Ron is the first Faculty Head of House for Memorial House in Vanderbilt’s residential college program for first-year students: The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons. The Ingram Commons comprises ten Houses, the Commons Center, and a residence for the Dean of the Commons. Each of the Houses has a Faculty Head who lives in an apartment in the House and participates in the life of the House. Ron leads Memorial House with his wife, Kathy. Students in the Ingram Commons benefit from opportunities to interact with Vanderbilt’s faculty and visiting researchers in an informal setting.

Ron received the Chancellor’s Cup in 2010 for “the greatest contribution outside the classroom to undergraduate student-faculty relationships in the recent past,” the Harvey Branscomb Distinguished Professor Award in 2008-09, the purpose of which is “to recognize, and thereby to encourage in others, that combination of talents and achievements which we identify as desirable in the University faculty member: creative scholarship; stimulating and inspiring teaching which results in learning of a high order; and service to students, colleagues, the University at large, and society at large,” the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering in 2008, the Chancellor’s Award for Research in 2003, and the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Early Achievement Award in 1996. He has received seven outstanding paper awards.