Madeline Shea, PhD, earns university’s top teaching award

Madeline Shea, PhD, University of Iowa professor in the Department of Biochemistry, has been awarded one of the 2020 President and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence in recognition of her years of outstanding teaching.

The award, which is administered by the UI Council on Teaching, was created in 2004 to recognize faculty members who have demonstrated a sustained, high level of teaching excellence.

Shea, along with three University of Iowa faculty members, Elizabeth Oakes, associate professor of instruction in the School of Music; Lisa Segre, associate professor in the College of Nursing; Mary Noonan, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology have been award this top distinction.

Shea is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry, having joined the UI faculty in 1989. She has had an immeasurable impact on the undergraduate, graduate, and medical students she has taught. She introduced electronic classrooms and hands-on data analysis into the graduate biophysical chemistry curriculum and created a course to develop critical-thinking skills for biochemistry majors. She has mentored many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in her laboratory and field, and has supervised more than 70 undergraduates in research, most for multiyear projects, with many contributing to peer-reviewed articles or conference presentations. She is the founding director of the FUTURE in Biomedicine program: Fostering Undergraduate Talent—Uniting Research and Education. The program pairs professors and students from primarily undergraduate colleges in Iowa with UI faculty to develop new research collaborations. Shea was recognized with the ICRU Distinguished Mentor Award in 2014, the Emily M. Gray Award for Contributions to Education from the Biophysical Society in 2018, and the Carver College of Medicine Teaching Award in 2020.

Learn more on the 4 faculty earn university’s top teaching award