Caroline Beesley Pate, O.D., is the 2017 recipient of the UAB President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for the School of Optometry.

Pate, an associate professor of Optometry and director of the School’s Residency Programs, was chosen for the award by the School’s awards committee, which is chaired by Candice Turner, O.D., clinical assistant professor of Optometry.

“Dr. Pate received nominations from both students and faculty and was the unanimous choice among the awards committee,” Turner says. “She has always exhibited great passion toward her students and dedicates much of her to time to their success. Dr. Pate is genuinely deserving of this award.”

UAB annually recognizes full-time faculty members who have demonstrated exceptional accomplishments in teaching. Pate will be recognized at a formal ceremony honoring all recipients at the Hill Student Center. She will receive a cash award and a crystal apple with an engraved base to symbolize her achievement.

Pate received a bachelor’s degree from Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and another from Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia, where she also received her doctorate of optometry. She completed her residency training in Family Practice Optometry at the UAB School of Optometry. She joined the School’s faculty in 2005.

She served as a coursemaster of Clinical Evaluation of the Visual System, the School’s clinical methods course series for 10 years. She is currently the coursemaster of Diseases of the Anterior Segment. Pate is also a clinical attending in the Ocular Disease clinical service at UAB Eye Care, which is the School’s clinical operation.

As director of Residency Programs, she oversees three in-house programs, including Family Practice Optometry, Cornea and Contact Lenses and Pediatric Optometry, in addition to four affiliated programs: Geriatric and Low Vision Rehabilitative Optometry in the Birmingham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Primary Eye Care/Ocular Disease at the Tuscaloosa Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Ocular Disease at Omni Eye Services in Atlanta, and Ocular Disease at VisionAmerica of Birmingham.

Pate has twice been named the Clinical Science Instructor of the year by the UAB chapter of the American Optometric Student Association, and was named the Alabama Optometric Association’s Young O.D. of the Year in 2014.

The formal honoring of faculty for teaching accomplishments with the President’s Award was begun by former UAB President Charles A. McCallum in 1990.