Dr. Yong-Zhuo Chen, professor of mathematics, has retired from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford after 34 years of service.
He was one of the longest-serving members of the faculty, having come to Pitt-Bradford in 1989 after having taught for one year as a visiting assistant professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Chen was born in China and obtained his Master of Science in mathematics from Shanghai Normal University before coming to the United States and earning his doctorate in mathematics at Pitt in 1988.
He loved the personalized teaching environment at Pitt-Bradford as well as the easy-going small-town life in Bradford, where he and his wife enjoy walking on trails for exercise.
In 2019, Lawrence Feick, then-interim president of Pitt-Bradford, presented Chen with the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Scholarship and Service.
“In 30 years at Pitt-Bradford, Dr. Chen has consistently performed admirably,” Feick said. “Students routinely give him strong assessments of his teaching, despite his teaching rigorous and technical classes. On top of that, he is a prolific scholar, advancing the frontiers of mathematics.
“In addition, he devotes time to his duties as chair of the Division of Physical and Computational Sciences and the mathematics community. In summary, he is a superb contributor in the key faculty responsibility areas of teaching, research and service.”
Dr. Stephen Hardin, then-vice president and dean of academic affairs, said, “Because of his unimposing nature, I believe that Dr. Chen does not always get the recognition and attention that he rightly deserves. Dr. Chen truly is excellent in all three areas of responsibility as a faculty member – teaching, scholarship and service.”
Hardin noted that Chen had continued to teach an overload of classes even as chair of his division and had developed new courses for the university.
As a scholar, Chen published 37 refereed articles since he started teaching at Pitt-Bradford in 1989 and has 508 Google Scholar citations, showing the esteem in which his mathematical colleagues hold him.
He has served on the editorial boards of mathematical journals and refereed papers for dozens of more publications.
Chen also has served as a faculty consultant and reviewer for the College Board’s Advanced Placement Calculus program, and he has received the AP National Conference Scholarship from the College Board to support his engagement with that organization.
For more than a decade, Chen served as a division chair. During that time, he oversaw the development of new majors in engineering technology, petroleum technology and environmental science and worked on the university’s transition from a computer science major to the computer information systems and technology major.
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