| Appointment of Dr. Maria Duarte-Gardea to Chair, Health Promotion |
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Colleagues: It is my pleasure to announce that Dr. María Duarte-Gardea has accepted the position of Chair, Department of Health Promotion, effective September 1, 2009.  This appointment will replace the departmental leadership team on which she served as co-Chairperson for the past two years with Dr. Meg Weigel and Assistant Dean Letty Paez. Please join me in recognizing all three of them for their service in this capacity since 2007. Dr. Duarte brings an impressive background to this position. She is a Registered Dietitian with more than 10 years of clinical experience in diabetes medical nutrition therapy. Before joining UTEP as Associate Professor in the Fall of 2001, she was the nutrition and research director at the Ob/Gyn Department at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center School of Medicine at El Paso. She has been actively involved in departmental, college and university committees and, as indicated above, has acted as Co-Chairperson at the Department of Health Promotion since 2007. Dr. Duarte is a mentor in the collaborative faculty mentorship program and in the FACES program and is the chair for the CHS – faculty recruitment, development and evaluation committee. Dr. Duarte’s research focuses on nutrition interventions and chronic disease prevention in Mexican-Americans. Has published research papers and book chapters and has co-authored papers in the field of nutritional chemistry. She is the principal investigator of a multi-million dollar federally funded project on community-based participatory research and participates in a multi-institutional transborder chronic disease prevention project. Duarte teaches nutrition and supervises undergraduate, master and doctoral students. She is a faculty core member in the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences PhD Program in the College of Health Sciences & School of Nursing and in the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Environmental Sciences & Engineering. Dr. Duarte has as participated as reviewer in multiple study sections from the National Institutes of Health and Center for Disease Control, and more recently in the Robert Wood Foundation’s Salud America initiative. She is a member of the expert panel in gestational diabetes of the American Dietetic Association and will be a speaker at the 2009 Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo in Denver, Colorado in October. She also holds a state government appointment at the Texas Diabetes Council – dietitian position – since 2007. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Duarte and welcoming her to this important role! |
