CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Mid-American Conference will announce the 13 institutional winners for the Outstanding Faculty Award for Student Success this week. This marks the seventh year that the award has been given out to recognize the outstanding efforts of MAC faculty to support and develop students both inside and outside of the classroom.
This student-focused award is distinguishable from academic or research-based awards as it celebrates the commitment of the MAC to a holistic student experience and the creation of an environment that supports success in school and in life.
Eligibility for this award is broad in nature in an effort to identify a wide range of outstanding means by which faculty are significantly impacting students, and to create an opportunity to recognize the various ways that student success is supported within the MAC. It is the hope of this award that the 13 nominees represent a diverse community that demonstrate support for student success throughout their entire collegiate experience.
Institutional winners from each MAC school will be announced each day this week, with the winner of the 2026 Outstanding Faculty Award for Student Success being announced on Friday, March 6.
2026 Outstanding Faculty Award for Student Success Institutional Winners
Dr. Seungbum Lee, University of Akron
Professor of Management
Dr. Seungbum Lee is a Professor in the Department of Management in the University of Akron’s College of Business. He received his Ph.D. in Sport Management from the University of Minnesota. He teaches a variety of courses, including Management: Principles & Concepts, Consulting Project in Sport Business, and Current Topics in Sport Business. Broadly speaking, Dr. Lee’s research lies at the intersection of sport and business. His work focuses on (a) business strategies and innovation in the sport context and (b) the intersection of sport, globalization, and international business, including global talent mobility, foreign direct investment, and ownership structures in sport.
Dr. Lee also serves as a Fellow for the Institute for Global Business in the College of Business at the University of Akron, where he helps design and execute experiential learning initiatives, such as the UA College of Business International Day. Through these programs, he supports the development of students’ global competencies and prepares them to assume leadership roles in an increasingly globalized business environment.
In addition, Dr. Lee serves as a faculty advisor for the Sport Analytics and Business Association at the University of Akron, one of the largest and most active student organizations on campus. The organization offers a wide range of activities, including conferences, case study competitions, sport organization site visits, group volunteering at sporting events, and other professional development opportunities.
Dr. Daria Kluver, Central Michigan University
Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Dr. Daria Kluver is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Central Michigan University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Meteorology from St Cloud State University and a master’s degree and PhD in Climatology from the University of Delaware. At Central Michigan University she has taught for the Meteorology and Environmental Science programs since 2011 and serves as the Meteorology Program Director.
Dr. Kluver’s research interests are focused on understanding the impacts of large-scale climate processes on precipitation through modeling, climate informatics applied to regional hydroclimate, and Atmospheric Science Education Research. She is a passionate and enthusiastic teacher who uses innovative pedagogy to make learning fun and engaging, which earned her the CMU College of Science and Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award in 2019. Students in her classes often analyze their own data, have choice in their assignments, face bosses, play games, level up, and make learning relevant to their lives. She strives to build environments where students feel safe taking risks to learn new things, and where no matter their background, students feel like they belong in science.
Dr. Michele Frank, Miami University
Associated Professor of Accountancy
Michele Frank earned her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015 after working for nearly a decade at EY, an international public accounting firm. She draws on her prior experience in tax and mergers and acquisitions when teaching tax and financial accounting at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Michele is known across the university for her excellence in the area of teaching. She is known by her students as someone who cares deeply about their success and who creates a safe and welcoming classroom environment. Michele has earned several teaching awards including:
• the Richard T. Smucker Teaching Excellence Award for Outstanding Junior Faculty, 2018;
• the Richard T. Smucker Teaching Excellence Award for Outstanding Professor Award, 2024; and
• the Miami University Honors College Professor of the Year Award, 2025.
Michele leads curricular development efforts within her department, division and university, aimed at improving students’ educational experience and post-graduation outcomes. Michele’s research focuses on understanding factors that influence the way in which auditors, managers, investors and jurors interpret and use accounting information. She is particularly interested in how individuals use accounting information to make predictions about the future and how the social context in which decisions are made influences the interpretation and use of information. Her research is published in numerous high quality accounting journals including The Accounting Review, Contemporary Research in Accounting and Accounting, Organizations and Society.
Dr. Frank was awarded the 2018 McLaughlin Prize for Research in Accounting and Ethics.
Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten, Western Michigan University
Professor in the Criminal Justice Studies program and Director of the Cold Case Program in partnership with the Michigan State Police.
Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten is a Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University. In her career as a faculty member at WMU (1997 to present), she has authored many journal articles and book contributions, and has secured over one million dollars in external funding. Although these achievements are undeniably valuable contributions, where Dr. Kuersten shines brightest is in her passion for teaching, mentoring, and supporting students. Dr. Kuersten has previously received the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Achievement Award in Teaching and the American Political Science Association and Pi Sigma Alpha Outstanding Teacher of Political Science Award. Dr. Kuersten’s successes in student-learning are plentiful, but this narrative will focus on her most ambitious efforts in providing experiential learning and career development opportunities to undergraduate students.
One of the major efforts Dr. Kuersten launched at WMU was the Wrongful Conviction Program. Dr. Kuersten served as the project director from 2014 to 2019, with the bulk of the efforts operating under a Department of Justice grant between 2015 and 2018. Under a partnership with the Cooley Law School’s Innocence Project, the WMU Wrongful Conviction Program enabled undergraduate students to assist in screening, reviewing, and investigating claims of innocence by convicted persons in Michigan. According to a program evaluation, the project involved the review of “over 900 case files and [included] over 8,800 hours reviewing these cases. Several cases conducted evidence searches and DNA tests to obtain support for innocence claims. The efforts of the program contributed to at least one exoneration (Chlebek, 2019). As amazing as that program was, however, Dr. Kuersten only expanded on these successes in her next major effort in student experiential learning. In 2019, Dr. Kuersten launched the Western Michigan University Cold Case Program with the Michigan State Police. The project started with a collaboration with the state police and a small team of three students in the first year, and has grown to a veritable army of 55 student participants in 2025. In their first six years, they have worked with not only the Michigan State Police, but ten additional police agencies, multiple prosecutor offices, and crime labs across Michigan. The WMU Cold Case Program is a student-centered learning opportunity. The cases themselves, the victims, law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders are naturally unrelated to the students themselves and external to academia. However, Dr. Kuersten has designed this program to provide educational and professional experience to its evolving team of student investigators. Dr. Kuersten built, and maintains over-time, a team of undergraduate students to work as student investigators directly assisting detectives in their work.
