Five Women Faculty Members Honored With Prestigious Awards

Barbara H. Long, an associate professor of health and human sciences and chair of the Division of Professional Studies at Bridgewater College in Virginia, received the 2016 Bob and Lynn Caruthers Service Award from the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education.

Dr. Long graduated from Bridgewater College in 1988 with a degree in biology. She earned a master’s degree in sports medicine and fitness management from the United States Sports Academy in Daphne, Alabama, and an educational doctorate in organizational leadership from Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia.

Frances Pouch Downes, a professor in the College of Human Medicine Public Health Division at Michigan State University, received the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

Professor Downes is a graduate of Indiana University. She earned a master of public health degree and a doctorate in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Maria Fernandez-Gimenez, a professor in the department of forest and rangelands stewardship at Colorado State University, received the Order of the Polar Star from the government of Mongolia. Since 2008, Professor Fernandez-Gimenez has been the director of the Mongolian Rangelands and Resilience Project.

Professor Fernandez-Gimenez earned her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.

Estella Atekwana, Regents Professor and director of the Boone Pickens School of Geology at Oklahoma State University, received the Outstanding Educator Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. Professor Atekwana joined the faculty at Oklahoma State in 2008.

Dr. Atekwana holds bachelor’s and master’s degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. She earned a Ph.D. at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Holly Powell Kennedy, the executive deputy dean and the inaugural Varney Professor of Midwifery at the Yale School of Nursing, received the Hattie Hemschemeyer Award at the 61st annual meeting of the American College of Nurse-Midwives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Dr. Kennedy is a graduate of Chaminade University in Honolulu. She holds a master’s degree from the Medical College of Georgia, and a doctorate in nursing from the University of Rhode Island.