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Recipients of the Early Career Professional Service Award
2010: Catharine G. Clark, University of Missouri -
Columbia
2009: Rudy M. Ortiz, Ph.D., University of California,
Merced
2009: Diane H. Munzenmaier, Ph.D., Medical College of Wisconsin
2010
Catharine G. Clark
University of Missouri - Columbia
The APS Trainee Advisory Committee is pleased to
announce that Catharine G. Clark, graduate student in the Department of
Veterinary Biomedical Sciences and Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center,
University of Missouri-Columbia, has been selected as the third recipient of
the APS Early Career Professional Service Award. The Committee was extremely
impressed with Ms. Clark’s record of commitment to public service and
education, especially in the area of working to increase the public’s
awareness of physiology and specifically the brain. They especially
appreciated her involvement with a wide range of ages, from middle school
students through the elderly.
Ms. Clark organized and implemented the first “Brain Awareness Week” within
the University of Missouri neuroscience community and area middle schools.
The event is now in its third year at the university and continues to grow
in popularity and size.
Ms. Clark searched out members of the Science Education Department and
worked with them to understand how students make decisions regarding the
controversial topic of stem cell research. The results from this study have
been accepted for publication and information from this study will be used
to change both the instruction and the assessment in courses on stem cells.
For the elderly, Ms. Clark designed and presented a seminar regarding the
brain and memory entitled: “What to remember about memory loss” at several
retirement homes as well as the public library. The resounding success of
this seminar led her to create an entire series of seminars devoted to
physiological topics of concern to the elderly, such as Alzheimer’s disease
and effects of aging on the brain.
She has also been highly active with the Graduate Student Association and
Graduate Professional Council, where she served as an Ambassador for her
department. She also is an active member in the Health Sciences Graduate
Student Association.
Consequently, the Committee is pleased to award the 2010 Early Career
Professional Service Award to Catharine G. Clark.
2009
Rudy M. Ortiz, Ph.D.
University of California, Merced
The APS Trainee Advisory Committee is pleased to
announce that Rudy M. Ortiz, Assistant Professor of Natural Science at the
University of California, Merced, has been selected as the second recipient
of the APS Early Career Professional Service Award. The Committee was
extremely impressed with his outstanding service contributions at all
levels, from K-12 to undergraduate to graduate to postdoctoral education.
Dr. Ortiz has been very active both inside and outside APS, foremost as a
mentor and trainer and also as a committee, task force, and advisory board
member; session organizer and presenter; and reviewer. He has done service
and outreach on a K-12, undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and new
investigator level.
In the K-12 arena, Dr. Ortiz has been a career panelist for the APS High School
Teacher/Student workshop at Experimental Biology and has served as
Physiologist-in-Residence for the APS Frontiers Science Teaching Forum. In
his own community, he speaks to local grade school classes on health and
nutrition.
Dr.
Ortiz has mentored over 30 undergraduate and graduate students, especially
under-represented minority students, in his own laboratory at Merced and
also at scientific meetings. He has been a meeting mentor to over 10
undergraduate and graduate students at EB and Society for Native Americans
and Chicanos in Science (SACNAS). He sponsors undergraduates to conduct
research in Japan and then acts as their mentor, as well as serving as a
mentor to the Japanese students. He served as a faculty panelist while also
taking three of his own students to the APS Undergraduate Physiology
Explorations Retreat. He has served as a poster judge for the Bruce
Excellence in Undergraduate Research Awards during EB and been the featured
speaker at the NIDDK Minority Travel Fellows luncheon.
Dr.
Ortiz is committed to training the next generation of physiologists. He
served on the Professional Skills Training Project Advisory Board and was
instrumental is helping develop both PST courses to meet the needs of
underrepresented graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. He also
participated as one of the speakers for both courses. He developed and
implemented an abstract writing symposium for the SACNAS annual meeting that
now stands as an integral component of their professional skills training
workshops. While serving as an inaugural member of the Trainee Advisory
Committee, Ortiz organized their first symposium and selected the topic to
be “Transition from Postdoc to Jr. Faculty.” The symposium was so
successful, it was standing room only.
In addition to his service on the Trainee Advisory Committee, Dr. Ortiz is or
has been a member of the Porter Physiology Development Committee, APS
Meetings Task Force, and Comparative & Evolutionary Physiology Section
Steering Committee. Importantly he was one of select number of trainees who
were asked to participate in the 2005 APS Strategic Planning Retreat. He was
also selected to serve on the State of California Legislator’s Task Force on
Childhood Diabetes and Obesity as the University of California, Merced
representative and is a member of the Merced Chapter of the Central
California Regional Obesity Prevention Program.
Dr.
Ortiz serves on many scientific review panels, including several for other
national and state societies. He is the chair of the university’s graduate
program Education Policy Committee and is a member of their Institutional
Animal Care & Use, Life Sciences Curriculum, and faculty search Committees.
 2008
Diane H. Munzenmaier, Ph.D.
Medical College of Wisconsin
Why Do Professional Service Anyway? Do It For You!
The Physiologist 51(5): 180-181, 2008.
Dr. Munzenmaier has served as judge and chair of various K-12 science
fairs throughout Wisconsin. Because of her strong commitment to K-12 through
medical school education, she was appointed to the APS Education Committee.
As a Committee member, she proposed, developed and helped pilot test the
K-12 outreach program, Physiology Understanding Week (PhUn Week). Phun Week
has met with great acclaim and has grown in just 3 years into a program that
is held at locations across the US and its territories and that involves
undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty.
Dr. Munzenmaier has taught physiology for the general public, as well as
undergraduate, graduate and medical students. She has been very involved in
the Summer Program for Undergraduate Research at the Medical College of
Wisconsin. She has served as a judge for the APS David Bruce Awards in
Undergraduate Research and encouraged her department to be a repeat sponsor
of the special APS Undergraduate Poster Session.
Because of her concern with the declining use of animals in teaching medical
students, Dr. Munzenmaier helped organize, redesign and direct a new whole
animal course for 1st-year medical students. She also is a member of the
Medical College of Wisconsin’s IACUC.
Dr. Munzenmaier has served as a reviewer on two NIH Study Sections.
Internationally, Dr. Munzenmaier helped organize the 8th World Congress of
Microcirculation Meeting, which involved over 600 scientists from 30
countries.
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