Excellence in Education Award

2026 Winner: Dior Kelley

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Dr. Dior Kelley has emerged as a leader in education, mentoring, and outreach. Dior has ten years of experience teaching at Iowa State University (ISU) where she has developed an undergraduate course in Plant Molecular Biology and graduate courses in Plant Metabolism and Fundamentals in Bioinformatics. Her courses emphasize exposing students at all career stages to primary scientific literature. In 2023 she was recognized for her outstanding teaching contributions with the ISU Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology Teaching Award. Additionally, Dior also has a reputation as an effective and impactful research mentor. To date she has trained 2 postdoctoral scholars, 11 graduate students (MS and PhD), 33 undergraduate students, and 2 K-12 teachers at ISU. Many of her trainees have been supported by external funding including funding from NSF, USDA, DOD, and the ASPB SURF. A majority of her trainees have gone on to pursue further training or careers in plant biology related fields. Throughout her career, Dior has been very active in outreach. In 2021, Dior was awarded an ASPB BLOOME grant to develop a new outreach activity for underserved high school students called “Amazing Roots”. This five-day short course has provided authentic plant biology research exposure to over 60 students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM. She has also developed an outreach program for young learners called “Botany4Tots” which exposes K-3 students to plant biology through hands-on activities that complement their curriculum. During the 2024-2025 academic year she served as the Curator of Art-Science at ISU and mentored two cohorts of undergraduate and graduate students to create science inspired art to promote scientific literacy and cross disciplinary interactions. Dior has also served on the ASPB Education Committee.