Naval Postgraduate School Distinguished Professor Nancy Haegel was one of 21 Monterey Peninsula teachers to receive the 2010 Allen S. Griffin Award for Excellence in Teaching, honored for her positive influence on students and educators as well as community service.

The award, created by a bequest of the late Col. Allen Griffin, founder and former publisher of the Monterey Peninsula’s local newspaper, The Herald, recognizes outstanding teachers at the high school through post-secondary levels. The Griffin Award honors teachers with a record of sustained excellence in the classroom and significant impact in the community.

Haegel joined NPS’ Department of Physics in 2003, following position teaching physics at Fairfield University in Connecticut and materials science at UCLA. Her areas of scientific expertise are high-resistivity transport, transport imaging with novel optical techniques, IR detectors, and polymer emitters for military applications.

Among her many honors are a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (1988), a Humboldt Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (2000), the American Physical Society Prize for Research at an Undergraduate Institution (2004), and the Schieffelin Award for Teaching Excellence at NPS (2008). Professor Haegel is a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Notre Dame and recently completed a three-year term on the American Physical Society Committee on the Status of Women in Physics.