2 Texas State faculty honored as TSUS Regents’ Professors for 2024

Arzu Ari, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Respiratory Care, and Cyrus Cassells III, a professor in the Department of English at Texas State University, have been named Regents’ Professors by the Texas State University System Board of Regents.

The board approved the honors during its quarterly meeting Nov. 17 in Beaumont.

The Regents’ Professor designation honors outstanding members of the system’s professoriate who have achieved excellence in teaching, research, publication and community service, while demonstrating an unwavering dedication to their students and university. Ari and Cassells are the 23rd and 24th TSUS Regents’ Professors to be honored at Texas State.

The Board of Regents bestows the designation upon tenured full professors who have been acknowledged as exceptional by their peers and students. The TSUS Foundation Board of Directors, the chancellor and the university president must all recommend the honor.

Ari came to Texas State in 2017 from Georgia State University. She earned her Ph.D. in educational policy/higher education administration from Georgia State, an M.S. in allied health with a specialty in respiratory care from Georgia State, an M.S. in public health with a specialty in pulmonary disease from Istanbul University and her B.S. in physical therapy and rehabilitation from Hacettepe University. 

Since her arrival at Texas State, Ari has been named Distinguished Professor in the Department of Respiratory Care and appointed associate dean for research in the College of Health Professions. As an internationally renowned scholar in respiratory therapy, she was the first to provide guidelines on the delivery of aerosolized drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued to publish papers reducing the risk of transmission of infected bioaerosols. Her guidelines allowed hospitals to provide aerosolized medications before committing patients to invasive ventilation, thereby reducing the acute shortage of ventilators worldwide.

Ari’s research has been published in two books, 17 book chapters and 89 peer-reviewed articles. She has received 15 grants totaling $376,000 in external funding, written 85 conference proceedings and given 336 conference presentations, including 96 keynote or invited presentations at 63 conferences worldwide. Her research and service have been recognized with 39 awards including the Hector Leon Garza, M.D., Achievement Award for Excellence in International Respiratory Care, the Louis Sinopoli Faculty Research Award in Respiratory Care and the Mitchell A. Baran Achievement Award for Clinical Excellence in Aerosol Therapy. Ari also received a fellowship with the American College of Chest Physicians and a Monaghan/Trudell Fellowship for Aerosol Technique Development three times. 

Ari infuses her research and clinical experience in her teaching. She instills a passion for research in her students and engages them in active learning, especially in her online classes. She has developed and taught one undergraduate and three graduate courses, chaired 18 thesis committees and guided 21 student research projects. She mentors her students to publish papers and present at scientific conferences where eight students have earned research awards. 

Cassells came to Texas State in 1998 and is a University Distinguished Professor of English. 

He is recognized as one of the most impactful poets of contemporary times and was named the 2022 Poet Laureate Fellow by the Academy of American Poets. The Texas Legislature appointed him the 2021 Texas Poet Laureate. Some of his many awards and honors include a 2019 Guggenheim fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the National Poetry Series, a Pushcart Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Lannan Literary Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry nomination, a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism nomination and a NAACP Image Award in Poetry finalist. 

Cassells is nationally and internationally renowned as an exceptional and insightful poetry and fiction writer, thoughtful critic and impactful translator. His award-winning work has been published in 10 books with three more in press, more than 30 anthologies and countless journals. He has presented worldwide in poetry readings, lectures, performances, films and exhibits. He is a prolific book, film and television reviewer, a cultural critic and the poetry editor of a monthly feature for The Washington Spectator, which nominated his work for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. His translations demonstrate his study of French, Italian, Japanese and Spanish—including the endangered languages and dialects of Gullah, Hawaiian and Catalan—and have twice received the Texas Institute of Letters’ Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translated Book. 

Cassells is known for approaching instruction with the intent to liberate students intellectually, emotionally and spiritually by fostering their dynamic relationship to art, creativity and language. He has created 10 new and innovative English and honors courses and supervised innumerable graduate theses through which several of his students have gone on to be National Book Award finalists and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry winners.