Faculty, Staff, and Student to Be Honored at 2020 Convocation.

Several members of the SPH community will be honored with awards at the 2020 School of Public Health Convocation: MPH recipient Mary Rose Dinnean; faculty members Candice M. Belanoff, Lauren Wise, and Madeleine Scammell; and staff member Jessica Christian.

Specific details about Convocation, including the date and format of the ceremony, will be announced at a later date.

Leonard H. Glantz Award for Academic Excellence

Mary Rose Dinnean, an MPH recipient, is the winner of the 2020 Leonard H. Glantz Award for Academic Excellence.

The Glantz Award is the highest award granted to a graduating MPH student at SPH. The award is named in honor of Leonard H. Glantz, emeritus professor of health law, bioethics & human rights, who served for 30 years as academic dean and demanded rigorous standards in curriculum and teaching throughout the academic program.

Glantz Award winners are nominated by faculty, and should demonstrate exceptional academic performance, creative and critical thinking, and seriousness and professionalism in public health.

Dinnean’s studies at SPH focused on healthcare management and maternal and child health, and she was known in class as a passionate presenter and thoughtful, methodical respondent to instructors and classmates. She also made a great impression at her summer practicum at Boston Children’s Hospital, with her supervisor making special note of her professionalism, critical thinking, and insightful questions: “I often forgot that she was a graduate student,” her supervisor wrote. Dinnean’s performance landed her a second practicum at Boston Children’s Hospital in the Technology and Innovation Department, where she again thrived.

Dinnean’s faculty nominators wrote that she is passionate, engaged, organized, and very likeable to boot. “We are excited to see where Mary goes next, and have no doubt about her capacity to make a significant contribution in the field of maternal and child health and healthcare management.”

Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching

Candice M. Belanoff, clinical associate professor of community health sciences, is the winner of the 2020 Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The Scotch Award is presented annually to an individual who has made outstanding and sustained contributions to the education program at SPH. The award is meant to recognize individuals, faculty, or others who have substantially enriched the educational experience for the students at the school.

A maternal and child health epidemiologist, Belanoff is particularly interested in the relationship between social forces and inequities and patterns of population health.

She joined the Department of Community Health Sciences in 2009, with an MPH from Hunter College and an ScD from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Originally on a research track, Belanoff soon turning her attention to teaching, winning her first of several teaching awards in 2011. She went on to design and serve as founding director of the Community Assessment, Program Design, Implementation and Evaluation (CAPDIE) certificate program. Belanoff also teaches several courses at SPH, perhaps most notably Social Justice and the Health of Populations: Racism and Other Systems of Oppression, which she took over in 2014, and redesigned with input from colleagues, teaching assistants, and student feedback to create a safe and informative environment for students to tackle these difficult topics head-on. One student remarked, “This course was worth all of the tuition of an MPH at BU.”

In one of many nomination letters for Belanoff, a former student and teaching assistant wrote: “I have never crossed paths with a professor that possesses the combination of intellectual acuity, genuine care, and proactive demeanor that Candice possesses and bestows onto her students… She makes strides to shatter all power divides that exist by creating an equitable world for all her students that is free of prejudice. She does this leading by example. She does this by constantly putting others’ interests before her own. She does this by encouraging her students to dream big and reach far. But most importantly, she does this by simply listening to students and reminding them that they matter.”

Faculty Career Award in Research and Scholarship

Lauren Wise, professor of epidemiology, is the winner of the 2020 SPH Faculty Career Award in Research and Scholarship.

This honor is given annually to recognize a faculty member for a distinguished body of scholarly or scientific work on a specific topic or within a general area of expertise.

Wise joined the Department of Epidemiology in 2004, after completing her ScD at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research focuses on reproductive and perinatal epidemiology, including the study of benign gynecologic conditions, and of delayed conception and adverse pregnancy outcomes. In both of these areas, Wise has developed multidisciplinary teams from fields including obstetrics and gynecology, reproductive medicine, biostatistics, environmental measurement and analysis, nutrition, and pharmacology.

