 |
 David M. Becker, J.D, enables and empowers students in the School of Law |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
Rodgers receives Dean's
Distinguished Service Award "Work is just not work to me," said Denise Rodgers, clinical research coordinator in the Department of Pediatrics and the 2001 recipient of the Dean's Distinguished Service Award.
It is that devotion that led her boss, Robert C. Strunk, M.D., professor of pediatrics, and Deborah K. White, supervisor of the pulmonary function laboratory, to nominate her for the award, which is given each year by the dean to an outstanding employee. "Denise's contribution represents an exceptional commitment and dedication to the School of Medicine," said William A. Peck, M.D., executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. "Her approach to patients and to the detail demanded by her job is exemplary." Strunk concurs. "Denise is bright, enthusiastic and energetic," he said. "She is a wonderful resource for pulmonary function studies, and her dedication to quality is widely recognized." Rodgers joined the School of Medicine in 1987 and in 1993 began to work for the Childhood Asthma Management Program (CAMP), a National Institutes of Health-funded research project that follows lung growth and response to therapy in asthmatic children. She now serves as coordinator of the St. Louis site of CAMP, which is one of eight centers across the country involved in the project. The St. Louis site boasts the program's highest retention rate -- researchers here still are following 130 of the 135 children who entered the study in the mid-1990s -- and Strunk credits Rodgers for that success. "The patients here repeatedly refer to Denise as the reason they come back for visits," he said. "Both the parents and children adore her and recognize her devotion to them and to the research." In addition to CAMP, Rodgers is involved in several asthma research projects conducted in the emergency department of St. Louis Children's Hospital. She also serves as an ambassador in the metropolitan community. For the past two years she has initiated and staffed a booth at the Black Expo in St. Louis, allowing her to talk with hundreds of people about asthma and to educate them about School of Medicine efforts to prevent and treat asthma in the African-American community.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|