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Major Awards Go to Outstanding Teachers
Outstanding teachers in each school at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have been selected to receive awards.
McGovern Awards
Students choose the John P. McGovern Outstanding Teacher Award winners for stimulating curiosity, promoting professional development and contributing to students’ abilities to think creatively. The awards are made possible by an endowment from the McGovern Foundation. John P. McGovern, M.D., is founder of the McGovern Allergy Clinic and holds faculty appointments at the health science center.
Amy Calvin, Ph.D., assistant professor of acute and continuing care in the adult health division, received the School of Nursing’s McGovern Award. The Department of Acute and Continuing Care prepares nursing students to manage the care of acutely ill adults.
Calvin, who joined the nursing school faculty in 2001, also is a palliative care nurse researcher at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital. She received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and her doctoral degree from UT Austin.
Gilbert J. Coté, Ph.D., associate professor of endocrinology and hormonal disorders at the UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, received the McGovern Award at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS). Coté teaches human and molecular genetics. His research interests include a variety of molecular biology techniques. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and 20 book chapters.
“His love for graduate education is reflected in his record as advisor or member of advisory/supervisory committees for 30 students,” said GSBS Dean George Stancel, Ph.D.
Octavio Pinell, M.D., professor and director of undergraduate education in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, is the Medical School’s recipient of the McGovern Award, his fifth since joining the faculty in 1994. His achievements include more than 50 awards, mostly in the area of teaching.
“In class, I attempt to activate the students’ brains – the rest is up to my students,” he said. “I try to impart my knowledge, but basically I give them my energy and enthusiasm.”
Pinell received his medical degree from the Universidad Nacional de Nicaragua.
Susan Tortolero, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology, received the School of Public Health’s McGovern Award. “Thank you, students, for providing me the opportunity to teach you. I have learned just as much from you,” she said at commencement exercises.
She is principal investigator for a $2.5 million grant for the Texas Prevention Research Center, which focuses on lifestyle behaviors started during youth that can cause serious health problems during adulthood.
Tortolero received her doctoral degree in epidemiology from the UT School of Public Health.
At the Dental Branch Donna P. Warren, assistant professor of dental hygiene, received the McGovern Award. A registered dental hygienist, Warren has taught at the Dental Branch since 1991.
Previously she served as director of the Ivanhoe Institute of Health Careers and as a clinical assistant professor of dental ecology and dental hygiene at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Warren is particularly interested in patterns of fluoride use and the effects of fluoride on restorative materials.
The School of Health Information Sciences McGovern Award went to Willy Wriggers, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of the Structural Bioinformatics Program. He also has a faculty appointment at GSBS.
In 2003 Wriggers received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Computational and Evolutionary Molecular Biology. He pioneered the use of modern information processing techniques to combine data from a variety of sources to create 3-D images and structural maps of proteins. Detailed analysis helps to identify targets for drug design.
Freeman Awards
At the Dental Branch and Medical School, students choose faculty members for the John H. Freeman Outstanding Teacher Award based on enthusiasm and teaching skills, personal interest in students’ problems and educational goals, and a conveyance of high standards. The awards are made possible by a gift from the late John H. Freeman, a lawyer, original member of the Texas Medical Center Board of Directors and major supporter of the health science center.
The Dental Branch’s Freeman Award went to Gary N. Frey, D.D.S., assistant professor
of restorative dentistry and biomaterials. A graduate of the Dental Branch, Frey has more than 20 years of clinical dental practice, with 10 of those concentrated in a crown and bridge laboratory. He received the Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2000-2002.
For the second time in three years, Kent Heck, M.D., clinical assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, received the Medical School’s Freeman Award.
Heck previously was director of the second-year pathology course. He now is director of autopsy service at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital and a neuropathologist in Gulf Coast Pathology Associates.
He received his medical degree from Tulane University. He received the Residents’ Faculty Teaching Award in 1994 and the Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award five times.
Brooks Award
The Benjy F. Brooks, M.D., Teaching Award is presented by Medical School alumni to recognize individuals who complement and enhance the education program by serving as role models for students. Brooks was the first board-certified woman pediatric surgeon in the U.S. and joined the school’s faculty in 1973. Until her death in 1998, she remained active in the life of the school.
