See past winners:
- 2024: Trenette Clark Goings
- 2023: Dr. David J. Weber
- 2022: Frayda S. Bluestein
Bob Goldstein
James L. Peacock III Distinguished Professor of Biology and Adjunct Professor of Art, College of Arts and Sciences
Bob Goldstein, an accomplished scientist and educator who is known worldwide for his outstanding research on animal development, is the 2025 recipient of the Edward Kidder Graham Faculty Service Award. Specifically, his work focuses on how cells move and change as they develop. In North Carolina, he has used the tools of his work to bring the excitement of science to thousands of elementary age students.
Goldstein uses sophisticated microscopy to produce stunning images of cells. The equipment ordinarily used for his work is expensive and typically only found at large research universities. However, he has used a do-it-yourself method for building an inexpensive microscope with little more than common hardware-store materials and a smartphone. Goldstein now runs workshops for teachers at under-resourced public elementary schools all over the state on how to build DIY microscopes. At these workshops, teachers assemble microscopes for their school to keep, and they brainstorm ways to use the microscopes to spark students’ interest and meet curriculum needs. These workshops have resulted in more than 1000 microscopes being built.
At scientific conferences, Goldstein has demonstrated how to replicate the workshops, and those who have learned from him have now hosted workshops in Kentucky, California, Connecticut, El Salvador and in areas of Guatemala with primarily indigenous populations.
Begun as a labor of love, the project now has funding from the National Science Foundation for materials, but Professor Goldstein continues to cover the travel costs personally, and he has offered to visit any public elementary school in North Carolina where more than 75 percent of the students receive free or reduced-cost lunch.
Goldstein’s work exemplifies the exhortation of Edward Kidder Graham “to make the campus co-extensive with the boundaries of the State.”
