HPU Chemistry Professor Receives Ruth Ridenhour Scholarly and Professional Achievement Award

HIGH POINT, N.C., May 7, 2026 – High Point University recently presented The Ruth Ridenhour Scholarly and Professional Achievement Award to Dr. Heather Miller, associate professor of chemistry. The annual award recognizes a full-time faculty member with at least three years of employment at HPU for exceptional contributions to his or her professional discipline.

Since joining HPU’s Wanek School of Natural Sciences in 2012, Miller has produced an impressive record of scholarship and research. She exemplifies everything the award was created to honor: exceptional scholarly achievement, deeply tied to teaching and carried out with generosity and support for the next generation of scientists.

“It is truly an honor to be recognized for this scholarly achievement award considering all of the innovative research and creative works happening on our campus,” Miller said. “While the Ridenhour is awarded to one faculty member per year, it is a team effort to create a body of work like ours. None of this research would be possible without my collaborators and lab members. Mentoring undergraduates in research is a passion of mine, and I am so fortunate to have a career where I help train the next generation of scientists.”

During the award presentation, HPU Provost Daniel Erb said Miller arrived at HPU with a clear vision: that great science and great teaching are not separate pursuits. Over the past 14 years, she has proven that conviction in remarkable ways, he said.

Miller’s research sits at the intersection of molecular biology and antibiotic resistance, one of medicine’s most urgent challenges, Erb said. Her laboratory investigates how novel small molecules can disarm methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA, without killing the bacteria outright. It is a transformative strategy that leading scholars at Vanderbilt University have called “paradigm-shifting” in addressing the global antimicrobial resistance crisis.

“This work resulted in HPU’s very first patent, a patent for small-molecule adjuvants that help existing antibiotics defeat resistant bacterial strains,” Erb said. “The impact of that research has been recognized far beyond our campus. Dr. Miller has secured, solely and as a co-investigator, over $1 million in total external funding, including two highly competitive National Institutes of Health Academic Research Enhancement Awards, the first NIH grants of their kind in HPU’s history.”

In 2023, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation named Miller a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, one of only eight faculty in the nation to receive that honor. The award is reserved for those faculty members who have built an outstanding independent body of scholarship while remaining deeply committed to undergraduate education.

More than two dozen of Miller’s publications, spanning peer-reviewed journals, include more than 25 undergraduate students as co-authors. Students who were curious when they entered her lab left as scientists. More than 90% of students who worked in her lab have gone on to graduate or professional programs.

HPU alumna Robin Stempel, a biochemistry major from Bermuda, was named a Rhodes Scholar finalist in 2024 after working closely with Miller. Rhodes Scholarships are highly prestigious, post-graduate scholarships and considered the world’s oldest international fellowship awards.

Miller’s contributions to science extend globally as well. The “Molecular Biology Techniques” laboratory manual she co-authored is now in its fifth edition and has been adopted by nearly 60 universities across seven countries.