UT Tyler Faculty Member Honored for Commitment to Student Success

Office of Marketing and Communications

October 3, 2022

Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303

TYLER, Texas (October 3, 2022) – The University of Texas at Tyler announced that Ashley Dalby, M.S., has been recognized as one of the best educators within the UT System. 

Dalby, a UT Tyler lecturer in health and kinesiology, earned the 2022 UT System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award and will receive $25,000 in recognition of extraordinary classroom performance, innovation and commitment to student success through teaching. 

Established in 2008, the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards reinforces the Board’s commitment to ensuring that University of Texas institutions are places of intellectual exploration and discovery, educational excellence and unparalleled opportunity.

“The UT System Board of Regents is honored to recognize top educators annually for their extraordinary dedication to the students they are equipping to be our future leaders,” Board of Regents Chairman Kevin P. Eltife said.

A UT Tyler alum, Dalby will be recognized with 13 other awardees in a virtual ceremony later this fall in Austin.

Dalby joined UT Tyler’s School of Health Professions as a lecturer for the Department of Kinesiology in 2019. She also serves as coordinator for the UT Tyler Lifespan Wellness Research Center. An American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) certified exercise physiologist and cancer exercise trainer, she applies her dedication and expertise in exercise science toward teaching and research as well as student and community engagement.

She was instrumental in establishing a FitSteps for Life® (FSFL) exercise location on the UT Tyler main campus. As UT Tyler’s founding FSFL supervisor, Dalby guides both graduate and undergraduate students in implementing specialized exercise prescriptions for community members with cancer and other chronic illnesses. 

As a faculty adviser, she led a team of undergraduate kinesiology students to UT Tyler’s first-ever state victory at this year’s Texas ACSM Conference “Student Bowl” competition, in which collegiate teams answer Jeopardy-type questions about exercise science. 

Dalby holds a Master of Science degree in kinesiology from UT Tyler and is currently pursuing a UT Tyler Master of Science degree in biology.

Nominees undergo a series of rigorous evaluations by students, peer faculty and external reviewers. The review panels consider a range of activities and criteria in their evaluations of a candidate's teaching performance, including classroom expertise, curricula quality and student learning outcomes.

With a mission to improve educational and healthcare outcomes for East Texas and beyond, UT Tyler offers more than 80 undergraduate and graduate programs to 10,000 students. UT Tyler recently merged with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (now known as UT Tyler Health Science Center). Through its alignment with UT Tyler Health Science Center (HSC) and UT Health East Texas, UT Tyler has unified these entities to serve Texas with quality education, cutting-edge research and excellent patient care. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News & World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.