Felicia Corsaro-Barbieri, PhD began as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 1974 and since then has established an outstanding record of teaching. She earned tenure in 1982, reached the rank of full professor in 1985, and in 1991 received the prestigious Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.
As the lead faculty member in Chemistry, Dr. Corsaro-Barbieri oversees all course materials, including syllabi and lab manuals, and consistently revises courses. Her contributions are crucial not only to address the standards for her own students but also to serve the needs of the Biology, Nursing, and Health Professions programs, as well as the general education of all undergraduate students. Since 1981, she has directed the work of the Pre-Professional Advisory Office, providing valuable service to students navigating the difficult path into and through graduate education in the health sciences, as well as to the faculty invited to collaborate in the process.
Although in her early career as a scholar Dr. Corsaro-Barbieri contributed to the scholarship of discovery through several peer-reviewed articles (1973-74) and later contributed as a co-author to the Handbook of Commonly Prescribed Pediatric Drugs (1999), her more consistent contributions over the decades have been through the scholarship of application and integration. She has served as a peer reviewer for The American Biology Teacher since 1998, for instance, and routinely presents at the semi-annual Expanding Your Horizons mini-conferences at Chestnut Hill College.
In addition, Dr. Corsaro-Barbieri has been the recipient of two NSF instrumentation grants, as a co-PI (1976-79) and as a PI (1986-89) and participated in the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development Grant Program in 2010. Dr. Corsaro-Barbieri also wrote the University’s first and only successful Pittsburgh Conference National Memorial College Grant in 2014, which resulted in much needed instrumentation for biology and chemistry research, including undergraduate research.
