By Nicholas Roznovsky
(L to R) Lowell Tong, MD; Weston Fisher, MD; and Laura Kaplan, MD [Photo courtesy Andreea Sertian, MD]
Three UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry members were singled out for acclaim by their peers at the Association of Academic Psychiatry (AAP)'s 2017 Annual Meeting in Denver. The trio received their awards during the conference's opening award session on Thursday, September 7.
AAP focuses on education in psychiatry at every level from the beginning of medical school through lifelong learning for psychiatrists and other physicians. It seeks to help psychiatrists who are interested in careers in academic psychiatry develop the skills and knowledge in teaching, research, and career development required to succeed. The organization also provides members a forum to exchange ideas on teaching techniques, curriculum, and other issues and to work together to solve problems.
Professor and department executive vice chair Lowell Tong, MD, was honored with the AAP Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of his long-term, sustained contribution as a national leader in education. Unlike other awards bestowed by the AAP which have an open nomination or submission process, nominations for this distinguished honor are made solely by the AAP Steering Committee and Awards Committee Members. Tong, an inaugural member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators and the Department of Psychiatry’s Endowed Chair for Medical Student Education from 2004-2014, was also the recipient of the organization's Psychiatric Education Award in 2009.
Assistant professor Weston Fisher, MD, received the AAP Early Career Development Award, a distinction reserved for promising junior faculty members. The program provides an opportunity for new educators to learn and share teaching techniques, skills, and innovations with other experienced AAP educators, and to network with other junior faculty from across the country. Fisher, a graduate of UCSF's Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program (RTP) and faculty member since 2014, is currently the program's associate director for core curriculum.
Fourth-year resident physician Laura Kaplan, MD, was named a 2017-2019 AAP Fellow in recognition of her promise as an educator and scholar in the field of academic psychiatry. During the two-year fellowship, she will attend the association's annual meetings, receive mentoring from AAP members, and collaborate with other program fellows. Kaplan is currently RTP's chief resident for clinical programs.
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry conducts its clinical, educational and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including UCSF campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay and Laurel Heights, UCSF Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises top-ranked hospitals – UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland – and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.
