UCSF Faculty Awarded 2016 Honors for Distinction in Teaching, Mentoring

Four UC San Francisco faculty members were honored with the Academic Senate’s 2016 Distinction In Teaching and Distinction In Mentoring Awards.

The recipients of the Academic Senate Distinction In Teaching Awards and the Distinction In Mentoring Awards were honored at the Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty Awards ceremony on Thursday, June 2, which was co-hosted by the Office of Academic Affairs and Faculty Development and Advancement.

To select each year’s recipients the Academic Senate Committee on Academic Personnel designates a selection committee comprised of faculty and student representatives from all four schools. The associate deans from each of the four professional schools assign student representatives.

“This really truly is an honor for these four faculty members to be distinguished in their work,” said Jeff Lotz, PhD, who serves as the chair of the Committee on Academic Personnel.

The Distinction In Teaching Award has been given annually since 1958. “It is meant to distinguish those faculty whose excellence in teaching goes beyond what is already an excellent and high bar that the University has for all of its faculty,” Lotz said.

The 2016 Academic Senate Distinction in Teaching Award for faculty at UCSF five years or fewer went to Jennifer Babik, MD, PhD, an assistant clinical professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases.

“I am really honored to win this award,” Babik said.

In her acceptance speech she thanked all of her colleagues and trainees who create an atmosphere on intellectual curiosity, the administration at UCSF, and her wife, who also is a teacher.

The 2016 Academic Senate Distinction in Teaching Award for faculty at UCSF more than five years went to Janet Koo Shim, PhD, an associate professor in Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

“I am just so glad to be at an institution that really supports this kind of work,” Shim said. “We often talk about invisible labor that goes into teaching and mentoring, but it also comes with a tremendous amount of joy.”

Along with thanks for her previous mentors and teachers at UCSF, her students, and her colleagues and friends at the University, Shim thanked her husband, who matched to a residency program at UCSF two decades ago. Shim came to UCSF with her husband, graduated from the sociology program and later became a teacher.

She also thanked her late mother, who Shim said “was her the first teacher in my life and probably the most important one.”

The Distinction In Mentoring Award has been given annually since 2008. “It is meant to acknowledge those faculty who are outstanding and go above and beyond mentoring their faculty peers here at UCSF and beyond,” Lotz said.

The 2016 recipient of the Academic Senate Distinction In Mentoring Award for faculty at the associate rank was Sheri Weiser, MD, MA, MPH, an associate professor in residence in the Division of HIV, ID and Global Medicine.

“When one receives a mentoring award, one has learned to be a mentor from the amazing mentors that one has been blessed with working,” Weiser said. “And at UCSF, I have been blessed with many.”

The 2016 recipient of the Academic Senate Distinction In Mentoring Award for faculty at the rank of full professor is Susan Kegeles, PhD, a co-director of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies and a professor in the Division of Prevention Sciences.

“I very much appreciate being given this honor this recognition for my mentoring,” Kegeles said. “Mentoring is one of the most gratifying things that I have ever done in my career, and I would say it is one of the most gratifying things I do in my life.”

She acknowledged her lifelong mentor, her father, who would have been 91 on the day of the awards ceremony, as well as her husband and son.

“I want to end by acknowledging all of the awardees today for their commitment and excellence,” Lotz said at the closing of the ceremony. “I think they serve as a great role model for the rest of us.”

The past recipients for the Distinction In Mentoring Award and the Distinction In Teaching Award can be found at the Academic Senate’s website.

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