As Director of Behavioral Sciences for the UT Southwestern Moncrief Cancer Institute and Professor of Psychiatry, Laura Howe-Martin, Ph.D., has a full plate of responsibilities. She savors every morsel – but teaching most of all.

“Around here, we all have to be and to do a little bit of everything, which is great,” said Dr. Howe-Martin, who is also a member of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute. “I love what I do, and I stay here because I get to teach.”

When she learned she had been named as a Regents’ Outstanding Teacher Award (ROTA) winner by the UT System Board of Regents – the highest honor for an educator – she said she was “over the moon.”

“Of all the really important career moments in my life, this is in the top three. This is fabulous,” she said.

Dr. Howe-Martin was among 12 UT System educators chosen to receive a 2024 ROTA. With her selection, 58 UTSW faculty members have received this honor to date. The recipients, recognized for their innovative instruction and outstanding classroom performance, each receive a medallion and $25,000 in appreciation of their positive impact on students and their institutions. The ROTA program was established in 2008.

“Dr. Howe-Martin’s dedication to nurturing the next generation of physicians and scientists through teaching and mentorship is remarkable. We are delighted that the Board of Regents has recognized her contributions to education with this award,” said W. P. Andrew Lee, M.D., Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Dean of UT Southwestern Medical School.

The granddaughter of a post-World War II teacher in West Texas, Dr. Howe-Martin always respected and admired teachers, but she had no plans to become a teacher or a psychologist. Instead, she initially pursued majors in music education and English. Then she took a course on the psychology of women, which changed everything – her major as well as her life.

She wrote a paper for the class, and the professor returned it with a note in the margin: “We should talk about where you’re going to grad school.”

“That was an ‘aha!’ situation,” Dr. Howe-Martin said. “I had a really good teacher who kicked me in the right direction.”

In a predoctoral internship within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, teachers and mentors guided her as she treated inmates with chronic mental illness and comorbid medical complications. While working on her doctorate in psychology, she was asked to be a teaching fellow for undergraduates.

“That was pretty fabulous,” she said. “I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.”

In the UTSW classroom, Dr. Howe-Martin pursues that passion through teaching core courses, including advanced psychopathology and cultural diversity, through the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology.

As a clinician-educator, she supervises psychiatry residents and psychology trainees, which is a more hands-on form of teaching. She also treats cancer patients with mental health issues.

Teaching keeps you on your toes, she said.

“It makes you continue to learn because you have to. You have to keep up with things you wouldn’t otherwise,” Dr. Howe-Martin said.

She likes seeing the wheels turn in her students’ brains as they put together pieces they may not have realized even went together, or when they recognize that just because something is done one way doesn’t mean it’s the best way and can’t be changed.

So what does this award-winning teacher – who was selected as a UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences' Outstanding Teacher Award recipient in 2016, who uses words like “fun” and “fabulous” to describe what she does – say makes a good teacher?

“You have to talk less,” she said, “which is funny because my students would say I talk all the time.”

An active and energetic classroom is also a must. Without that, “you’ve lost them,” Dr. Howe-Martin said.

And perhaps most of all, “You show up. If you say you’ll be there, be there. Show them you’re just as invested in their learning as you want them to be.”

Do those three things, and your students will do amazing things, she said.

“They will learn and they will study and they will go the extra mile. I’m always impressed by students at UT Southwestern,” Dr. Howe-Martin said. “They bend over backward if they feel you’ve invested in them.”