John McDowell of Blacksburg, Va., associate professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science, was awarded the 2010 Certificate of Teaching Excellence from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech.McDowell teaches two graduate-level courses that are heavily grounded in molecular biology and genomics: Molecular Biology for the Life Sciences and Plant Disease Physiology and Development. He has also been instrumental in developing an interdepartmental Ph.D. program in molecular plant sciences that involves seven departments in three different colleges.