Dr. Philip A. May, professor of Sociology and Family and Community Medicine from the UNM Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions (CASAA) and director of the New Mexico Access to Research Careers program, recently received the Wayne S. Fenton Undergraduate Research Educator Award presented by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He is the second individual to receive the award, which was initiated last year.
Photo: Dr. Philip A. May
The award is named in honor of the late Wayne Fenton, M.D., a truly dedicated psychiatrist from NIMH who was killed while delivering mental health services to persons with severe mental illness.
The plaque for the award reads: "for outstanding achievement as a mental health research educator dedicated to teaching and supporting undergraduate honors scholars embarking on the career pathway of mental health research."
“I am very grateful to NIMH for supporting New Mexico students and me over the many years,” said May. “Furthermore, I accepted the honor on behalf of the wonderful staff and colleagues that I have had supporting me and our training programs over the years.
“The list includes Phyllis Trujillo, Thomas Atencio, Judith Arroyo, Paul Amrhein, Marita Brooks, Kathy Deeschinni, Jan Gossage, Wendy Kalberg and David Buckley.”
May’s accomplishments have been noteworthy over the course of his 30-year career as a professor training both graduate and undergraduate students in mental health and behavioral research at UNM. In addition to the many National Institutes of Health and other research grants that Professor May has written and obtained for UNM projects over the years, he has secured six major training grants from NIMH totaling more than four million dollars that are specifically for the support of student research training.
For the past 18 years he has directed the New Mexico Access to Research Careers program, which is funded by NIMH as part of their undergraduate research training initiative, Career Opportunities in Research (COR). In the program, qualified honors undergraduate students receive full tuition and fees, a substantial stipend, research project support money, and opportunities to study with the best researchers in mental health at UNM and at institutions around the country.
In addition, Alfredo Aragon, Ph.D. and Tassy Parker, Ph.D., two of the more than 120 former trainees who have graduated from the UNM COR program, completed their professional training several years ago, and are back at UNM as faculty, NIH grant-funded employees at CASAA, and are very actively engaged in training current COR students with May.
This past November, the COR program at UNM and the Pueblo of Laguna Tribal Government and the Laguna Department of Education partnered to host the entire NIMH-COR program for a national colloquium. More than 200 students and faculty from 15 universities from around the country and the federal government participated.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at December 13, 2007 02:35 PM