Michael Forstner named Regents' Professor by TSUS board

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
August 16, 2013

Michael R. Forstner, Alexander/Stone Chair of Genetics and professor of biology at Texas State University, has been named a Regents’ Professor by the Texas State University System Board of Regents.

The designation honors exceptional and outstanding members of the System’s professoriate who have achieved excellence in teaching, research and publication, and community service, while demonstrating an unwavering dedication to their students, their university and their community.

It is a lifetime designation bestowed by the Board of Regents upon tenured faculty who have been acknowledged as exceptional by their peers and students and recommended by The TSUS Foundation Board of Directors, the chancellor and their university president.

"Michael Forstner has had an extraordinary impact in teaching, research and service as a member of Texas State’s faculty, and has set a high bar for faculty excellence at the university," Texas State President Denise M. Trauth said. "We are fortunate to have a professor of Michael’s caliber leading a new generation of researchers at Texas State."

Forstner came to Texas State in 1999 from Florida Atlantic University. In more than 13 years on the Texas State faculty, he has overseen the development of the university's core genetics course as well as raised the university's international profile with a research program making significant contributions to genetics, conservation and wildlife management.

He has earned numerous awards for outstanding research at the institutional, state, national and international level. Forstner's support for the scholarship, research and thesis projects of his students has resulted in 162 peer-reviewed journal articles, many of which featured his students as first author.

Forstner’s areas of research include vertebrate systematics and population genetics. The majority of his projects comprise genetic and physical surveys of endangered or threatened species, including ongoing work with the endangered Houston Toad.

Forstner earned his B.S. in zoology from Texas State in 1988, his masters from Sul Ross State University in 1991 and his Ph.D. in genetics from Texas A&M University in 1995. In 2007, he was named the inaugural holder of the Alexander/Stone Chair of Genetics.

The Texas State University System Board of Regents is the governing body for Texas’ oldest university system, which comprises seven institutions in addition to Texas State University: Lamar University; Sam Houston State University; Sul Ross State University; Sul Ross State University Rio Grande College; Lamar Institute of Technology; Lamar State College-Orange; and Lamar State College-Port Arthur.