Faculty shine at Educational Recognition Awards ceremony, Last Lecture

The 2024 UMass Chan Medical School Educational Recognition Awards ceremony on Thursday, April 25, honored achievements by faculty of the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing, Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and T.H. Chan School of Medicine.

Ann Moormann, PhD, MPH, professor of medicine, received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring, and Susan Zweizig, MD, professor of obstetrics & gynecology, presented the annual honorary Last Lecture.

Chancellor Michael F. Collins said the Excellence in Mentoring award “celebrates mentoring as a foundational element of our academic community and the broader science, nursing and medical professions.”

Dr. Moormann, a member of the Program in Innate Immunity and the UMass Cancer Center, joined UMass Chan in 2009. Her research focuses on the immunopathology of malaria, Epstein-Barr virus and Burkitt lymphoma, the most common pediatric cancer in sub-Saharan Africa.

Moorman was in Rwanda, attending the Pan-African Malaria Conference in support of UMass Chan mentees who are presenting their research.

“This is the type of commitment to mentoring that we like to celebrate,” Chancellor Collins said.

In her lecture, “What You Don’t See,” Dr. Zweizig spoke directly about moments in her own life, and underscored the importance of physicians, nurses and medical students taking the time to listen and being vigilant and inquisitive to “what is not readily seen;” the necessary balancing of work and life to keep an active mind, avoid burnout and maintain outside interests; and understanding what you owe to yourself, especially in a rewarding and meaningful career in medicine.

“By valuing your sense of self and keeping in touch with your humanity, it’s easier to take time during the patient encounter. You can let things in that you might not otherwise see. That can make the diagnosis easier and faster. It’ll sustain you and it’ll keep you in touch with who you really are,” Zweizig said.

The Last Lecture provides an educator the opportunity to share a message they would want to give students if they had only one lecture left to give. At UMass Chan, the honor of delivering it is bestowed on the recipient of the prior year’s Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Teaching. The medal is presented annually to a faculty member who has fostered students’ personal, intellectual and professional development. Recipients are nominated by faculty members and selected by the chancellor.

Zweizig also received the 2023 Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching, a $10,000 award established by former UMass Board of Trustees Chair Robert Manning and his wife, Donna Manning, both UMass alums. The prize honors one outstanding faculty member from each of the five UMass campuses.

Joan Vitello-Cicciu, PhD, the Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Chair in Nursing, dean of the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing and professor of nursing, presented two new nursing faculty awards during Thursday’s ceremony: the Clinical Education Award to Jennifer Flynn, MS, RN, and Miguel Olmedo, DNP, FNP-C; and the Student Education Award to Mechelle Plasse, PhD, APRN.

Dean’s and faculty awards were presented by Dr. Vitello-Cicciu; Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor, executive deputy chancellor, provost and dean of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine; Mary Ellen Lane, PhD, the Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Chair in Biomedical Sciences, dean of the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and professor of neurobiology; Anne Larkin, MD, associate professor of surgery and vice provost and senior associate dean for educational affairs of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine; and Educational Policy Committee co-chairs Erin McMaster, MD'96, associate professor of pediatrics, and Lela Giannaris, PhD, associate professor of radiology.

Watch the full awards ceremony and Last Lecture on the UMass Chan YouTube channel.