Home Members Only Search About Us Store FASEB Member Directory

 the-aps.org>awards >society awards

advertising
awards
careers and mentoring
chapters
committees
education
meetings
membership
news archives
press room
public affairs
publications
sections and groups
sites of interest
trainees

9560 rockville pike, bethesda, MD 20814-3991
 

 


Recipients of the Early Career Professional Service Award
 

2009
Rudy M. Ortiz, Ph.D.

University of California, Merced

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.

Back to Early Career Award description