The Annual Women of Achievement & Spotlight Awards Luncheon

HELD DURING THE FALL SEMESTER EACH YEAR

This annual event celebrates the tenure and promotion and recognitions achieved by women faculty members at Case Western Reserve; and honors one woman from each school at Case Western Reserve for their excellence in research and scholarship. (Recipients chosen by their schools.)

Awards presented on October 30, 2009

2009 Mather Prize honorees were:

Jessica Berg School of Law	Jessica Wilen Berg is Professor of Law and Biomedical Ethics with a joint appointment in Case Western Reserve University's Schools of Law and Medicine. Ms. Berg joined the faculty at Case Western in 1999 after serving as the Director of Academic Affairs of the Institute for Ethics, and Secretary of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs for the American Medical Association. Professor Berg is first author on a book published by Oxford University Press entitled Informed Consent: Legal Theory and Clinical Practice. Her publications and research span a variety of areas including medical decision-making, end-of-life care, research with human subjects, ethics and pediatrics, reproductive law and ethics, genetic enhancement, confidentiality, mental health law, professional self-regulation, public health law and ethics, and e-medicine. Professor Berg received both her B.A. and J.D., with honors, from Cornell University where she was a notes editor of the Cornell Law Review. She received her MPH from Case Western Reserve University Medical School in May 2009.
Susan Helper Weatherhead School of Management	Susan Helper is AT&T Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department, Weatherhead School of Management. Her research focuses on the impacts of collaborative relationships between suppliers and customers and management and labor. Currently she is studying how globalization of supply chains affects development and innovation in the U.S., Mexico, and India. She is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and of the International Motor Vehicle Program. Susan Helper has published in several anthologies and in journals such as Industry and Innovation, American Economic Review, Sloan Management Review, and the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. In 2005-06 she was visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Oxford. She has a BA from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
Lynn Lotas School ofNursing	Marilyn Blankenship Lotas is Associate Professor of Nursing and Associate Dean for the Undergraduate Program at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. Her research focuses on the effect of environmental light patterns and levels on preterm infant development. She has developed an innovative model to teach BSN students the principles of public health nursing and increased competence in the delivery of culturally competent care to diverse populations from the local level to international locations. She has been a consultant to Perinatal/Neonatal graduate programs at several universities. She established a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Texas and chaired the group responsible for the establishment of the Ph.D. in Nursing program at Emory University. Dr. Lotas was elected to Sigma Theta Tau in 1986 and was selected for the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Nurse Scholars Program from the University of Pennsylvania from 1988 to 1990. She earned a BSN in Nursing and an MEd in Psychology from Wayne State University, her MSN and Ph.D. in Nursing from the University of Michigan.
Ica Manas-Zloczower School of Engineering	Ica Manas-Zloczower is a Professor in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering and Associate Dean for Faculty Development at the Case School of Engineering. Her current research interests include structure and micromechanics of fine particle clusters, interfacial engineering strategies for advanced materials processing, dispersive mixing mechanisms and modeling, design and mixing optimization studies for polymer processing equipment, microfluidics and microstructure characterization in multi-component systems using fractal analysis. She has more than 120 publications in peer-reviewed journal, more than 80 published conference proceedings, and a number of book chapters. She is the editor of the 2009 book, Mixing and Compounding of Polymers, published by Hanser. She is the President-Elect of the Polymer Processing Society, a fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Polymer Engineering. Professor Manas-Zloczower received her BS and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute Jassy, Romania, and a Doctor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota.
Grace McComsey School of Medicine	Grace A McComsey, MD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Rheumatology at the School of Medicine. Recognized as an international leader in the field of HIV metabolic complications, Dr. McComsey's work has helped define the syndrome of HIV-related lipodystrophy and its link to mitochondrial toxicity. She is currently the principal investigator on more than a dozen studies, including several NIH-funded grants, investigating different aspects of the metabolic and cardiovascular complications of HIV. Dr. McComsey's accomplishment in her area of research is evidenced by a substantial publication record and her regular selection to present papers at leading national and international conferences. She was recently elevated to fellow by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Her work in HIV has earned her several awards. Dr. McComsey received her medical degree from St. Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon. She completed an internal medicine/pediatrics residency and a combined adult and pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Suchitra Nelson School of Dental Medicine	Dr. Suchitra Nelson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Dentistry. She is an epidemiologist who studies the oral health of children from health disparate populations. In December 2009, in a White House ceremony, Professor Nelson received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), selected by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Professor Suchitra's research activities include a study of the oral health of very low birth weight children who frequently have special needs, funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. She is also conducting a Health Resources and Service Administration-funded clinical trial aimed at reducing dental caries in poor inner-city elementary school children. Dr. Nelson received her Bachelor's degree in Madras, India, and her Masters and Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Case Western Reserve University.
