Professor Dar Roberts has been selected as a recipient of the 2007/08 UCSB Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award. The award was initiated in 2005/06 in recognition of UCSB faculty whose mentoring is considered exemplary, and, of the eight recipients to date, two have been from the Department of Geography (Professor Reg Golledge received the award in 2005/06). To quote the UCSB web site, “Mentorship of graduate students is a broad concept involving all stages of the graduate student cycle. Facets of outstanding mentorship include contributions to student recruitment, strong mentoring ethics, development of students’ research and professional skills, career advice and placement, and fostering intellectual growth and critical thinking, and contributions to a climate which supports a diverse student population” https://senate.ucsb.edu/~awards/.
mentor/guide.pdf).
One of the sponsors of Dar’s award wrote the following to the Committee on Outstanding Graduate Mentor Awards: “Looking back now, I understand how fortunate I was to have Dar as a graduate advisor. Many graduate students have good relationships with their advisors, but few can say their advisor treats them as an equal. Dar views his students as collaborators. In fact, I distinctly remember Dar getting angry when any of his students would casually mention that they work “for” Dar Roberts. He would insist that we worked “with” him, and he was right. I am also grateful that Dar was able to fund me for almost my entire graduate career. Dar works tirelessly to obtain enough funding to make sure his graduate students are well supported. It is a credit to Dar’s mentoring abilities that almost all of his students finish and go on to do great things. He seemed to have a seemingly endless supply of energy to deal with his research and teaching responsibilities and still have time to give his students individual attention. Dar’s graduated Ph.D. students have enjoyed phenomenal success within and outside academia.”
Dar’s achievement will be honored at a public ceremony and reception at the June 5th meeting of the Faculty Legislature. In a note to his many sponsor’s, Dar commented, “It is really wonderful that you all stepped forward to help make this happen. It certainly makes a soul feel greatly appreciated. Thanks for everything.” Needless to say, the entire Department thanks Dar in return!
