News and information (appointments, searches, events, awards, etc.) pertaining to the School of Medicine are featured in SOM e-NEWS in abstract form and are linked to the web for more detailed information. SOM e-NEWS is currently published bimonthly. If you have information you would like published in this newsletter, please contact Denise Gonzalez, in our office via email (djgonzal@utmb.edu) or by fax (29598). Please let us know your ideas and suggestions for this communication format. You may send your comments via email to Linda Phillips (lphillip@utmb.edu).

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1. UPCOMING EVENTS

NEW FACULTY ORIENTATION LUNCHEONS

A series of orientation luncheons have been scheduled to introduce new faculty to UTMB. The luncheons are scheduled as follows and will be held from noon to 1:00 PM, Caduceus Room, 6^th Floor of Administration Building:

March 15^th Kathy Shingleton, Chief Human Resources Officer
Topic: Overview of Human Resources
Building UTMB’s Success Through People

Jeffery R. Davis, M. D., Steward, Preventive, Occupational & Environmental Medicine

Topic: Application of the Prevention Model to a University Environment

Mike Shriner, Steward, Facilities Operations and Management
Topic: Campus Master Plan
Overview of future improvements for the University

March 22^nd                Christine A. Stroup-Benham, Ph.D., Director, Office
            of Institutional Analysis
            Topic: UTMB’S Office of Institutional Analysis

Discussion of history; services offered: Strategic Planning/Decision support; Official purveyor of UTMB’S “numbers”; Reporting

            Rick McFee, Executive Director, Logistics-Infrastructure
            Leadership
            Topic: Logistical Services at UTMB

           Ralph Farr, Information Services Leader
           Topic: Overview of Information Services
           To provide the current organization structure; services
           provided and key contacts

March 26^th                Edward Postlethwait, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Internal
           Medicine
           Topic: The Environmental Toxicology Laboratory Core
           Facility

Dr. Postlethwait will discuss the institutional core facility, supported by the Sealy Center for Environmental Health and Medicine.

                                    Richard Hodge, Ph.D., Sealy Center for Molecular
            Science
            Topic: Synthetic Organic Chemistry Core Lab

Dr. Hodge will discuss specialization of synthesis of modified oligonucleotides, nucleosides and small organic compounds and many other types of organic synthesis and purification procedures available to all UTMB researchers which may not be readily attainable elsewhere.

April 3^rd Susan H. Coulter, Vice President for University
Advancement

April 12^th Charles H. Christiansen, Ed.D., Dean, School of Allied
Health Sciences

Cary W. Cooper, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School of
Biomedical Sciences

Pamela Watson, R.N., Sc.D., Dean, School of Nursing

April 19^th Presentations regarding Faculty Governance

April 30^th John D. Stobo, M.D., presentation regarding President's
Council

VISIT OF EMMA J. STOKES, PH.D

Dr. Emma Stokes, Senior Organization Development Consultant, Johns Hopkins University, is scheduled to visit our campus on March 18-21, 2002. Dr. Stokes is visiting as a consultant to all schools regarding faculty development, including mentoring and gender or minority issues.

DEPARTMENTAL REVIEW

--Family Medicine: March 24-26, 2002

MATCH WEEK - Monday, March 18-March 21, 2002

--Match Day Ceremony - Thursday, March 21^st at 11:00 AM

UTMB FACULTY WOMEN'S CLUB EVENTS

-- The Lunch Bunch - Thursday, March 21^st at Noon, Galveston Yacht Club. Please contact Kelly Chambers for more information or reservations, 621-4796 or email ednkelly@juno.com.

--Book Club - Thursday, March 21^st, 7:00 PM, Upstairs at the Mosquito Café, 14^th & Winnie. The book to be discussed is Floating in My Mother's Palm by Ursula Hegi. For more information contact Rina Vinetz at 740-6840 or email rinaviper@aol.com.

The UTMB Faculty Women's Club and all of its events are open to all UTMB female faculty and faculty spouses.

