Eason Hildreth, D.V.M., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, was recently awarded the 2024 Graduate Biomedical Sciences (GBS) Faculty Teaching Award at the Graduate Student Research Day event held Friday, August 9. The award recognizes a course director or lecturer who has demonstrated exceptional accomplishments in teaching and is nominated and voted upon by GBS Ph.D. students. Hildreth is a two-time award winner, having also received this distinction in 2022.
Hildreth joined UAB in July 2019 from the Medical University of South Carolina and has since shown his dedication to the field and the Department. Since joining he has been awarded the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research Rising Star Award, a METAvivor Early Career Investigator Award, a Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama Research Award, and has been named a UAB Heersink School of Medicine Pittman Scholar.
The bulk of Hildreth’s teaching has been in his Intro to Pathobiology course. He was the founding co-director of this course in 2021 and became the sole course director in 2024. Hildreth also leads the Cancer Biology theme breakout session for the first-year course Basic Biological Organization, a cell biology course.
“Intro to Pathobiology, in a nutshell, is a course in pathologic basis of disease. We showcase many clinical and research faculty in pathology,” Hildreth says. “We had 9 total students in the first offering in 2021. In 2024, we had 35 students enrolled, representing almost all GBS Ph.D. themes and roughly half of the first-year class! It didn’t register how much we had achieved over this period until I saw the class there on the first day. Memorable? Most definitely. Hoping to have even more enrollment next year? Absolutely.”
Hildreth delivers lectures on cell response to injury, inflammation, wound healing, and bone as a tissue in Intro to Pathobiology and is involved in all the clinical case discussions. His Cancer Biology theme breakout sessions allow first-year Ph.D. students to experience theme-specific content. He has led this session each winter since 2021.
“My approach to the Cancer Biology breakout session is to expose the students to the scientific methods used in papers. Why is the method being used? What do you need to accomplish the method? What alternative might you consider? Each week the students choose 5 methods that have not yet been discussed. After 5 weeks, they have all learned 25 methods,” Hildreth says. “I really appreciate Drs. Lalita Shevde-Samant and Sooryanarayana Varambally (Cancer Biology theme directors and professors in Molecular and Cellular Pathology) for supporting me in this 'outside the box' approach. We have even had authors on the papers we discuss join us live via Zoom for an 'ask the author' session. We all enjoy these breakout sessions.”
“When I was told that I was receiving the award again, I immediately thought of the students, past and present; however, I have also been thinking of the teachers I have tried to emulate from clinical, classroom, and research settings. I also have three great teachers in my lab: my two Ph.D. students, Bailey and Will, and my lab manager, Victoria. They are a big inspiration to me. I couldn’t be present to receive the award – the only thing better was my lab being there to accept it on my behalf”.