Chancellor Mike Bishop will present awards for the advancement of women to three at a ceremony on Wednesday, March 23, at noon in Toland Hall on the UCSF Parnassus campus.
This year's recipients are Barbara Gerbert, professor of preventive and restorative dental sciences, Crystal Morris, operations manager in the human resources department, and Lydia Pace, a second-year medical student.
Gerbert is director of the Center for Health Improvement and Prevention Studies. For the past decade, her research has focused on the health and well-being of women. She has conducted studies examining the ways in which health care providers help their patients when domestic violence is present. Gerbert is currently principal investigator of a study to identify ways to reduce preventable risk behaviors of smoking, drinking and drug use in pregnant women. She also is investigating ways to help health care providers identify, address and reduce domestic violence in the lives of pregnant women.
Gerbert was a member of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on the Status of Women (CACSW) for 12 years, and chaired several of its subcommittees, including the Faculty Women Leadership Subcommittee. Recently, she led a project which chronicled the history of CACSW, and was lead author of the subsequent report.
In 2002 and 2003, Gerbert was invited to provide testimony to a committee of the California State Senate about progress made by the University of California to reduce gender disparity in faculty hiring, and was a member of the UC President's Summit on Faculty Gender Equity. She served on the Academic Senate's Committee on Academic Personnel for three years.
As operations manager in the Temporary Employment Program (TEP), Morris does her part to assure that UCSF offers opportunities for qualified women to become employees at UCSF. She and her staff conduct outreach to a variety of community agencies to recruit potential employees. Many temporary employees have gone on to career or casual positions at UCSF.
Morris also chaired a committee that developed and wrote UCSF's flexible time policy, and is involved in three programs that help women gain entry into the UCSF workforce with training, mentoring and sponsoring. In 1998, she co-designed the Community Outreach Internship Program (COIP) which is a partnership between TEP and the Florence Crittenton Services, a social services agency mainly for girls in crisis. Since then, of the 58 young women who have received internships at UCSF, 35 remain employed in San Francisco and 28 are building careers at UCSF.
Morris also was involved in the Community Employment in Bioscience program, a partnership of Environmental Health & Safety, and the Young Community Developers. This program provides training in biotechnology research for individuals, especially women, in the city's Bayview/Hunters Point and other underserved communities. Morris is also an advisor to Employer Days, an outreach program through the Jewish Vocational Center, the Mission Hiring Hall, Family School and Arriba Juntos.
Pace is a coordinator of Medical Students for Choice (MSFC). Last year, she helped organize an event for Roe v. Wade week; this year she is planning a campuswide week to increase awareness of critical issues in women's reproductive health. Pace attended the MSFC national conference, and represented medical students in the March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC. In 2004, she helped organize an event co-sponsored by MSFC and the Women's Health Interest Group, a registered campus organization, titled "What's at Stake in 2004? Women and the Presidential Election."
Pace also organized a Global Action AIDS Week at UCSF last spring, and helped coordinate the annual AIDS forum in the fall. Over the summer Ms. Pace engaged in research examining Peruvian doctors' training in women's reproductive health. Finally, she is a co-coordinator for this quarter's Reproductive Choices elective.
