Dr. Sarah Eichhorn has been awarded one of the 2011 Alder Awards from the Mathematical Association of America. The award is in recognition of her outstanding teaching since her arrival at UCI in 2007. The MAA established the Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member in 2003 to "honor beginning college or university faculty whose teaching has been extra ordinarily successful and whose effectiveness in teaching undergraduate mathematics is shown to have influence beyond their own classrooms. Each year, at most three college or university teachers are honored with this national award." The award was presented to Dr. Eichhorn during MathFest 2011, the annual summer meeting of the MAA.
 
Dr. Eichhorn joined the Mathematics Department in 2007 as an LPSOE. She has been an excellent instructor who consistently receives top scores on her student evaluations. She has been very active in improving the quality of undergraduate education in mathematics at UCI. Dr. Eichhorn is currently the advisor for students in the Concentration in Mathematics for Education with a Secondary Teaching Certification through the CalTeach program. She is also the UCI Undergraduate Math Club faculty advisor. In addition, she organizes the Undergraduate Mathematics Colloquium, inviting department faculty to give talks accessible to the novice mathematician. Dr. Eichhorn is the Founder and Faculty Advisor for the UCI SIAM student chapter. She is also involved in mentoring students outside the classroom and Math Club. In 2010, Dr. Eichhorn trained three teams for the MCM (Mathematical Contest in Modeling), and one team received “Honorable Mention” for their project. In 2011, a team that she and Dr. Arvind Baskaran trained received Meritorious Distinction, which was given to the top 13% of the participating teams. This team was also in the top 10 of the participating US teams.
 
Dr. Eichhorn has already earned awards honoring her work and grants to support her future work. In her first year as an instructor at UCI, Dr. Eichhorn received the School of Physical Sciences Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. Dr. Eichhorn is also a co-PI on a nearly $2 million NSF PRISM grant, which is being used to create a research experience program in computational and applied mathematics for undergraduate students at UCI. The UCI Interdisciplinary Computational and Applied Mathematics Program (iCAMP) "provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to learn about a topic in computational applied mathematics, get early research experience and explore what it is like to work as a professional in computational applied math." Most recently, Dr. Eichhorn and Dr. Alessandra Pantano organized the first Sonia Kovalevsky Mathematics Day at UCI. This event was designed to inspire high school and middle school girls to continue their study of mathematics and featured fun, hands-on activities, talks by leading female mathematicians, social interaction with other Orange County students and mini math competitions for great prizes!