor with the George Kudolo Award for Research Excellence.
He won the UT System Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010, and in 2013 he received the esteemed Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor in The University of Texas System.
But for Dr. Kudolo, his proudest moments are the achievements of his students, most notably, when one of his students became the first female chief toxicologist for the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“I think it’s Einstein who said, ‘If you can’t explain something very simply, then you don’t understand it well enough.’ And I believe that,” said Dr. Kudolo. “Every time you learn something so that you can teach somebody else, you become enriched yourself. So, I find that [aspect] of the teaching profession to be very enlightening and very satisfying.”