The CEU Teaching Excellence Award recognizes CEU faculty members who promote high standards of teaching in alignment with the university’s mission and institutional ambitions. Established by the CEU Senate in 2014, this award not only underscores CEU's long-standing commitment to excellence in teaching but also provides an opportunity for faculty, students, and alumni to acknowledge teaching at CEU that has had a special impact on their academic work and lives.
Aistara is an accomplished environmental anthropologist, renowned for her program-level leadership and her innovative, multi-layered, and student-centered teaching that combines structure with experience and experimentation. Her nominators note that Aistara’s teaching evokes a “sense of intrigue and curiosity that inspires learning,” and that “her classes motivate students to build critical thinking skills around complex and relevant environmental questions through a process of independent and experiential discovery.”