Wise is principal investigator of the SPH-based Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO) and co-investigator of the Aarhus University-based Snart Gravid (“Soon Pregnant”) and Snart Foraeldre (“Soon Parents”) studies. These online prospective cohort studies of thousands of women and couples in North America and Denmark examine whether lifestyle factors such as diet, stress, and medication use have an impact on fertility, time-to-pregnancy, and pregnancy and birth outcomes. Wise is also principal investigator of NIH-funded studies investigating environmental and genetic determinants of uterine fibroids in African American women, including an ancillary study of endocrine-disrupting chemicals and fibroids in the Study of Environment, Lifestyle, and Fibroids (SELF) in Detroit, Michigan.

Wise’s work has been cited over 7,500 times, and her most-cited paper has been cited over 350 times. She has received numerous honors, including two Excellence in Teaching Awards from SPH, a Young Investigator’s Award from ASPH/Pfizer, and the American Journal of Epidemiology’s 2013 Article of the Year. She is also a member of the Boston University Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research, president-elect of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology Research, and vice-chair of the Environment and Reproduction Special Interest Group of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

“In summary, Lauren is a super-star,” one of Wise’s colleagues wrote in a nomination letter. “She produces an extraordinarily high volume of superb scholarship. She serves the school well through her many collaborations, grant success, and service within and outside BU. The Excellence in Research Award is much deserved.”

Dzidra J. Knecht Award for Distinguished Service

Jessica Christian, grants administrator in the Department of Community Health Sciences, is the winner of the 2020 Dzidra J. Knecht Staff Award for Distinguished Service.

The Knecht Award recognizes staff members who have made outstanding and sustained contributions to the administrative functioning of their departments and therefore the school. It is named in honor of Dzidra J. Knecht, the school’s first associate dean for administration, who spent 30 years working for the university, 20 of them at SPH.

Christian joined the Department of Community Health Sciences in 2011, recruited by her former colleague Karen Smith, the department’s late executive director and the 2017 recipient of the Knecht Award. Before Smith passed away in February of this year, she noted her intention of nominating Christian for the award, calling particular attention to Christian’s “can do” attitude and her qualities as a quick learner and team player. “She is calm and professional under pressure, a joy to work with, and always produces high quality work,” Smith wrote.

In a joint nomination letter, several faculty members in the department wrote, “Jessica always steps up to the plate,” from filling the role of executive director of administration for another department last year (and then training the new director), to serving as “the epitome of assuring that core functions continue” in the current COVID-19 crisis. The nominators noted Christian’s speed, organization, and fairness in managing grants for the department and in every other task she takes on.

“Perhaps most notable, she would be mortified if she knew we were writing this about her,” they wrote. “She is humble and flies under the radar. She is most deserving of this award.”

Award for Excellence in Practice

Madeleine Scammell, associate professor of environmental health, is the winner of the 2020 SPH Award for Excellence in Practice.

This honor is presented annually to a faculty or staff member who has made outstanding and sustained contributions to the health of populations through advocacy work, community engagement, and/or public policy endeavors.

Scammell completed a DSc from SPH in 2008, and immediately joined the Department of Environmental Health as a faculty member. She has directed the Community Engagement Core of the Boston University Superfund Research Program since her time as a doctoral student, and for the last five years she has also led the community engagement core of the Center for Research on Environmental and Social Stressors in Housing Across the Life Course (CRESSH), a partnership between SPH, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Health Resources in Action, and GreenRoots.

She also chairs the board of directors for GreenRoots, an environmental justice organization in her home city of Chelsea, and has served on Chelsea’s Board of Health for 10 years. In the COVID-19 crisis, Scammell has been instrumental in bringing attention and aid to Chelsea, where the per-capita infection rate has been the highest in Massachusetts, and higher than some of the hardest-hit boroughs of New York City.

Scammell is a leader of the Research Group for the Study of Chronic Kidney Disease in Central America, a collaboration between researchers in Boston, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. She is also president and chair of the Board of Directors of the Science and Environmental Health Network.

A central part of her work is in developing mechanisms to support long-and short-term research relationships between community groups and scientists, and responding to community requests for scientific assistance.

“Throughout her teaching and research, Madeleine consistently focuses on how communities will be affected, and more importantly, how communities can be best supported and empowered to help improve their health and wellbeing,” a colleague wrote in a nomination letter for Scammell. “Madeleine is the exemplar of Think. Teach. Do.”

—Michelle Samuels