Three Women Full Professors Honored With Prestigious Awards

Alvia Wardlaw, professor of art history and director and curator of the University Museum at Texas Southern University in Houston, received the Dr. John E. Fleming Award from the Association of African American Museums.

A graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Professor Wardlaw earned a master’s degree in art history at New York University. In 1996, she became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in art history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Nancy Adler, the Lisa and John Pritzker Professor of Psychology, chair of the department of psychiatry, and director of the Center for Health and the Community at the University of California, San Francisco, has been selected to receive the 2017 Academy Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Biomedical Science from the New York Academy of Medicine. She will be honored on November 2.

Dr. Adler’s research focuses on investigating why individuals engage in health-damaging behaviors and how their understanding of risk affects their choices. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Melissa Simon, the George H. Gardner Professor of Clinical Gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, will receive the 2017 Marion Spencer Fay Award from the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership at the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on eliminating health disparities among women from underserved populations, particularly those who suffer from cancer.

Dr. Simon is a graduate of the University of Chicago. She holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a medical degree from Rush Medical College in Chicago.