HOMECOMING

-- Friday & Saturday, March 22-23, 2002

FACULTY OF MEDICINE MEETING

-- Tuesday, April 2, 2002, 4:30 PM, Clinical Sciences Auditorium

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE COMMENCEMENT

--Saturday, May 25, 2002, 10:00 AM, Moody Gardens Convention Center

Commencement Speaker: J. James Rohack, M.D., Medical Director, Scott & White Health Plan, Temple, TX

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2. CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH IN WOMEN'S HEALTH

A new center focusing on research in women's health has been created within the School of Medicine. The mission of the new Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health will be to promote, stimulate and support multidisciplinary research related to the health of women across the lifespan. The Center will be directed by Dr. Abbey Berenson, Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics. Dr. Cheryl Watson, Professor in the Department of Human Biological Chemistry & Genetics, will serve as Associate Director for Basic Science, and Dr. Susan Rosenthal, Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, will serve as Associate Director for Clinical Research. The Center will build on current funding in women’s health research that is approximately $6 million dollars annually to promote interactions between investigators from different academic backgrounds who can contribute different perspectives, training, and expertise to a collective effort to seek solutions to health problems that are more common in women, or that have different manifestations in women than in men. This multidisciplinary team will design and seek funding for collaborative grants, partner with existing programs to encourage investigations of sex/gender differences in health and disease, and provide structured mentoring to motivated junior investigators who are committed to women’s health.

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3. WOMEN FACULTY SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Four women faculty have been selected to attend the AAMC Mid-Career Women Faculty Professional Development Seminar to be held on June 22-25, 2002 in Washington: S. Lynn Knox, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesiology; Ruth E. Levine, M.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences; Robin Mallett, M.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences; and Patricia A. Rogers, M.D., F.A.A.P., Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics. This seminar is an excellent program for providing participants with insights into the realities of building a career in academic medicine as well as developing leadership and managements skills and expanding their network of colleagues and role models.

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4. APPOINTMENTS TO ENDOWED POSITIONS

The following faculty were appointed to endowed positions:

Sally S. Robinson, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Family Medicine, Departments of Pediatrics and Family Medicine, was named as the initial holder of the Q.T. Box, M.D., Endowed Professorship effective January 1, 2002

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5. UTMB FACULTY ORGANIZE CONFERENCES

School of Medicine faculty are invited to attend two important meetings organized by UTMB faculty to be held at the San Luis Conference Center:

HEPATIC INFLAMMATION AND IMMUNITY 2002, March 21-24, 2002

This international conference will bring together 29 speakers from 6 countries and a variety of disciplines to discuss basic immunologic mechanisms in the liver and their roles in health and disease. The conference, organized with support from the McLaughlin Endowment at UTMB and the NIH, will attempt to synthesize knowledge of the distinctive immunologic environment of the liver. It is based on the belief that continuing advances in understanding the basic immunobiology of intrahepatic T-cells might be brought fruitfully to bear on the issues of allografting, chronic infection and autoimmunity. It is the organizers' view that the paradigms used to understand immune responses in most solid organs may not satisfactorily explain the tolerogenic environment of the liver, nor the cases in which an apparently perfectly effective immune response to T-cell surface ligands (such as CD95L) and soluble mediators (cytokines and growth factors) that result in liver damage and/or promote stellate cell activation and thereby initiate fibrogenesis. For additional information, go to: http://microbiology.utmb.edu/schedules/mclaughlin.htm or call Mardell Susman at 2-2319

MOLECULAR GENOMICS: PROFILING OF GENE EXPRESSION, April 5-7, 2002

Completion of the sequence of the human genome provides a distinct reference point for the evolution of human functional genomics. While a significant achievement in itself, the human genomic sequence is only a tool to be used in addressing the challenge of validating the identities of the genes and defining their function. One technology that is playing a key role in this process is mRNA expression profiling. It is with this thought in mind that the “Molecular Genomics: Profiling of Gene Expression” symposium was organized. This meeting will provide an excellent opportunity for interested investigators and students to interact and exchange their most recent data. Twelve invited speakers from across the United States will set the topical framework for the meeting. A poster session will provide a format for individual attendees to present their work.

For additional information and registration, please visit http://www.scms.utmb.edu/genomics2002 or call Mamie Barnard 409.747.0386 or Jeannie Rice 409.772.1253.

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6. calL FOR APPLICATIONS FROM THE NIAID AND PFGRC

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Pathogen Functional Genomic Resource Center (PFGRC) at The Institute for Genomic Research announce a call for applications for acquisition of glass slide microarray resources. The PFGRC was established by The Institute for Genomic Research through a contract awarded by the NIAID to provide scientists with a centralized resources necessary to conduct functional genomics studies on a variety of pathogens for which genomic sequence information is currently, or will soon be, available. Applications are now being accepted through the NIAID web site to acquire microarrays produced by the PFGRC for S. pneumoniae, S. aureus, and S. typhimurium. For more information regarding the application process, deadlines, and review criteria, please visit the following web sites:

