Dr. Holly Huye, professor in the School of Kinesiology and Nutrition at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM), has been announced as the recipient of the 2025 Award for Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Service Learning in Higher Education Research by the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning in Higher Education. The award is given to an individual who has demonstrated excellence in community-engaged research and/or scholarship on the teaching and learning of service-learning.
Over the past decade, Huye has formed strong relationships with leaders of community-based organizations and health researchers across Mississippi to ensure that community partner perspectives and a community-based approach are included in efforts to address the obesity epidemic as well as chronic diseases within our state.
“Dr. Huye has worked tirelessly for many years to promote health equity and to advocate for community involvement in developing health interventions,” said Christy Kayser, director of USM’s Center for Community Engagement. “This award recognizes not just her contributions to health research, but her impact on other health researchers and undergraduate students as well.”
Since 2009, Huye has worked in the Lower Mississippi Delta as a project manager and co-investigator on a USDA Agricultural Research Service project for the Delta Obesity Prevention Research Unit and more recently, as a principal investigator on an Office of Minority Health project working with Head Start parents and their children to reduce preschool obesity. Since 2017, she has served with the Mississippi Center for Clinical and Translational Research (MCCTR) Community-Engaged Research Summer Institute to train junior researchers in design and implementation of community-engaged studies. She is currently serving as co-director for the MCCTR Community Engagement and Outreach Core at Southern Miss.
Huye also co-leads the Community Engagement and Health Equity Practice Unit of the Southeast Center for Health Achievement and Growth in Equity, one of five research hubs across the United States to promote health equity and reduce the burden of disease in underserved populations. The Hub, coordinated through the University of Mississippi Medical Center and funded by the National Institute for Health, harnesses the expertise of nationally recognized scholars to tailor support services and provide contextual guidance to build Community-Led, Health Equity Structural Interventions’ research capacity and develop sustainable interventional models.
“Throughout her career, Dr. Huye has demonstrated an unwavering dedication to addressing obesity and cardiometabolic-related diseases in Mississippi through innovative community engagement and outreach research methods. This award highlights the significant impact of her work both within the community and among our students,” said Dr. Trent Gould, dean of the College of Education and Human Sciences at Southern Miss. “We are incredibly proud of Dr. Huye, her research team and their commitment to improving public health outcomes in Mississippi.”
As a service-learning practitioner, Huye also publishes research on how service-learning activities impact students in her nutrition courses. Her scholarship has demonstrated the impacts of service-learning participation and reflection on students’ cultural competency and awareness of personal values, course content and social issues.
Huye will be recognized during the Gulf-South Summit’s annual meeting in March. The mission of the Gulf-South Summit is to promote networking among practitioners, research, ethical practices, reciprocal campus-community partnerships, sustainable programs and a culture of engagement and public awareness through service-learning and other forms of civic engagemen