On May 13th, 2024, the Duke School of Medicine (SOM) hosted its Spring Faculty Celebration at the Doris Duke Center at Duke Gardens, at which Pathology Professor Laura Hale, MD, PhD, received the 2024 Gordon G. Hammes Faculty Teaching Award. It recognizes continuing excellence in teaching and mentoring and exemplary commitment to the education of graduate students within basic science departments and graduate training programs in the SOM. This award is unique among faculty awards in that the recipient is selected by a committee of biomedical graduate students, not by SOM faculty or administration.
“Dr. Hale is a wonderful teacher and mentor who is truly loved by her students,” said Johnston-West Endowed Department Chair of Pathology Jiaoti Huang, MD, PhD. “What is remarkable is that she has been doing this for years and is always enthusiastic about teaching. We are very lucky to have such an outstanding mentor among us!”
For over 25 years, Dr. Hale has taught the Introduction to Systemic Histology and General Pathology courses, typically taken by graduate students in pathology and other biomedical departments in the fall and spring of their first year of graduate school. She also teaches several classes each year for other graduate courses, including Molecular Aspects of Disease; Animal Models in Translational Research; Laboratory Management for Pathology Assistant Students; and Basic Biology of Cells as a Function of Aging.
“[Dr. Hale was] the greatest and most influential professor that I have ever had and [is] so deserving of this prestigious award,” wrote William “Bill” Butler, PhD. “In addition to being an excellent teacher and great mentor, [she was] always such a warm presence during my graduate school years.” Butler earned his PhD from Duke Pathology in 2023 and currently is pursuing a fellowship in clinical chemistry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
This isn’t the first time Hale has been nominated for this award. The graduate student selection committee named her as a Distinguished Nominee in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2020, 2021, and 2023. A Distinguished Nominee, although not the finalist that year, is a nominee that the student selection committee wishes to formally acknowledge as noteworthy.
The School of Medicine established this award in 2001 in honor of Gordon G. Hammes, PhD, Professor of Biochemistry and University Distinguished Professor, who served as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs from 1991 through 1998. During his tenure as Vice Chancellor, Hammes led a number of major initiatives to improve the scope and quality of our graduate program within the School of Medicine. This award is part of Spring Faculty Award program. View all of Duke School of Medicine’s 2024 Faculty award recipients.
In addition to teaching, Hale is also a practicing pathologist and an accomplished researcher. Since 1995, Hale has served as Principal Investigator or co-investigator on over 40 NIH-, DOD-, and privately funded grants that studied mechanisms and novel therapies for immune-mediated diseases and cancer. In August 2023, she received a five-year grant award through the National Institute of Aging as part of a program project to determine mechanisms that control age-related thymic atrophy and changes in immune function and as well as to identify therapies that can rejuvenate immune responses in older individuals.
In March 2023, Hale and Joseph Turek, MD, PhD, Associate Professor and Chief of Duke Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, received a two-year R21 grant titled “Transplantation of Cryopreserved Thymus” from the National Institute of Allergy, Immunology, and Infectious Diseases.