Two U of A faculty inducted into Franke Academy of Scholars
Every year, the W.A. Franke Honors College accepts two exceptional University of Arizona faculty members into the Franke Academy of Scholars for Teaching Excellence. The 2026 selected scholars are Dr. Cindy Rankin, Associate Professor and Educator Scholar in the Physiology department at the College of Medicine - Tucson, and Dr. Yancy Shirley, Professor in the Astronomy department at the College of Science and an Astronomer at Steward Observatory.
Dr. Rankin and Dr. Shirley were reviewed by a committee appointed by Franke Dean John Pollard, and chosen for the Academy of Scholars based on their teaching, mentorship to students, and the strength of their research or creative activity. For their outstanding service within the classroom, they will each receive an award of $10,000 to be used to advance their teaching, research, and/or mentoring support.
Meet the 2026 Scholars
Cindy Rankin
Lucinda (Cindy) Rankin, PhD. is an Associate Professor and Educator Scholar in the Physiology department at the College of Medicine - Tucson. For the past 40+ years, Dr. Rankin has been immersed in multiple facets across University of Arizona. Driven by the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement to enable students and faculty to thrive, she works to explore and optimize effective teaching at the course, curriculum, and university levels, and she has developed and taught more than 20 different courses for gen-ed freshmen, physiology undergraduates, and interdisciplinary graduate and medical students. She has also served as a research mentor for numerous honors and graduate students, gathering multiple teaching awards along the way.
Dr. Rankin began her engagement with Honors students in 1993 and the Honors college in 2003, and that engagement continues to evolve along 5 distinct but interrelated pathways: working with individual students, developing honors specific courses, implementing a Physiology honors program, establishing/deepening a collaboration between Physiology and the W.A. Franke Honors College, and sharing/learning about the Honors Experience across units and institutions. All five approaches help each student find and optimize their unique path through the UA, explore the full breadth of on- and off-campus opportunities, establish a campus-wide network of support to enhance both academic and extracurricular activities, graduate with Honors, and successfully progress beyond into their careers.
Yancy Shirley
Dr. Yancy Shirley is a Professor in the Astronomy department at the College of Science and an Astronomer at Steward Observatory. Dr. Shirley's research focuses on studies of star formation, astrochemistry, and astrobiology using radio and infrared imaging and spectroscopy. He works on a variety of projects studying the incipient phases of low-mass and high-mass star formation, the chemical evolution of those regions (i.e. through molecular deuterium fractionation and the evolution of complex organic molecules), and the connection between dense molecular gas and global star formation rate relationships in galaxies.
Over the past 17 years at the University of Arizona, he has mentored 40 graduate and undergraduate students in individual projects and over 75 undergraduate students in large group projects. This includes 15 completed Honors Theses, with 3 in progress, and 5 published undergraduate first-author articles in refereed scientific journals. He has developed several large, multi-year group research projects where undergraduates are involved in every stage of the research process, from proposing to use telescopes, observing with the telescope, reducing and analyzing data, and writing up and presenting the results in posters, talks, and papers.