Three Undergraduate Faculty Win Inaugural Judith Deckers Teaching Award

Deckers Award winners Karin Shapiro, Dorian Canelas and Catherine Admay with vice provost Candis Watts Smith.
Deckers Award winners Karin Shapiro, Dorian Canelas and Catherine Admay with vice provost Candis Watts Smith.

Three undergraduate faculty members received the inaugural Judith Deckers Prize for excellence in undergraduate education. This honor recognizes leaders in their fields who have substantial track records of positively affecting student learning and lives. 

The honorees were celebrated Thursday evening during a reception on Duke’s campus. Provost Alec Gallimore, and Interim Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Candis Watts Smith each gave remarks, congratulating the prize winners and reflecting on their contributions to Duke.

“Classroom educators are the unsung heroes of the academy and often go uncelebrated,” said Smith. “Shaping the minds of future generations and inspiring growth is some of the hardest work in education.”

Judith Deckers' commitment to teaching in spaces beyond the classroom inspired this prize. Many of the academy's educators go uncelebrated. With the Judith Deckers Prize, Duke aims to highlight its excellent undergraduate educators.

“It’s been amazing to see our community rally around its faculty,” Gallimore said. “This spring the Judith Deckers Prize received more than 500 nominations from students, faculty, alumni and staff highlighting 120 excellent educators.”

The Judith Deckers Award illuminates and celebrates teaching excellence at Duke – in and outside the classroom. The year’s award granted three faculty members a prestigious honor along with a monetary prize of $35,000 each.

The 2024 Judith Deckers recipients are:

Catherine Admay

Catherine Admay is a senior lecturer in the Sanford School of Public Policy and a faculty affiliate at Duke’s Global Health Institute. Admay's teaching and research interests are in the areas of human rights, law and development, global health, comparative constitutional law of socio-economic rights, conflict transformation, and interdisciplinary engagements with law (ethics, arts, storytelling).

Dorian Canelas

Dorian Canelas is associate professor of the practice of chemistry in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Canelas has been active in implementing student-centered pedagogies and developing programs to increase undergraduate retention in science tracks. Her research interests include chemical education research, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and macromolecules for industrial and biological applications, such as microelectronics, coatings, membranes, gene therapy delivery and blood compatibility.

Karin Shapiro

Karin Shapiro is associate professor of the practice of African and African American studies in Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Shapiro’s scholarship and teaching focus on South and Southern African, American and transnational history. She’s written and edited several academic texts, produced four films, and is currently working on a biography for Archbishop Walter Khotso Makhulu.