Elizabeth Short College of Arts and Sciences	Elizabeth Short is Professor of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, Associate Director of the Schubert Center for Child Studies, and Co-director of the Childhood Studies Program. Her research focus is to explore the processes underlying cognitive development in preschoolers and school-aged children. Professor Short has published over 50 research articles in distinguished journals. In 2007 she received the Keith Conner Award for Scholarly Contribution to the Journal of Attention Disorders. Currently, Professor Short is working on two grant-funded research studies, both related to long-term effects of sociodynamic circumstances on low-birthweight children. Professor Short received her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Upon joining the faculty at CWRU, she completed the clinical re-specialization tract, adding cognitive and clinical psychology to her training background.
Elizabeth Tracy Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences	Elizabeth M. Tracy is the Grace Longwell Coyle Professor of Social Work at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and Chair of the PhD Program. She has served on the advisory board to the Center for Math and Science Education and is a faculty associate of the Schubert Center for Child Development and a University Affiliate of the Ohio Mental Health Network for School Success. Professor Tracy's research focus has been the development and evaluation of social work practice models and methods that support families, make use of natural helping networks, and incorporate environmental helping strategies. In addition to numerous journal articles, Dr. Tracy has co-authored Social Work With Families And Children And Person-Environment Practice: The Social Ecology Of Interpersonal Helping. She also has co-edited a book entitled Delivering Home-Based Services: a Social Work Perspective. She currently is Principal Investigator of a three-year National Institute on Drug Abuse funded study examining the role of social networks in post treatment functioning.
SPECIAL AWARD FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PROVOST
Dorothy C. Miller Director, Flora Stone Mather Center for Women	Dorothy C. Miller is Director of the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women and Clinical Associate Professor of Social Work at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences. Previously, Dr. Miller was Chair of the Women's Studies Department at Wichita State University. At CWRU, she established the Center for Women and has overseen the development of initiatives for health advocacy, the Project on Men and Gender, the Women Staff Leadership Development Initiative, and the revival of the Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable (WISER), among others. Dr. Miller's research focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of social policy in relation to women and gender. She is co-editor of the recent Socializing Care: Feminist Ethics and Public Issues, and author of Women and Social Welfare: a Feminist Analysis. She received her D.S.W. in Social Policy, Planning, and Community Organization and her M.S. in Social Work from Columbia University. She has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania.
NOTABLE WOMEN OF THE YEAR
Joanne Eustis University Librarian	We salute Joanne Eustis, who is retiring as University Librarian this semester. She arrived in August, 1998 and spearheaded many changes in her time here. The CaseLearns Program, which serves over 1000 faculty, students and staff in 2009, was established. In 2005, we saw the opening of the Samuel B. And Marian K. Freedman Digital Library, Language Learning and Multimedia Service Center, a partnership between the College of Arts and Sciences and the Kelvin Smith Library (KSL). Digital Case, which preserves digital information, was established. In addition to pioneering new media initiatives, Dr. Eustis also focused on service to campus "patrons," which means all of us who turn to the library for our various needs. She launched 24/7 building access for students, expanded printed and electronic materials to more than 2 million items, created additional study rooms, updated computer equipment, introduced the CPL@Case-KSL collection, and expanded access to eJournals. Dr. Eustis came to Case Western Reserve from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where she served as the Interim Library Director, Director of Planning in the ITS department and as Faculty Senate President. She and her husband will move to Charleston, S.C., but retirement will not be immediate, as she may use her Ph.D. degree in Public Policy and Planning to do some work in environmental or urban planning.
Theresa Pretlow School of Medicine Professor of Pathology	We celebrate and honor Theresa Pretlow, who is retiring after a distinguished career at Case Western Reserve University. In her first full-time position, she arrived at CWRU in 1983 as Assistant Professor of Pathology. In 1996 she attained the rank of Professor, the first woman tenured Professor in that department. Dr. Pretlow's research has focused primarily on microscopically identified lesions in the human colon, called aberrant crypt foci or ACF. These lesions appear to be the earliest identified precursors of colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Her laboratory was the first to report these lesions in human colons. It is hoped that these studies will provide greater insights in how to prevent colorectal cancer especially in families with an increased incidence of this disease. Dr. Pretlow has received numerous awards and presented papers around the world. She coauthored 122 published papers and book chapters. Of these, twelve have been cited in the literature over 100 times with her most highly cited, 351 times. Dr. Pretlow received her B.S. in Chemistry at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY and her Ph.D. in Radiation Biology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Before coming to CWRU, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

