Each year, the Department of Biology recognizes four exceptional teachers with teaching awards. The recipients include two members of the faculty and teaching staff, and two graduate students.
With these awards, we celebrate the dedication, creativity and teaching talent of our undergraduate educators, and hope to encourage faculty and students to visit each other’s classrooms, to learn from each other’s experiences and to continue to develop our teaching skills in the ever-changing landscape of higher education.
2025 Winners
Read about each winner below. Special thanks to the teaching award committee: Kelly Hogan, Paul Manos, Julie Reynolds, and Spencer Rhea.
Gustavo Silva
Gustavo Silva has contributed to undergraduate teaching in our department in two critical ways. First, as part of the team who taught Biology 201L: Molecular Biology for many years and second, for his development of a seminar called Defective Proteins & Diseases (Bio290S).
Gustavo’s pedagogy is strongly influenced by Dr. Paulo Freire, a renowned Brazilian educator and philosopher who promoted critical pedagogy and community literacy — tools for liberation of the oppressed. As a result, Gustavo is a strong proponent of developing equitable classrooms, where all students benefit and are equally supported to achieve their goals. Evidence of his success is found in his students’ words:
“Entering a Duke bio course, it can be intimidating to speak and ask questions. … I feel like Dr. Silva understood this and allowed us to ease into the seminar style, ultimately letting us reach where we are now.”
One of Gustavo’s goals as a teacher is to help students make connections beyond the course. For example, in addition to teaching the molecular details of how mutations lead to diseases, Gustavo wants his students to think deeply about the daily impact of diseases on patients and their families, the lack of support for rare diseases, and the limited resources available to study and develop therapies. Students get this, as one explains:
“Group projects, diverse prompts and molecular-level thinking all made this course much more engaging that I initially anticipated. I came into class with general knowledge from assigned readings, but was pushed to not only understand this knowledge but apply it to real world scenarios. It was incredibly stimulating to know that the molecular biology I was learning was not just staying on a page, but rather being applied to diseases and active in communication.”
Emily Brady
Emily Brady is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the department and has supported three advanced-level courses, two with labs, Mammalogy and Entomology, and one with discussion sections, Mechanisms of Animal Communication. Her skills in organismal biology are in high demand. Her enthusiasm to diversify and develop her teaching portfolio while contributing to the learning experience beyond expectations has been noted by the faculty.
“... she went some extra miles in finding online some very useful additional accessories to make the exercise clearer and more accessible to the students… AND volunteered and taught and helped re-organize during our lab-prep session.”
“Although she had relatively little prior knowledge of insects, she has a broad and deep interest in Biology in general, and unbridled enthusiasm for learning more and teaching... lab was enriched by her outgoing character and enthusiasm for the topic.”
Emily is enrolled in the Duke Certificate in College Teaching Program and has taken the Intro to College Level Teaching course. She plans to take more courses in the future, including College Teaching and Course Design. She hopes to use the knowledge gained from her training to be the instructor of record for a course on comparative vertebrate anatomy in her final year as a graduate student.
Chris Shreve
Chris Shreve is a Training Coordinator in the department focusing most of his efforts on Biology 201L: Molecular Biology. He has been associated with introductory biology in the department for many years — first as a lab instructor and now as the course coordinator for 201L. He develops curricular materials and assessments for lecture and lab, teaches lectures, trains TAs for each week’s labs and helps mentor faculty new to teaching. Recently, he has taken on the role of co-leading the department’s graduate student training and will help co-facilitate a week-long summer institute on teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Students in Biology 201 discussed the positive and interactive learning environments he creates and praised the way he brought enthusiasm, joy, and engagement to lessons.
A colleague who observed a lesson Chris developed and led stated, “I’d never thought worthwhile interactive learning could be done in very large sections until seeing this course. It was also impressive to see the comradery evident in the student body, and how well peers work together to solve problems. I also was struck with how the questions in class ascended the cognition levels in Bloom’s, so that by the end students were using the fundamentals from earlier in the class to solve a complex problem.”
Diego Garfias Gallegos
Diego Garfias Gallegos is a third-year Ph.D. student in Biology and has served as a TA in the BIO 201 labs for two years. Diego is committed to continually improving student learning. In his labs, he developed a mid-semester evaluation, a classroom compact, and is always looking for creative ways to engage students in molecular biology. Diego is also committed to ensuring his classroom is an inclusive learning environment. A faculty member observing Diego’s class noted:
“it became clear that he is an empathetic instructor who works to connect with his students; he tries to notice students’ body language and facial expressions during the class so he can respond to students in need. He is particularly aware of the challenges for students for whom English is their second language and tries to slow down his presentation to ensure that all students are included in the lesson.”
Diegos’s excitement and commitment to teaching Biology is rooted in his love for the discipline. In his own words, this is how he described his teaching approach:
“Biology is a field that allows students to find answers to the natural wonders around us. The path to tackling these questions uses the scientific method: phenomena observation, trial and error, and critical thinking. I search for my classroom to be an environment where students can consciously engage in these steps, try without fear of being mistaken, and apply both theoretical and applied biological knowledge to engaging questions.”