Awards highlight employees’ commitment to Baylor values

Faculty and staff were honored with annual awards from the RIITE Role Model program at an August ceremony in Rayzor Lounge at main Baylor.

The You FIRST RIITE Role Model program awards faculty and staff quarterly for high performance and exceptional contributions that directly advance the College’s overall mission and values of Respect, Integrity, Innovation, Teamwork and Excellence. The annual award winners are then selected from the quarterly recipients. Winners of ‘FY 17 annual awards are listed below, along with highlights from their nominations.

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Innovation

Ben Tuma

Office of Information Technology

Computing Service

Ben Tuma has demonstrated exemplary worth ethic, innovation, teamwork, and expertise to the IT infrastructure group. Our recent Epic 2015 Upgrade was a monumental undertaking which took over a year to complete start to finish, and Ben was an integral part of making this all happen. He was tasked with creating an entirely new server infrastructure to support the new version of Epic, designing and documenting a new and efficient backup and restore process, seamlessly migrating data from the old Epic servers to the new, creating scripts to keep the “machine” running smoothly, not to mention many other improvements even I probably wouldn’t understand. As a result, we had not only an incredibly smooth upgrade, but overall system performance is significantly improved. He has streamlined all related processes and provided thorough documentation of our new infrastructure outlining how all of our systems (and particularly important to me how our Epic systems) work together.

Excellence

Sharon Mitchell

Senior Administrative Coordinator and Residency Program Coordinator

Department of Family and Community Medicine

Sharon’s responsibilities include coordinating resident schedules with multiple faculty members in multiple institutions, making last minute substitutions when needed if a resident is sick, arranging the recruiting schedule of prospective residents (an ongoing job for about 4 months), helping new residents with details ranging from professional to personal, and serving as a ‘mother’ to 12 residents and more faculty members – plus, to the joy of everyone in the department, she keeps chocolate on her desk. She has an open door policy (hence the chocolate) that extends to the more than 1,000 applicants each year for eight residency positions. A current faculty member and graduate of the residency program who has known Sharon for the last many years had this to say: “Words cannot express the importance of Sharon Mitchell’s contributions to this residency program. She has given tirelessly to her job as residency coordinator, frequently going above and beyond the call of duty. She has served with patience, kindness and a loving spirit and has been a joy to work with over the years.”

Leadership

Dr. Eric T. Warwick

Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine – residency education

Dr. Warwick has been an effective residency program director since 2013 and has overseen numerous changes to the residency program. He has been instrumental in improving the educational quality and the stature of the Baylor Family Medicine Residency program. His work demonstrates a repertoire that is broad and confirms his tireless efforts and his dedication to the field of medical education. The volume of his endeavors is inspiring, especially considering his continued heavy clinical workload and his administrative responsibilities. He serves as mentor and role model to many. He is known for his happy demeanor and for being approachable and available. I knew him as a resident in our program many years ago. He was kind and gentle then. He has maintained all those desirable aspects of his personality and has now adorned himself with a mantle of serious education leadership at Baylor College of Medicine. He is driven by a desire to better his work environment and himself. I am sure that all the residency program faculty and the many residents past and present would unanimously agree with me that he is richly deserving of this award.

Teamwork

Genetic Counseling Training Program

Sandra Darilek, Daniel Riconda, Tamara Solomon, Tanya Eble, Deanna Erwin, Dianne Samad, Andrea Lewis, Katie Bergstrom, Sarah Scollon, Sarah Huguenard, Salma Nassef, Jill Mokry, Patricia Robbins-Furman and Patricia Ward

Over the past 18 months, these genetic counselors have worked very closely together to create a new curriculum, establish clinical rotations, determine metrics for student and class evaluation, create a website, develop marketing materials, develop an prospective genetic counseling student internship program, and apply for new program accreditation all while still maintaining their regular clinical, educational, and research responsibilities. The idea of a genetic counseling program at Baylor had been discussed for nearly a decade, but once it was determined that it was feasible, this team was able to work efficiently and with great collaboration to take a loy idea and make it an actual reality.

The recipients of the FY ’17 Quarter 4 RIITE Role Model awards are listed below:

Excellence

Sharon Mitchell

Senior Administrative Coordinator

Department of Family and Community Medicine

Nominated by Dr. Fareed Khan

See highlights above

Innovation

Dr. Stacey Rose

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Associate Director,

Internal Medicne Residency Program

Nominated by Dr. Chirayu Shah

Dr. Rose redesigned the entire residency evaluation system to follow milestone-based principles. Through the process, she met with leaders of each IM rotation to understand the expectations for the residents and then customize an evaluation form to the objectives outlined. She then developed clear anchors for the evaluation form and went through several iterations with the rotation leaders. This shows that she is able to work with a variety of other physicians with different perspectives about education and across training site (over 5) to find common ground on how to evaluate residents. Another example of her leadership is in her role championing an innovative wellness initiative for the residency program. In addition, she personally provides mentorship and guidance to many of the residents.

Leadership

Dr. Lara Shekerdemian

Professor

Department of Pediatrics-Critical Care

Nominated by Alex Ledesma

Dr. Shekerdemian never stops setting a vision, achieving goals and looking towards the future of critical care medicine. Under her leadership, our section has more than doubled in size due to continued expansion of critical care services and capacity. Due to her influence, Texas Children’s Pediatric Critical Care has an increased global presence in both arenas of research and education. She has developed the right Critical Care Model at both the TCH West Campus and TCH Woodlands Campus as well as a Transport Model that services all patients requiring critical care. Dr. Shekerdemian is also a physician leader for the expansion of a new Critical Care Tower at the Main Campus

Dr. Shekerdemian is not only a leader at Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital, but is also a world renowned leader in her fields of pediatric critical care and pediatric cardiology. Conferences and organizations from all over the globe have invited her to give guest lectures, moderate sessions and participate in committees for various research and educational initiatives because of her reputation in the fields.