APS President Hannah V. Carey and Angela J. Grippo, Chair of the Trainee Advisory Committee, present the first Early Career Professional Service Award to Diane H. Munzenmaier.

The APS Trainee Advisory Committee is pleased to announce that Diane H. Munzenmaier, Assistant Professor of Physiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, has been selected as the first recipient of the APS Early Career Professional Service Award.  The Committee was extremely impressed with her outstanding service contributions at all levels, from K-12 to undergraduate to graduate/medical education.
Munzenmaier has been very active in her community, department, and institution. In addition, she has served nationally with NIH and APS and internationally with the World Congress of Microcirculation.

Locally and regionally, Munzenmaier has served as judge and chair of various K-12 science fairs throughout Wisconsin and the southeastern region of the state. 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 urged greater interaction between physiology faculty members and K-12 teachers and students. To stimulate that interaction, 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 three 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.

Munzenmaier has taught courses in physiology for the general public, as well as at the undergraduate, graduate and medical student levels. 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, Munzenmaier helped organize and redesign a new whole animal course for first-year medical students. Due to her efforts, she was named the director of that course. She also recently volunteered to serve on the Medical College of Wisconsin’s IACUC as part of her ongoing commitment to the use of animals in research.

Nationally, as mentioned above, Munzenmaier is active in the APS, having served on the APS Education Committee and participating in many of the Committee’s service activities. She also has served as a reviewer on two NIH Study Sections.
Internationally, Munzenmaier joined four other colleagues in organizing the eighth World Congress of Microcirculation Meeting. This planning process occurred over a three-year period with the meeting involving over 600 scientists from 30 countries.

Munzenmaier was honored at the Experimental Biology 2008 meeting during the APS Business Meeting. She will also write an article for a future issue of The Physiologist about professional service.

APS congratulates Dr. Munzenmaier on this well-deserved honor.

For information about applying for the 2009 Early Career Professional Service Award, see http://www.the-aps.org/awards/society/earlycareer.htm.