2009 Women of Achievement Honor Roll:

Women Appointed or Reappointed to Endowed Professorships Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences Elizabeth (Betsy) Tracy, Grace Longwell Coyle Professor in Social Work New Leadership College of Arts and Sciences Mary Grimm, Chair, Department of English Weatherhead School of Management Susan Helper, Professor of Economics, July 1, 2009, appointed Chair of the Department of Economics, the first woman chair of a department at the Weatherhead School of Management. Promotions to Associate Professor and Professor and Awards of Tenure College of Arts and Science Gabriela Copertari, Associate Professor with tenure, Modern Languages and Literatures Mary E. Davis, Professor, Music Kimberly K. Emmons, Associate Professor with tenure, English Marixa Lasso, Associate Professor with tenure, History Barbara Ann Mazanec Lewis, Professor, Communication Sciences Cheryl Toman, Associate Professor with tenure, Modern Languages and Literatures School of Dental Medicine Kristin Zakariasen Victoroff, Associate Professor, Community Dentistry School of Engineering Alexis R. Abramson, Associate Professor with tenure, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Melissa Louise Knothe Tate, Professor with tenure, Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Xin Yu, tenure awarded (as associate professor), Biomedical Engineering Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences Elizabeth (Betsy) Tracy, Grace Longwell Coyle Professor in Social Work, February 20, 2009, endowed professorship, School of Medicine Jennifer Bailit, Associate Professor, Reproductive Biology Elma D. Baron, Associate Professor, Dermatology Carolyn Cacho Bowman, Associate Professor, Medicine Cathleen Cerny, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry Sharon Lee Groh-Wargo, Associate Professor, Pediatrics Sudha Iyengar, Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Mary Beth Kavanaugh, Senior Instructor, Nutrition Sheryl A. Kingsberg, Professor, Reproductive Biology Susan Riga Kirsh, Associate Professor, Medicine Jane Korsberg, Senior Instructor, Nutrition Margaret Kotz, Professor, Psychiatry Sara Laskey, Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine Lili Liu, Associate Professor, Medicine Sheng Liu, Assistant Professor, Family Medicine Anna Maria Mandalakas, Associate Professor with tenure, Pediatrics Susanne Mohr, Associate Professor, Medicine Farah Munir, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry Rachel Schlesinger Parks, Assistant Professor, Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine Theresa P. Pretlow, Professor Emerita, Pathology Amani Ramahi, Assistant Professor, Neurology Colleen Bevevino Tomcik, Assistant Professor, Neurology Deanne E. Wilson-Costello, Professor, Pediatrics Stacia S. Yaniglos, Associate professor, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Vivian Chia Yee, tenure awarded (as Associate Professor), Biochemistry Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine: Cornelia Bergmann, Professor, Molecular Medicine Margot S. Damaser, Associate Professor, Molecular Medicine Elizabeth Fisher, Associate Professor, Molecular Medicine Stephanie A. Hagstrom, Associate Professor, Ophthalmology Veronique M. A. Lefebvre, Associate Professor, Molecular Medicine Weatherhead School of Management Susan Helper, Professor of Economics Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Elizabeth Damato, tenure awarded (as Associate Professor) Elizabeth Madigan, Professor Amy Y. Zhang, Associate Professor Sarah Hall Gueldner, Professor