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/dmid/genomes/pfgrc/default.htm

http://pfgrc.tigr.org/

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7. UTMB RESEARCH RECOGNITION WEEK

The UTMB community wishes to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of its research faculty as researchers, scholars, authors, and mentors through Research Recognition Week April 15-19, 2002. Sponsors of this event are the Office of the President, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and UTMB-Research Services' Office of Research Education. You are encouraged to participate in these events to recognize those contributing to UTMB's research accomplishments. Activities for this week can be found at: http://research.utmb.edu/ore/resflyer.htm

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8. FORUM ON EMERGING INFECTIONS

In the wake of September 11th and recent anthrax events, our nation's bioterrorism response capability has become a priority for policymakers, researchers, public health officials, academia and the private sector. The Forum on Emerging Infections that is sponsored by the Board on Global Health of the Institute of Medicine has released a summary of a workshop in which experts identified, clarified, and discussed the next steps to prepare and strengthen bio-terrorism response capabilities.

To read the summary, please click on http://www.nap.edu/books/0309082536/html/

More information on the Forum on Emerging Infections is available at

http://www.iom.edu/IOM/IOMHome.nsf/Pages/Forum+On+Emerging+Infections

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9. 102^ND GENERAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) 102^nd General Meeting will be held on May 19-23, 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The ASM General Meeting is the largest annual gathering of microbiologists in the world. The tragic events of last fall, especially the incidents of bioterrorism, have significantly affected the context of this year's meeting. The General Meeting will be supplemented with a Bioterrorism Special Session that will complement sessions on this topic that were already planned prior to the events following September 11, 2001. The General Meeting will continue to provide a forum for microbiologists from different backgrounds to interact and share scientific expertise in all areas of microbiology. For more information, please visit:

http://www.asmusa.org/mtgsrc/generalmeeting.htm

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10. FACULTY RESOURCES WEB PAGE

Coming soon is the faculty resources web page, created to serve the needs of UTMB faculty. This new site will include a calendar of events and a faculty resources database. To see the current main home page please visit: http://www.utmb.edu/faculty/.

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11. GRANT WRITING WORKSHOP FOR HISPANIC RESEARCHERS

The Stanford Hispanic Center of Excellence announces a call for applications for its Grant Writing Workshop for Hispanic Researchers to be held on April 19-20, 2002 at Stanford University. The two-day workshop is designed for Hispanic researchers who want to enhance their basic grant writing skills. Each participant will be provided with up to $500.00 to defray the cost of travel and accommodations. Participants may be fellows, post-doctoral students, or junior faculty. Deadline for applications is April 1, 2002. Should a successful candidate(s) be selected, the Office of the Dean of Medicine will provide financial support for travel and other related expenses for up to two junior faculty. Further information and application forms are available on the web at: www.stanford.edu/dept/med/COE/Courses/HSR/index.html.

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12. COMMUNITY-CAMPUS PARTNERSHIPS FOR HEALTH FELLOWS PROGRAM

The Community-Campus Partnerships for Health ((CCPH) Fellows Program is designed to support academic administrators, faculty, and community-based professionals who provide leadership in service-learning, community-based participatory research, and community-campus partnerships in their field and/or discipline.

Community based professionals, academic administrators, and faculty with significant knowledge and expertise in building and sustaining service-learning, community-based participatory research and community-campus partnerships are encouraged to apply. The expected outcome of the CCPH Fellows program is to advance and support these concepts in the context of health professions education and practice. CCPH Fellows will receive $5,000 for a one-year fellowship period (May 2002-May 2003) with the potential for a second year of funding. Deadline for application submission is April 1, 2002.

CCPH members and CCPH non-members are welcome to apply. For further information on the program, the responsibilities of CCPH Fellows, and application procedures, visit the program’s web site at: http://futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph.html

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13. FACULTY DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP

A faculty development workshop will be held on April 16-18, 2002, designed for nurses and physicians in Primary Care, Pediatrics, Family Medicine and Community Health. The workshop will focus on the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness. This is a program from WHO and PAHO that incorporates clinical skills, family and cultural competence, and community development to improve the health of children.

Please visit the following web site at: www.son.utmb.edu/nursing/WHO/index.html for full information about the conference to be held at UTMB. It will be offered in both English and Spanish. Feel free to contact Imelda Mendoza at: (409) 772-5029, or by email at: imendoza@utmb.edu if you have any questions.

