Four women who have worked to improve the lives of women have been selected to receive the Chancellor’s Award for the Advancement of Women.

Chancellor Mike Bishop will present the awards at a ceremony on Monday, March 13, at noon in Toland Hall.

The awards committee, chaired by Marylin Dodd, acting dean of the School of Nursing, recommended that Donna Ferriero, MD, chief of child neurology; Tracy Weitz, manager of UCSF’s National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health; and graduate students Melanie Egorin and Tania Gonzalez receive the awards.

Ferriero, a professor in residence of neurology and pediatrics, is a successful clinician, teacher and scientist. But it’s her dedication to helping women succeed in science that prompted multiple nominations for this award. During her 11 years on the faculty at UCSF, Ferriero has mentored many female and male students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty.

As part of her efforts, Ferriero organized a networking group for women in the clinical basic neurosciences. She also has served on a number of important committees, such as the Dean’s delegate to the AAMC Women in Medicine Committee, chair of the Academic Senate Equal Opportunity Committee and the American Medical Women’s Association.

Weitz, who has worked at UCSF past eight years at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center, Mount Zion and Parnassus, played a pivotal role in 1996 in responding to a request for proposals that resulted in UCSF’s designation as a Center of Excellence (COE) in women’s health. As center manager, she promotes comprehensive clinical care for women, multidisciplinary research, and partnerships with women’s health advocacy groups with the goal of improving the health of women.

Weitz also developed the COE’s Women’s Health Internship Program, which provides opportunities to young women from diverse backgrounds who want to learn more about women’s health and contribute to the health of their community. As a mentor in this program, Weitz encourages interns to explore controversial issues and to consider how their work will impact the broadest number of women. Interns have gone on to pursue higher education in schools of medicine and public health, to work in the community and at UCSF, according to nomination letters.

Graduate students Egorin and Gonzalez have both mentored students at UCSF. A graduate student in sociology, Egorin has worked with the Women in Life Sciences (WILS) peer mentoring program and the Doctoral Forum in the School of Nursing, which she helped organize. Her research focuses on women with AIDS, with an emphasis on their reproductive options, their access to care and the health care providers who treat them. Her master’s thesis examined communication between adolescents and their mothers about HIV and condom use. Recently, she was asked to speak at the American Sociological Association’s national conference.

Gonzalez, a graduate student in the department of biochemistry, worked on the Women Leaders in Science, a program developed to provide inspiration and mentoring for young women scientists at UCSF and to encourage the recognition of the scientific contributions of leading women scientists. She has also organized discussion groups about recruitment of women and other issues.

As a member of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women, Gonzalez chaired the Student and Postdoctoral Fellow Leadership and Coalition Building Subcommittee, and has mentored students through the UCSF Summer Research Training Program, WILS, the Mission Science Center and Take Our Daughters to Work Day.

Links:

Chancellor Honors Advocates for Women (1999 winners)

1998 Winners

Ferriero Advocate for Designing Brain-Saving Drugs Specifically for Children

Source: Lisa Cisneros, Newsbreak Editor