Biologist with Penchant for Strengthening Science Education Named UA’s Outstanding Professor

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A biology professor who has won nearly $5 million in grants to strengthen undergraduate education in the sciences is the winner of The University of Alabama’s Blackmon-Moody Outstanding Professor award.

Dr. Martha Powell, professor of biological sciences at UA, will be honored in a ceremony at the University’s President’s Mansion Nov. 18.

This award is presented annually to a UA faculty member judged to have made extraordinary contributions that reflect credit on the individual, on his or her field of study, on students, and on the University. It was created by Frederick Moody Blackmon of Montgomery to honor the memory of his grandmother, Sarah McCorkle Moody of Tuscaloosa.

Since 1998, Powell has been awarded $4.9 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to strengthen undergraduate education in the sciences through three separate programs. The latest, a $1.5 million award to Powell in 2010, is benefitting students from UA, Stillman College and Shelton State, as well as area high-school students and graduate students.

Through the latest award, UA faculty have developed four initiatives that seek to increase the diversity of students attracted to science careers and to help them see the excitement of scientific research.

“Martha Powell has worked tirelessly in moving programs forward and in instilling in faculty who participate in these programs the ‘teaching-through-research’ model in the classroom and in the research laboratory,” wrote Dr. Guy Caldwell, UA professor of biological sciences, in support of Powell’s nomination.

UA’s HHMI proposal, led by Powell, was one of 50 selected for funding from among the 165 research universities submitting proposals for the Institute’s Precollege and Undergraduate Science Education Program. She was also awarded Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Science Education grants in 1998 and 2002.

Powell, who has taught at UA since 1997, serving as department chair of biological sciences from then until 2007, earned her bachelor’s degree from Western Carolina University, her doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University.

A mycologist – a microbiologist who focuses on the study of fungi – Powell has served as national president of the Mycological Society of America and was earlier named a fellow of that organization.

UA’s department of biological sciences is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.