Association Honors Promotion of Women Faculty

Sixteen women faculty members who were promoted to full or associate professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston during the past academic year were honored Oct. 1 at the second annual luncheon hosted by the Association of Women Faculty (AWF).

It’s important to recognize the accomplishments of women promoted to full or associate professor, said AWF President Christine Koerner, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine at the UT Medical School at Houston and director of pediatric emergency medicine at LBJ General Hospital. Katherine Loveland, Ph.D., assistant dean for faculty affairs at the Medical School, congratulated the women and gave each a yellow rose.

“Although there is opportunity for women here at UTHSC-H, the AWF would like to see more qualified women in leadership positions, especially endowed chairs,” Koerner said.

According to a 2002 study by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), “women face many more challenges than men in obtaining career-advancing mentoring,” but “there are both short- and long term payoffs for academic health centers that capitalize on women’s intellectual capital.”

Only 13 percent of medical schools have a formal women faculty organization, the AAMC reported.

“The Association of Women Faculty exists to support and promote the career development of women faculty, to enhance leadership skills and provide social interaction, and to study and influence policies and practices that impact professional women,” Koerner said.

While recognizing the professional accomplishments of the women who had been promoted, the luncheon also assisted in further career development by featuring guest speaker Sherry Wilson, director of the Employee Assistance Program, who spoke on “Emotional IQ – The Other Key to Success.”

It’s not enough to study hard and to work hard, Wilson said. To succeed in today’s workplace, with its emphasis on flexibility, teams and a strong customer orientation, one must use what author Daniel Goleman calls Emotional Intelligence – “the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.”

Emotional Intelligence is twice as critical as cognitive IQ in predicting highly successful leaders, Wilson said, citing research by The Hay Group, a human resources consulting firm. The emotional competencies that most often lead to a high level of success are: initiative, influence and empathy.

Emotional Intelligence can be learned and developed as we go through life’s experience, Wilson said. Encouraging the audience to act as role models, she said, “If you embrace Emotional Intelligence, there are unlimited things you can do to make work life better.”

— By Ina Fried, Public Affairs