Francisco Fuentes, M.D., professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, received the award. Director of the Cardiology Fellowship Program, he holds the Theodore R. and Maureen O’Driscoll Levy Endowed Professorship in Cardiology Research. His annual preventive cardiology conference has benefited health professionals and the general public over the past decade.
Fuentes has received the Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award numerous times. In 2000 he served as president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology. In 2002 he received a gold medal of the Murcia Regional Government from the President of Spain. A native of Spain, he received his medical degree from the University of Valencia.
His nominator for the award said, “Those who have worked with Dr. Fuentes know that he is a gentle, caring and level-headed individual who always puts his patients and students first. He is a true gentleman and a credit to our profession and our school.”
DuPont Award
Selection for the Herbert L. and Margaret W. DuPont Master Clinical Teaching Award at the Medical School is coordinated by a faculty committee with student and resident representatives. Herbert DuPont, M.D., is the Mary W. Kelsey Professor in the Medical Sciences and director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the School of Public Health, as well as chief of internal medicine at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital. Margaret W. “Peggy” DuPont provides administrative oversight to travel health clinics in Mexico where health science center faculty carry out research.
This year’s DuPont recipient, Philip Orlander, M.D., is professor and director, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism in the Department of Internal Medicine. He is a multiple recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Award, as well as numerous other teaching awards and honors.
More than 10 years ago, Orlander and his colleagues started working with the standardized patient concept and applying it to the Medical School curriculum. “Standardized patients are people who are taught to mimic disease. Students take their history and sometimes have to give these patients bad news about their diagnosis,” he explained. A standardized patient exam will be incorporated into the national board exam for the first time this year.
Orlander is chair of the Curriculum Committee for medical students. For the last two years, he has been a member of the Health and Human Spirit group. Orlander received his medical degree from Free University of Brussels, Belgium.
Humanism in Medicine Award
The Humanism in Medicine Award, sponsored by the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, honors faculty who are exemplary in their compassion and sensitivity in the delivery of care to patients and their families, who administer scientifically excellent clinical care, and who serve as role models to students.
Virginia A. Moyer, M.D., professor of pediatrics and internal medicine at the Medical School, received the 2004 award. She is associate director of the Center for Clinical Research and Evidence-Based Medicine and director of community and general pediatrics at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital. She is adjunct associate professor of management and policy sciences at the School of Public Health.
“I try to teach students how to find out what’s going on with their patients – that beyond the signs and symptoms, there’s a way to elicit information that is nonthreatening and engenders trust so that the patient feels comfortable asking questions and we can develop a plan that the patient is likely to follow,” she said.
Moyer received her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine and a master of public health degree from the UT School of Public Health. She has received the Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award and was voted outstanding teacher in pediatrics multiple times.
Regional Campuses
John R. Herbold, D.V.M., Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology, was named outstanding teacher at the School of Public Health (SPH) San Antonio campus. He is associate director of UT’s Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness in Houston, where he teaches a graduate course in bioterrorism and disaster preparedness.
He joined the faculty in 1993 after 27 years of service in the U.S. Air Force. He provides technical assistance to Region 8 of the Texas Department of Health, and is cochair of the Texas Strategic Planning Partnership Working Group to Ensure Essential Public Health Services.
Zuber D. Mulla, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology, received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the students of the SPH El Paso Regional Campus. He joined the faculty in 2002 after working as an epidemiologist for seven years in Florida.
“I am sure that one reason that I won this award is because I have spiced up my lectures – whether in my infectious disease epidemiology class or epidemiologic research methods class – with presentations on interesting outbreaks from my Florida days, including the anthrax attack in the fall of 2001,” Mulla said.
Martha Schecter, J.D., instructor, received the teaching award at the SPH Dallas campus. She teaches public health law and works with the Legal Aid Society of North Texas. Licensed in Texas, Kentucky, New York and the District of Columbia, she also teaches at the State University of New York Empire State College and is the former director of the Legal Aid Society of Broome County, N.Y.
She received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, her law degree at the University of Louisville and a master’s in law at Columbia University.
Martha Soledad Vela Acosta, Ph.D., M.D., assistant professor of environmental and occupational health, was named outstanding teacher at the SPH Brownsville campus. She is coinvestigator at the Hispanic Health Research Center in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Vela Acosta is committed to achieving a safer work environment for migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States and enhancing occupational health and safety education for Latino working youth in Texas.
She received her M.D. from the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, and her Ph.D. from Colorado State University.