4/15/2025 2 min read
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Professor Prashant Mehta and Associate Professor Emeritus Mike Philpott were named this year’s winners of the MechSE Alumni Effective Teaching Awards. Mehta won the Five-Year Effective Teaching Award, and Philpott received the Two-Year Alumni Effective Teaching Award.
For more than 40 years, the MechSE Alumni Board has sponsored two Alumni Effective Teaching Awards—established so that alumni two and five years into their professional careers have the opportunity to honor faculty whose teaching they now perceive as having had the greatest impact on their careers. They are voted on by former students – this year, the classes of 2020 and 2023 – to recognize truly outstanding teaching in the department.
Philpott is a lecturer in MechSE and served as the long-time advisor to the Illini Motorsports team – helping guide the team to ecstatic finishes: in 2022 as the #1 team in the country; 2023, #1 in North America and #3 in the world; and last year in 2024, beating out 347 teams to be named the best Formula SAE team in the world. With about 150 active members in any given year from 20 academic majors, Philpott’s guidance has impacted thousands of students over the course of his career. Additionally, he teaches ME 170 (Computer-Aided Design), ME 199 (Automotive Design Projects and SAE-related sections), as well as ENG 491 (Interdisciplinary Design Projects) for The Grainger College of Engineering.
Mehta’s roster of courses includes ME 360 (Signal Processing); TAM 541 and 542 (Mathematical Methods); and Control System Theory and Design, and Analysis of Nonlinear Systems. He has a passion for sharing his passion for controlled interacting particle systems and particle-based algorithms for nonlinear estimation and mean-field optimal control. He is regularly included on the university’s List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students.
Mehta and Philpott were recognized April 11 at the MechSE Awards Banquet.