January 30, 2009
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Five individuals received the 2009 University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) President's Awards for Diversity during a ceremony Jan. 29, at the UAB Hill University Center, Great Hall. The annual awards recognize the importance of institutional diversity and honor those who nurture diversity of thought, culture, gender and ethnicity on the UAB campus and elsewhere. UAB President Carol Garrison, Ph.D., created the awards.
UAB Assistant Professor Lamia Zayzafoon, Ph.D., winner of the 2009 President's Diversity Faculty Award, is credited for achieving an "impressive publication record on topics within the domain of cultural diversity," including articles on race, gender and Islam and on topics such as the Algerian Civil War and the postcolonial aftermath and women and Islam in North Africa. Zayzafoon, who teaches in the UAB Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, has taught Arabic language courses, classes on the Shoah in North Africa and seminars on human rights in the Muslim world. In addition, she led the first UAB Study Away program to her native country of Tunisia.
Debora Morgette received the 2009 President's Diversity Staff Award. Morgette is a coordinator of the Safe Zone program at UAB. Through Safe Zone, volunteers provide support to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals at UAB. Morgette also is a group facilitator for the Tunnel of Oppression, a program that teaches about the different types of oppression due to racial and ethnic differences, sexual orientation and poverty, and she facilitates a Diversity Awareness Education program through the UAB Office of Equity and Diversity. Morgette was recently awarded a certificate for her 50th class.
UAB dental student Cramin P. Wiltz II is the winner of the President's Diversity Professional Student Award. Huw F. Thomas, BDS, Ph.D., dean of the UAB School of Dentistry, credited Wiltz for playing an important role in the mentoring and recruitment of underrepresented minorities to the School of Dentistry.
Thomas said Wiltz has spoken at local high schools, colleges and health and church fairs about dentistry as a career. Wiltz has been a member of the School of Dentistry's Minority Recruitment Task Force, and he presented a proposal for a UAB Summer Pre-Dental Enrichment Program at the annual American Dental Association meeting in San Francisco in 2007. Also that year, he was a student representative at the National Dental Association's annual "Day on Capitol Hill" in Washington D.C., where he met with congressional staff members to discuss the challenges of recruiting minority students to health careers and about pending legislation affecting dental education.
Materials engineering student Andrew Uehlin received the President's Diversity Graduate Student Award. He was honored for his activities with the UAB chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Uehlin, a doctoral student, is president of the UAB chapter. Through Engineers Without Borders, he has worked on a project in the Amazon Basin of Peru, assisting with portable water delivery and health education in several villages. He also designed a collapsible, all terrain crutch for a man with post-polio muscular atrophy, whom he met during one of his visits to Peru.
Junior biology student Amanda Azoroh won the 2009 President's Undergraduate Student Diversity Award. Azoroh was honored for successfully organizing a lecture and book signing at UAB for the authors of "The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream." The book tells the story of three African-American teens who made a pact to attend college and become doctors. Azoroh was inspired to invite them to share their story with children and college students in Birmingham after reading the book. The authors, Dr. Sampson Davis, Dr. Rameck Hunt and Dr. George Jenkins, known as "The Three Doctors," spoke at the Alys Stephens Center on Sept. 23, 2008.