Diana Ashe Selected as 2026 BOG Teaching Award Recipient

Diana Ashe, professor in the UNCW Department of English, is a recipient of the 2026 UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The award winners represent all 16 of North Carolina’s public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Recipients were nominated by special committees at each institution and selected by the Board of Governors Committee on Educational Planning, Policies and Programs.

Since joining UNCW in 2000, Ashe has become a pedagogical leader on campus as well as nationally. She has taught more than 30 undergraduate and graduate courses, many of which she designed, and her teaching evaluations are consistently strong. As described by a colleague, Ashe is “at the forefront of curriculum and pedagogical innovation, empathic and evidence-based professionalism, as well as institutional policy development,” while another describes her classes as hallmarks of “trust, transparency and joy.”

“I've been lucky to work for more than 25 years — longer than many of my current students have been alive — with fantastic students and faculty from all over the university. UNCW has seen breathtaking changes in this time, and faculty work has changed along with it,” said Ashe. “What hasn't changed is how much our faculty care about helping students to learn and to explore new ideas. We've strengthened our research profile, but UNCW is still home to great teaching in every campus unit.”

Extending her impact beyond the classroom, Ashe served as the director of the Center for Teaching Excellence from 2016 to 2022 and director of the Center for Faculty Leadership from 2016 to 2023. She helped develop responsive faculty programming, including the Course Design Institute, Transparency Camp, post-Hurricane Florence workshops and pandemic-era Modality Meet-ups.

In collaboration with colleagues across multiple departments on campus, Ashe has continued to develop interdisciplinary initiatives. This spring, her digital composing students will create electronic portfolios for intermediate ceramics students. Additionally, she has developed a seminar for STEM doctoral students focused on grant writing for the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health post-doctoral fellowships.

In addition to the latest honor from the Board of Governors, Ashe is the recipient of various teaching honors, including the Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award, the Board of Trustees Teaching Excellence Award and the Distinguished Teaching Professorship Award.