ORLANDO -- Tosha Dupras buries pig and plastic bones on campus to help her forensic anthropology students learn how to excavate human remains. Using what they’ve learned in class, her students then decide where to excavate and how to find the bones while preserving them as much as possible.

Creative teaching methods like the “annual pig dig” helped Dupras, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, win the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, one of several honors announced Wednesday during Founders’ Day festivities.

Other winners of top awards included Donald Malocha, an electrical engineering professor who was selected as the Distinguished Researcher of the Year, and Keith Folse, a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature who received the University Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Henry Daniell, a professor of molecular biology, was named the 2004 Pegasus Professor, which honors faculty members for excellence in teaching, research and service.

A physical anthropologist who specializes in forensics, Dupras joined the UCF faculty in 1999. Since then, her teaching style has helped to attract more anthropology majors, and her courses’ popularity encouraged her department to hire a second forensic anthropologist this year, department chairman Jay Corzine wrote in his nomination letter for the teaching award.

“Dr. Dupras … structures her courses so that all students will receive meaningful experiences in developing skills that will be useful in their later lives, regardless of their career paths,” Corzine wrote. “These include writing, oral presentations and computer expertise. She constantly strives to have a positive impact on each of her students’ lives, and she enjoys great success in doing so.”

Folse administers the master’s degree program in Teaching English to Students in Other Languages. He created new graduate certificate programs in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and in English for Speakers of Other Languages.

His students have said that he makes learning “delightful” and “forces us to do a lot of thinking.”

Malocha plays a leading role in UCF’s efforts to create and improve devices that can store energy or launch waves when electricity is applied to them. This technology already is used in filters in television sets and mobile telephones, and it eventually could be used in sensors to better monitor the temperature of the space shuttles in flight, detect gases that are harmful to humans and improve radar systems on military helicopters.

Malocha, who has taught at UCF since 1982, works in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center. He won the Florida Governor’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Science and Technology in 1989 and is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

“Professor Malocha’s ongoing development of entirely new concepts and acoustic structures for communications are representative of the best in quality in the world,” wrote Arthur Ballato, the chief scientist of the U.S. Army’s Communications-Electronics Command in a nomination letter for the Distinguished Researcher Award.

Enrique Ortiz, a professor in the College of Education, and Kristina Tollefson of the College of Arts and Sciences received the University Awards for Excellence in Faculty Academic Advising. Melissa Dagley Falls of the College of Engineering and Computer Science received the University Award for Excellence in Professional Academic Advising.

Current and past winners of the awards recognizing excellence in teaching, research and advising will be honored on a new wall constructed in the library. Plaques for each of the awards will be displayed under the heading “Celebrating Excellence.”

A ceremony honoring those winners will be held at 2 p.m. April 19 on the first floor of the library.

In addition to Malocha, the nominees this year for the Distinguished Researcher Award were psychology professor Peter Hancock and political science professor Roger Handberg from the College of Arts and Sciences; management information systems professor Carol Saunders from the College of Business Administration; child, family and community sciences professor Gordon Taub from the College of Education; molecular biology and microbiology professor Beverly Rzigalinski from the College of Health and Public Affairs; and scientist Danny Parker of the Florida Solar Energy Center. Parker was nominated as the representative of UCF’s institutes and centers.

Nominees for the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award included English professors Melody Bowdon, Tison Pugh and Ernest Smith; political science professors Aubrey Jewett and Bruce Wilson; theatre professor Kristina Tollefson; and biology professor Jane Waterman, all from the College of Arts and Sciences; accounting professor Donna Bobek, finance professor Melissa Frye and marketing professor Karl Sooder from the College of Business Administration and Cynthia Hutchinson, a professor of educational studies in the College of Education.

The College of Engineering and Computer Science nominated W. Linwood Jones, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Alireza Rahrooh, an engineering technology professor; and the College of Health and Public Affairs nominated Dorilyn Hitchcock, a professor of molecular biology and microbiology, and Ronnie Korosec, a professor of public administration.

Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award nominees included Marshall Schminke, a management professor in the College of Business Administration; Larry Holt, an educational studies professor in the College of Education; Jose Sepulveda, an industrial engineering professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science; and Jannick Roland from the School of Optics.

In other awards announced Wednesday, Bruce Wilson from the College of Arts and Sciences and Ahmad Elshennawy from the College of Engineering and Computer Science won university awards for excellence in professional service. Athena Hoeppner received the Excellence in Librarianship award.