PAEA Honors Award Winners, Faculty
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At the annual Awards Luncheon in Quebec City, the Association honored six outstanding PA educators and organizations. All received plaques or other commemorative gifts from master of ceremonies Anita Glicken, then PAEA president elect. Photos from the luncheon, as well as from other forum events, can be accessed here.

Brenda Kaminski, MPH, PA-C, Shenandoah University PA Program, Winchester, Virginia, won the New Faculty Award for Professional Excellence, given to a faculty member who has been in PA education for three years or less.

Kaminski was nominated by her program director,Tony Miller, who said that in his 28 years in PA education, he had never witnessed anyone adapt as quickly and with such ease from the clinical role to that of an educator. Kaminiski's students nominated her for the Shenandoah program’s “Act of Kindness Award,” previously given only to other students. Her course evaluations averaged 4.64 out of 5 — well above average for a new faculty member.

Kaminski demonstrated her leadership skills by co-directing a one-week medical mission trip to Nicaragua in May. Twelve PA students were part of a multidisciplinary team that also included pharmacists, occupational therapists, and nurses. Kaminski also helped secure more than $30,000 worth of medications and supplies from the community and a $4,300 grant from the PA Foundation.

Mary Warner, MMSc, PA-C, Yale University PA Program, New Haven, Connecticut, received the Rising Star Award, given to a faculty member who has been in PA education for between three and seven years.

Warner joined the Yale faculty in 2000 as a didactic coordinator after many years of clinical practice in both cardiac and orthopedic surgery. In September 2004, she was appointed assistant dean and program director. Warner broadened the Yale PA program’s mission to include a focus on global health and spearheaded a plan to establish a PA school in Uganda. This involves an agreement between the Yale University Department of Medicine and the Makarere University Medical School in Kampala, Uganda, to help train the workforce to care for patients with AIDS and establish clinical experiences for students and medical residents in Africa.

Outside of the program, Warner has served as the PA member of the Connecticut State Medical Examining Board. She began working with PAEA as a peer reviewer for the small grants subcommittee of the Research Institute and, more recently, was appointed chair of the subcommittee.

Ted Ruback, MS, PA-C, Oregon Health & Science University PA Program, won the Master Faculty Award, given to a faculty member who has been in PA education for more than seven years. Candidates for this award must demonstrate outstanding contributions in a minimum of three of the following areas:

• Teaching
• Scholarship
• Administration
• Professional service

Ruback was recruited in 1994 by the Oregon Health & Science University to begin a new program at the lone academic health center in the state. Within five years of its inception, he took the program from a bachelor’s level to the graduate level and continues to be its director.

He helped advance continuing education for PAs throughout Oregon and developed a Web-based curriculum for PAs, leading to an online master’s degree program. He has been an accreditation site evaluator for the ARC-PA since 1997, a delegate to the AAPA House of Delegates for the past 11 years, and has served on numerous other committees for the PA organizations.

Ruback’s most enduring legacy to the PA profession may be his service with the CASPA Advisory Committee. Since his first proposal for a central application service in 1995, he has championed CASPA’s development. He was a founding member of the CASPA Advisory Committee and has served as chair since 2001. During this time, nearly 95 programs have joined CASPA, and the data collected through the centralized process has informed the PA profession about the national applicant pool.

Donald Wexler, MD, Northeastern University PA Program, Boston, received the Outstanding Service Award, given to an individual who has provided “sustained exceptional service or leadership to PAEA or who has contributed to the advancement of the PA profession in other ways.”

Wexler recently retired from the Northeastern University program, where he has been medical director since 1977. Prior to that, he was a clinical preceptor in mental health at one of the program’s rotation sites. He has worked extensively in the Boston medical community to recruit and develop clinical teachers and sites for the PA program.

Over the years, he has worked behind the scenes with the American Psychiatric Association and several private foundations to promote and expand the role of PAs in treating patients with behavioral issues. As the program’s medical director, he supported the need to include psychosocial didactic coursework in the curriculum. He helped to ensure that skills such as patient advocacy and the ability to listen to patients were adopted in the infancy of PA education and stressed their importance in understanding the psychosocial dynamics that influence patient behavior.

Ruth Ballweg, who nominated Wexler for this award, put it this way: “Dr. Wexler is a great example of faculty members who are consistent attendees at PAEA functions and who have played a major role even though they haven’t officially been elected leaders. These individuals hold our organization together, contribute to our culture, and make us wiser as a result.”