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14. CALL FOR NOMINATIONS-DORIS DUKE DISTINGUISHED CLINICAL SCIENTIST AWARD

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is now seeking nominations for the 2002 Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award for Excellence in "Bench to Bedside" Research. The Foundation will fund up to five awards, distributed among four disease categories, i.e., cancer, AIDS, cardiovascular diseases, or sickle cell anemia and other blood disorders. Each Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award will be for a period of at least five years in the amount of $1.5 million. The program seeks to provide support for a substantial portion of a distinguished investigator's efforts in translational clinical research and to provide funds to enable the physician-scientist to support and mentor the next generation of physician-scientists conducting translational clinical research.

Our School may nominate up to 4 candidates, one in each of the four disease areas. Candidates must have a full-time faculty appointment at the level of associate professor (physician-scientists who have been appointed to the level of professor or its equivalent after December 15, 1997 are also eligible to be nominated) and have an M.D. or M.D./Ph.D. or equivalent. The deadline for receipt of nomination packages is April 25^th.

A selection committee will be formed to review applications for this award. If you would like to nominate an individual, please submit a comprehensive letter of nomination (include nominee's research interests, mentoring activities and what this award would enable them to do) and a copy of their CV by April 1^st to allow time for committee deliberations and review of application materials prior to the Foundation's April 25^th deadline. These may be submitted to Linda G. Phillips, M.D., Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, either through campus mail (Office of the Dean of Medicine, Route 0133) or electronically. If you would like more information regarding this program, please visit the following web site: http://ddcf.aibs.org/dcsa/.

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15. PROMOTION AND TENURE ACTIONS

Below is a list of School of Medicine faculty who were recommended by the Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee and approved by the Executive Committee of the Faculty of Medicine for promotion and/or tenure. These actions are effective September 1, 2002 and are pending System approval:

--Patrick A. Adegboyega, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, be promoted to Associate Professor

--Constance D. Baldwin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Family Medicine, Departments of Pediatrics and Family Medicine, be promoted to Professor of Pediatrics and Family Medicine

--Patricia S. Beach, M.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, be promoted to Professor of Pediatrics

--Donald J. Deyo, D.V.M., Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Department of Anesthesiology, be promoted to Associate Professor of Anesthesiology

--Michael J. Grecula, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation, be promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure

--Bhupendra S. Kaphalia, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pathology, Department of Pathology, be promoted to Associate Professor of Pathology

-- A. Joseph Koska, III, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, be promoted to Associate Professor of Anesthesiology

--Gayle Olson Koutrouvelis, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, be promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure

--Roberto Logrono, M.D., Associate Professor, Department of Pathology, be awarded tenure in his current rank

--Robert E. Shope, M.D., Professor of Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology and PM&CH, Departments of Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology and PM&CH, be awarded tenure

--Vicki M. Soukup, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology, be promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure

--Smita Vaidya, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Pathology, be promoted to Professor

--Shu-Yuan Xiao, M.D., Assistant Professor, Departments of Pathology and Internal Medicine, be promoted to Associate Professor

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16. NEW FACULTY APPOINTMENTS

The Dean of Medicine welcomes the following new School of Medicine faculty who have been appointed during the month of February:

Mahmoud Ahmed, Ph.D., Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology

John Jennings, M.D., Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology

Tracy Toliver-Kinsky, Ph.D., Instructor, Anesthesiology

Tusha Varma, Ph.D., Instructor, Anesthesiology

Dongfang Wang, Ph.D., Instructor, Surgery

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17. GRANT OPPORTUNITIES

REQUEST FOR 2002 AAMC AWARDS NOMINATIONS

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is requesting nominations for its major awards presented each year at their annual meeting. These awards honor individuals and programs making significant contributions to our community. A listing of each award, nomination requirements, and deadlines are available at the following web site: http://www.aamc.org/about/awards/start.htm.

For other funding opportunities, please visit the following web site:

http://www.som.utmb.edu/announcements/

The Research Funding Library has posted internal review deadlines for invited funding opportunities to a special web site calendar with links to contact information. The calendar may be viewed at: http://www.utmbhealthcare.org/scripts/we3.07/webevent.pl?cmd=opencal&cal=cal19&

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We want your news!

Submit your information for SOM e-NEWS:

· Via email to djgonzal@utmb.edu

· On the phone to ext. 23967

· Via fax at 29598

SOM e-NEWS is an initiative of the Office of the Dean of Medicine, to improve communication with faculty and staff in the school. The editor of the newsletter is Dr. Linda Phillips. An archive of the newsletter is available on the SOM web site:

http://www.som.utmb.edu/e-NEWS/eNEWS-TOC.htm. Thank you for your interest and time.

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