Awards and honors

Hispanics in Philanthropy named Maria de los Angeles Torres, professor of Latin American and Latino studies, among the recipients of its 2016 HIPGivers Award.

Awards and Honors

Hispanics in Philanthropy named Maria de los Angeles Torres, professor of Latin American and Latino studies, among the recipients of its 2016 HIPGivers Award. The honor recognizes Latino philanthropists, community leaders, educators and artists. Torres, who is also executive director of the UIC-based Inter-University Program for Latino Research, will be recognized March 10 in Sonoma, California, during the organization’s annual leadership summit and gala.

Kelly LeRoux, associate professor of public administration, received a Best Article Award for a report on nonprofits increasing voter turnout, and an Editor’s Prize for a report on recruiting nonprofit managers, at the annual conference of the Association of Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action.

Rohan Jeremiah, assistant professor of community health sciences, in collaboration with Global Girl Inc., received the 2015 MacArthur Foundation International Connections Grant Fund.  Jeremiah and Global Girls executive director Marvinetta Woodley-Penn are launching an exchange program for adolescent girls in Chicago and Grenada, West Indies. A goal of the initiative is to facilitate opportunities for girls to collaboratively develop and perform a performance art piece with the use of music, dance and drama that symbolizes the public health realities of womanhood.

A group of MIS graduate students brought home the gold from Kraft Foods’ “Clustering Challenge,” a two-day analytics event held at Kraft headquarters. UIC team members Pravesh Shenoy, Karthikeyan Venugopal, Chiranjib Ghorai, Sameer Deshpande and Manohar Lakshmikanthaiah competed against teams from 20 area schools to solve a practical business problem using data analytics and application development. They were awarded $5,000 for their winning clustering solution, which they presented to Kraft executives.

Ross Arena, professor and head of physical therapy in the College of Applied Health Sciences, was named a fellow of the European Society of Cardiology.

Kanokwan (Mandy)Bunsawat, doctoral student in kinesiology, has received the American Heart Association’s Predoctoral Fellowship, which will fully fund her research for two years. Her project is “The role of obesity in neurovascular responses to exercise.”

Teresa Córdova, director of the Great Cities Institute, received the Sor Juana Award for university programs from the National Museum of Mexican Art. The award recognizes women worldwide for outstanding civic, social and artistic contributions.

The Water Museum by Luis Alberto Urrea, professor of English and LAS distinguished professor, was named among Kirkus Reviews’ best fiction books of 2015.

Val Prater and Lois Hitchcock, clinical assistant professors of health information management, received fellowships from the American Health Information Management Association.

Ken Morgan, director of the Urban Health Program in the College of Applied Health Sciences, won the 2015 Directors Award (Central Region) from the National Association of Medical Minority Educators. The award honors his service as a regional director and committee participant at the National Association of Medical Minority Educators.

Angela Odoms-Young, associate professor of kinesiology in the College of Applied Health Sciences, received the 2015 Katherine Kaufer Christoffel Founder’s Award from the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children.