Imoukhuede wins prestigious college teaching award

4/6/2017 Laura Schmitt

Bioengineering Assistant Professor Princess Imoukhuede will receive the College of Engineering’s Rose Award for Teaching Excellence on April 24, 2017.

Written by Laura Schmitt

Bioengineering Assistant Professor Princess Imoukhuede will receive the College of Engineering’s Rose Award for Teaching Excellence on April 24, 2017. In addition to recognizing great teaching, this award honors faculty who excel at motivating undergraduate students to learn and appreciate engineering. Imoukhuede teaches Conservation Principles in Bioengineering (BioE 201) and Systems Biology and Bioengineering (BioE 498/598).

“I am honored to receive the Rose Award for Teaching Excellence,” said Imoukhuede. “It’s a joy to teach our Bioengineering students—they’re engaging and among the best and brightest students in the nation, so I feel they ought to have all the tools to support their success.”

According to Imoukhuede, in addition to learning bioengineering fundamentals, one of those tools is leadership training, which she has incorporated into her instruction through team-based classroom projects and guest lecturers who provide the students with specific training.

“I assign students to teams using the CATME team maker, which is an online tool that uses research-grounded approaches to form optimal teams,” she said. “Each student holds the role of team spokesperson or team scribe for [several] weeks. Each time the students rotate responsibilities, they reflect and report on their own development and that of their peers through the CATME online tool.”

In addition to being a gifted educator, Imoukhuede is conducting research that focuses on the vascular microenvironment to identify molecular and cellular signaling networks that modulate, inhibit, and promote blood vessel formation.  She combines this with systems biology approaches to identify promising therapeutic targets. 

Ultimately, her research aims to unravel the molecular complexities governing blood-vessel formation, which has the potential for treatment of more than 70 diseases, including breast cancer and some cardiovascular diseases.

“I am very grateful for this award—to me this recognition reinforces our collective value for student-focused teaching and learning,” said Imoukhuede, whose Bioengineering colleagues Jenny Amos (2013) and Rohit Bhargava (2012) had previously won the award. 


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This story was published April 6, 2017.