NIU faculty members Ahmed Rifai, William Johnson and Randall Newsom have been designated as three of NIU’s finest educators and recipients of the 1988 Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.

These teachers were chosen for recognition by members of the Committee for the Improvement of Undergraduate Education. Tim Blickhan, committee chairman and NIU music professor, said choosing three faculty members out of the 13 nominees was virtually an “impossible task.”

He said the award announcements cap off nearly three months of an exhaustive nomination process that began on the departmental level.

Individual departments each submitted one nominee’s name to their respective colleges by the end of February. Nominees were chosen from among teachers suggested by students, faculty and alumni.

Each college was allowed to nominate a certain number of teachers, based on the college’s percentage of NIU faculty. Colleges were required to submit their nominations to the committee by the end of March.

This year’s award recipients will be honored at 7 p.m. on April 24 as part of NIU’s Honors Day banquet in the Holmes Student Center’s Duke Ellington Ballroom. The three award winners will be presented with checks for $1,500 from the NIU Foundation.

Rifai, a business systems and analysis professor, began teaching at NIU in 1970, and has been adviser of the international business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, since 1973. He is a former “Adviser of the Year” award recipient for both NIU and the entire Midwest for his work with the fraternity.

He received degrees from Ein Shams University at Cairo, Egypt, Wharton Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Syracuse University.

Rifai taught at Syracuse for two years before coming to NIU. He has written articles for such magazines as American Economist and Industrial Engineering and he said he has worked for Egypt’s General Petroleum Authority, the Suez Canal Authority, and on the Suez president’s staff. He said he is in the process of writing a book with University of Nebraska professor Marc Schniederjans about “the optimization of scarce resources.

“Receiving this award means a lot to me, because I really love my students,” Rifai said. “This sets a standard for me to keep.”

Johnson, an associate professor of English, came to NIU 19 years ago. He said his specialized area of study is Reformation and Renaissance literature and history.

Johnson holds degrees from Chicago State University and the University of Iowa. He said he is the national executive secretary of Sigma Tau Delta, the international honor society for English.

He also directed the Honors Program at NIU for five years.

“I was overwhelmed to receive this honor. It signifies to a teacher that he or she has made a difference (in their student’s education),” Johnson said. He said he particularly enjoys teaching English because “literature helps us to discover who we are.”

Newsom is an assistant professor of theatre arts who came to NIU in 1979. He received music education degrees from both Pikeville College at Pikeville, Ken., and Eastern Kentucky University at Richmond. He also has attended the London Institute of Choreology.

He could not be reached for comment on his award.

Newsom has performed with such groups as the Rockford Dance Company, the Irish National Ballet and NIU’s Illinois Stage Company. He is a board of directors member for the Emergence Dance Theatre.