Audra Rankin receives 2026 Faculty Award for Global Excellence

Three women stand together smiling; the woman in the center holds a glass award. They are in front of a blue University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill banner inside a well-lit building. — Dr. Ashley Leak Bryant, Dr. Audra Rankin
and Dean Valerie Howard

UNC School of Nursing Associate Professor Audra Noble Rankin, DNP, APRN, CPNP, has received a 2026 Faculty Award for Global Excellence, given each year to three UNC faculty members whose contributions advance the University’s “unwavering commitment to excellence as one of the world’s great research universities.”

Rankin is director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice program, as well as associate faculty director of the Center for the Business of Health at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

“With lux, libertas — light and liberty — as its founding principles, the University has charted a bold course of leading change to improve society and to help solve the world’s greatest problems,” said Vice Provost for Global Affairs and Chief Global Officer Barbara Stephenson. “At this great research university, we are competitive; committed to excellence. These three awardees have set quite the example for us.”

According to Stephenson, Rankin is “creative” and “forward-looking.”

A man in a suit holding a glass award shakes hands with a woman in a black dress on stage, while another woman in a black suit stands nearby, smiling. Blue and white balloons and flowers decorate the background.

For her “Global and Interprofessional Approaches to Solve Complex Cases” course, Rankin has developed a curriculum that prepares students to think beyond clinical care and consider regional, national and global health systems. The course examines how policy, diplomacy and care shape health outcomes in North Carolina, the U.S. and the world.

Originally from Tarboro, North Carolina, Rankin is the first faculty member to receive an award for global excellence who, also, was once an undergraduate student at Carolina. Several years later, she returned to her alma mater to help define how Carolina prepares nursing students, and all students, for the world’s modern workforce.