NC State honors Melissa Srougi with outstanding teacher award: full analysis
NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine has announced that Dr. Melissa Srougi, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences, won the NC State University Outstanding Teacher Award for 2025-26. The April 21 announcement positions Srougi as both a cancer researcher and a teaching innovator, reflecting a broader institutional push to connect frontline science with workforce-focused biotechnology education. (cvm.ncsu.edu)
Srougi’s path to the award is somewhat unusual by traditional academic standards. According to NC State, she trained as a pharmacologist at Case Western Reserve University, spent postdoctoral years as a bench scientist studying cancer therapies, including work with cell biologist Keith Burridge at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and later shifted toward teaching-centered faculty work. She returned to NC State in 2019 after serving as an assistant professor of biochemistry at High Point University, where she helped restructure curriculum and co-authored a molecular biology techniques textbook. (cvm.ncsu.edu)
The university’s announcement and faculty profile show that her current portfolio spans both cancer therapeutics research and discipline-based education research. In the lab, her group studies targeted therapeutics for human breast cancers, especially tumors with BRCA1/2 mutations, and investigates NQO1-bioactivatable quinones and combination strategies with DNA repair modulators. In the classroom, she develops biotechnology courses aimed at giving life sciences students practical laboratory skills, while also studying interventions designed to improve critical thinking and student outcomes in STEM learning environments. (cvm.ncsu.edu)
NC State tied the award in part to Srougi’s course design and interdisciplinary reach. The university said students from more than 80 academic programs and all eight colleges pass through her courses. In nomination materials quoted by the college, former Biotechnology Program director Robert Kelly credited her with keeping a high-enrollment core course current with biotechnology and pedagogical advances, and with pioneering a virtual reality-based cell culture simulation. The faculty profile also lists recent scholarship on immersive biotechnology training, including a 2024 PLOS ONE paper on a 3D simulation in a molecular biotechnology course and additional 2024 and 2025 conference abstracts on virtual cell culture and technical-skills instruction. (cvm.ncsu.edu)
The announcement also points to momentum behind her teaching work before this latest honor. In 2025, Srougi and chemistry faculty member Dr. Audrey Fikes received the Warwick A. Arden Interdisciplinary Teaching Excellence Award for their Cancer Drug Discovery and Development course. Fikes said that course lets students participate in real drug discovery research for triple-negative breast cancer while contributing to cancer biology research itself, not just classroom exercises. Student nominators quoted by NC State described Srougi’s classrooms as supportive, inclusive, and willing to let learners fail safely and try again. (cvm.ncsu.edu)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, this is more than a campus teaching award. NC State’s veterinary college is signaling that educator-scientists who can bridge cancer biology, biotechnology, and applied training are central to how future talent is developed. That has practical implications for veterinary schools, teaching hospitals, and industry partners looking for graduates who can move between research and practice, especially in areas like comparative oncology, translational medicine, laboratory diagnostics, and biomanufacturing. Srougi’s work also reflects a growing emphasis on measurable teaching methods, not just subject expertise, as health professions education becomes more skills-based and outcomes-driven. (cvm.ncsu.edu)
It also fits a larger pattern inside NC State. The university has separately highlighted that recipients of its Outstanding Teacher Award join the Academy of Outstanding Teachers, underscoring that this is a university-level recognition rather than a college-only accolade. Combined with Srougi’s active grant involvement in molecular biotechnology training and undergraduate research programs, the award suggests NC State sees her as part of a broader pipeline strategy for life sciences education. That could resonate with veterinary institutions weighing how to modernize curricula without losing research depth. (mse.ncsu.edu)
What to watch: The next signal will be whether NC State uses this award to further scale Srougi’s model, particularly immersive lab training, course-based drug discovery, and cross-college biotechnology instruction, into broader veterinary and biomedical education programs over the 2026-27 academic year. (cvm.ncsu.edu)