Awards
Fellowship in Medical Humanities
Each year, the Division offers a competitive award of one Fellowship in Medical Humanities (FIMH). This one-year Fellowship provides medical students the chance to study an area of the Medical Humanities that may interest them considerably, but that cannot be explored adequately within the constraints of the regular curriculum. The program encourages medical students to research aspects of healthcare within George Engel's medical framework-- to consider their places and those of their patients in relationship to self, family, community, nation, and biosphere. And to do students will use materials and methodologies of humanities disciplines, including, literature, fine arts, philosophy, ethics, religious studies, visual and cultural studies, law and history.
The Fellowship is intended to provide an intellectual opportunity and funding for substantive and innovative humanities-focused projects on medical topics or issues. FIMH hopes to nurture a balance of humanistic and scientific perspectives. The Fellowship does not support completion of degree programs at other institutions. The Fellowship cannot be deferred from the year in which it is granted.
Medical Humanities Summer Research Student Grants
Co-sponsored by the Student Enrichment Program, the Division offers several summer grants to eligible students with summer research proposals whose topic, objectives and methodology are more appropriate to humanities or social sciences than clinical basic sciences. Contact Adrienne Morgan, adreinne_morgan@urmc.rochester.edu for further information and deadlines.
Medical Humanities/Ethics Enrichment Grants
The Division offers a number of small grants of up to $250.00/student and available to all medical students in good standing to support small projects, conferences, workshops related to humanities and/or ethics which will enrich the individual student's medical experience. Students must submit a two page application which includes an explanation and justification for the project, conference, workshop or experience, and a clear budget statement explaining how the funding would be used. Applications are accepted throughout the year. Funds cannot be used retroactively for events or activities already completed. Students may apply for only one Enrichment grant per academic year.
Rochester Academy of Medicine Awards for Essays on a Medical or Historical Subject
Every year the Rochester Academy of Medicine (RAOM) offers a number of awards from $300 - $750 to medical students, physicians, and other health care professionals for essays on a topic in medicine or medical history. These awards are available in the fields of geriatrics, nursing, adult primary care, trauma and emergency medicine, surgery, occupational medicine, medical history any medical subject. Further information is available on the RAOM website or from Andrea Ehmann, email: andrea_ehmann@urmc.rochester.edu.
2008 Creative Excellence Award Contest
Thanks to everyone who entered this year’s contest. Twenty-one entries were submitted (9 Staff, 9 Student, 3 Faculty) and the Judging Committee had a difficult time selecting just one entry from each group.
Please join us in congratulating this year's recipients:
Staff Award: Peter Sullivan
Winning submission: short story “Remembering Sensation In The Feet When Walking”
Peter Sullivan is a Senior Social Worker and the Coordinator of the Group Therapy Service in the Department of Psychiatry. He has worked at the University of Rochester within Strong Behavioral Health since 1992.
About this story, he says that one time on a dark and stormy morning he was entering Clinton Crossings as a patient. Just as he was coming in the door he made eye contact with an elderly woman who was being lifted out of a van, she too on her way to have some medical procedure done. In that instant of recognition, there was the shared experience of being caught up in the very technically efficient and busy sweep of health care.
Mr. Sullivan says that he continues to approach the age when one’s subjective sense of time passing by speeds up, and he is so fascinated by this that he periodically asks other folks if they notice the same phenomena. Luckily, they do.
Faculty Award: Colleen Fogarty, MD
Winning submission: personal essay “Caring for a farm-worker couple with an anencephalic fetus”
Dr. Fogarty joined the Department of Family Medicine in 2004, after nearly 5 years on the Family Medicine faculty at Boston University. She is Assistant Program Director of the Family Medicine Residency and practices at Brown Square Community Health Center, where she serves as Residency Site Director.
Since medical school, Colleen has always worked in Community Health Centers, both rural and urban. She comments, “Some of my most memorable clinical experiences come from my work with migrant farm workers and from caring for pregnant women and their families. The story on which this essay is based happened early in my career, and I have worked for many years on crafting the story for a public audience.”
Dr. Fogarty has published empirical work on domestic violence and primary care mental health. Her creative writing includes poetry and prose, and has been published in the Journal of Family Practice, Family Medicine, and Families, Systems, and Health. She would like to especially acknowledge Dr. Susan McDaniel and the participants in the Department of Family Medicine Professional Writing Seminar, who provided helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
Student Award: Brynn Champney
Winning submission: poem “A WIC Clinic Waiting Room”
Brynn Champney is a UR Undergraduate studying Anthropology and interested in creative ethnography, which is the blending of traditional anthropology and creative writing. Working in Rochester's WIC clinics (supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children run by the Department of Health), she says she struggles with the assumption people have about America as a land of wealth and equal opportunity.
Her poem is one of her first attempts to raise a cultural issue in a way that is accessible to a wider audience.
Brynn is completing her first fieldwork in Rwanda this summer.
Honorable Mention was awarded to two students:
Ravi DeSilva, Medical Student, Class of 2008, for his photography submission.
“This series of images is a reflection on the physical exam in repetition and a possible patient’s perspective. This is also how medical students learn. The images are meant to use humor to arrive at the deeper reality of patients’ and students’ interactions.”
Ravi received his M.D. degree on May 16, and will continue post-graduate studies in Surgery at URMC this coming year. He plans to exhibit his photos in the Medical Center in the fall.
Jack Peltz, first-year student in the UR Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program, for his personal essay “Forgetting Father” which describes the relationship of a father and son as age begins to diminish the father. It portrays both the loss of memory with age and the desire to keep hold of memories as a loved one shows decline.
Jack graduated from Middlebury College in 1996 with a BA in Japanese, taught middle and high school Humanities and French for about 10 years, got his masters in child development at Tufts, and then matriculated to the U of R to work with Dr. Sheree Toth, his advisor at the Mt. Hope Family Center. His current research focus is broadly on the role fathers play in their children's lives. He hopes to teach/conduct research in a university when he is done with the program.
We are grateful to UCIS, the University Committee on Interdisciplinary Study, which funds the Cluster on Health and Human Values, for providing the funds for this contest.