The Dallas/Fort Worth Area Health Education Center (DFW AHEC) was selected winner of the PAEA Partnership Award, presented to “an institution outside of formal PA program circles, e.g., a preceptor or local organization that has made an outstanding contribution to excellence in PA education.” Lori Millner, PhD, executive director of the DFW AHEC, attended the luncheon to receive the award and spoke on behalf of her staff. Her wish was that “all of her staff could have attended with her as this award really reflected their daily work!”

Both the University of Texas Southwestern PA Program at Dallas and the University of North Texas Health Science Center PA Program at Fort Worth nominated the DFW AHEC. Venetia Orcutt, director of the University of Texas Southwestern PA Program referred to AHEC as their program’s “Partner Extraordinaire.”

Some of the activities for which the DFW AHEC was honored included:

• Assisting with recruiting, interviewing, and hiring Spanish-speaking simulated patients, resulting in more than 7,600 hours of training for PA students

• Coordinating community volunteer service to the underserved. The DFW AHEC coordinated health screenings by approximately 20 PA students at the Mexican Consulate's Ventanilla de Salud, provided supplies, and identified community physician support. The AHEC also recruited 14 PA students to serve as mentors to disadvantaged middle-school students interested in the health professions.

• Purchasing medical training models for the University of Texas Southwestern PA program

• Assisting programs in identifying grant funding sources and participating in the development and submission of proposals to enhance PA education

The University of Washington MEDEX Northwest PA Program received the Excellence through Diversity Award. The award recognizes the “outstanding commitment and achievements of a PAEA member program in its implementation of specific strategies and activities designed to foster the diversity of program faculty, staff, and student body.”

Some of the strategies documented by the MEDEX program are:

• Achieving significant diversity through the program's work with specific population groups and communities — Alaska Natives, American Indians, and Hispanic farm workers. This has brought experienced health care workers into the program.  

• Targeting selected colleges and specific population groups from the five states it serves. The program has worked to create recruitment pathways for military personnel, which have high percentages of minority individuals in their health careers programs.

• Devoting 30 classroom hours to issues of diversity, medical care, and health care disparities. In the clinical year, all MEDEX students are required to complete a four-week rotation in a medically underserved clinic — usually a community health center or an Indian Health Service clinic. The assigned paper for this rotation includes an analysis of the health care issues for the community.

• Having students organize presentations and invite key community members into the classroom to share their experiences.

PAEA/NCCPA Research Grant Awards

Also at the Awards Luncheon, six PA faculty members received grant checks from the 2006 cycle of the PAEA/NCCPA Research Grants Program. Mary Warner, chair of the PAEA Research Institute subcommittee that selected the winning proposals, acknowledged the committee members who performed the judging process: Meredith Davison, Tony Miller, Michele Heinan, and Patricia Jennings. Warner presented checks to the following faculty members:

• Theresa Hegmann, MPAS, PA-C, University of Iowa PA Program, received $3,504 for her proposal, “Cheating by Physician Assistant Students on Patient Encounter Logs.”

• Douglas M. Brock, PhD; Donald Coerver, PhD, PA-C; Gino Gianola, PA; and Keren Wick, PhD; University of Washington MEDEX Northwest PA Program, received $4,974 for “The PA Profession and Military Veterans: A Pilot Study.”

• Ruth Ballweg, MPA, PA-C; Donald Coerver, PhD, PA-C; Keren Wick, PhD; and Eric H. Larson, PhD; University of Washington MEDEX Northwest PA Program, received $5,000 for “Educational Background and Practice Characteristics of Physician Assistants in Orthopedics.”

• J. Glenn Forister, MPAS, PA-C, and J. Dennis Blessing, PhD, PA-C; University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio PA Program, received $3,295.72 for “Professional Burnout: A Study of Physician Assistant Educators.”

• Alexandria Garino, PA-C, MS, Yale University School of Medicine PA Program, received $2,500 for “Improving Clinical Anatomy Recall and Spatial Relationship Reasoning in PA Students.”

• David M. Brissette, MMSc, PA-C, Yale University School of Medicine PA Program, received $4,972 for “Physician Assistants as Medicine Hospitalists: The Yale-New Haven Hospital Experience.”