Skip to content Skip to main navigation Report an accessibility issue

Two Faculty Receive Chancellor’s Honors Award for Research Mentor of the Year

As part of the Chancellor’s Honors Awards, two UT faculty received the University’s top recognition for an undergraduate research mentor. Dr. Erin Darby and Dr. Gregory Stuart were named Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor of the Year for their ongoing work to support undergraduate research at UT.

Dr. Erin Darby is an associate professor of Religious Studies. She graduated with her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Duke University in 2011 and before coming to UT taught for Duke University and Missouri State University. Erin has been the recipient of several travel awards supporting her research in Jordan, Cyprus, and Syria. She has also received a State Department Educational and Cultural Affairs Research Fellowship (2007) and a NEH Fellowship (2016) for her work at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. She is the co-director of the ‘Ayn Gharandal Archaeological Project, excavating a Nabataean-Islamic period site in southern Jordan and leads the UT Dig Jordan study abroad program where undergraduates have the opportunity to work on active archaeological sites. Since 2010 Erin has mentored 83 undergraduate researchers, the majority at the University of Tennessee, through archaeological field research, student research presentations, and honors theses. Many of her UT students have gone on to graduate school and medical school including Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, Oxford, and Cambridge.

Dr. Gregory Stuart is a professor in Psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1998. Stuart has taught at UT since 2008 and is a clinical psychologist who studies the etiology, prevention, and treatment of intimate partner violence and substance misuse. He is editor-in-chief of Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment and a reviewer for 72 other scientific journals. His work has been funded by more than 40 grants equaling more than $25 million. His lab has two current ongoing grants funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) / National Institutes of Health (NIH). One grant is a multi-site, longitudinal research project that examines the temporal relationship between alcohol use, moderating variables, and dating violence in sexual minority young adults. A second multisite study, also funded by NIAAA/NIH, uses ecological momentary assessment to examine the temporal relationship between drinking and dating violence in young adults. He has been recognized for his work mentoring undergraduate researchers, a core part of his mission. He has mentored 100 undergraduate students, the majority of which are from UT. Undergraduate students working with Dr. Stuart have presented approximately 74 times at regional and national psychology conferences. His undergraduates are first author on approximately 33 of these presentations.