Assistant Professor Casey DeRoo has received the Collegiate Teaching Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) at the University of Iowa.

Collegiate Teaching Awards are given each year to faculty who demonstrate outstanding performance in the classroom, laboratory, or studio. They are recognized by their peers for stimulating and satisfying students' desire to learn, developing innovative and effective methods of presenting the most current and exciting knowledge in their disciplines, and fostering productive and generous mentoring relationships with individual students. The CLAS Collegiate Teaching Award Committee chooses the award winners.

DeRoo studies the UV/X-ray sky and the instrumentation needed to make effective astronomical measurements at these wavelengths. His research focuses on the fabrication, characterization, and use of diffraction gratings in spectrometers and on thin, high performance mirrors for high energy telescopes. For his work developing freeform grating patterns on curved surfaces, Prof. DeRoo was named a Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellow by NASA’s Astrophysics Division in 2021.

 DeRoo has taught various courses, including general education, undergraduate majors, honors seminars, and graduate. Active learning is at the core of his teaching approach. His students appreciate his teaching philosophy and find it reflected in his course design. 

“Professor DeRoo is an exceptional educator,” physics and astronomy DEO Mary Hall Reno wrote in a nomination letter. “He employs state-of-the-art teaching techniques, and he incorporates assignments and activities that build students’ skill sets so that they can be successful not just in class, but also in future research and employment contexts.”