SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Phillip Clark, a human development and family studies professor at the University of Rhode Island, has been named recipient of the 2018 Hiram J. Friedsam Mentorship award from the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, according to a URI release.
A professor of undergraduate- and graduate-level students, one of Clark’s top priorities is mentoring his students.
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“Everyone comes to a project with a different lens. We’re educating students to be a team of different lenses,” he said in a statement. “The only way to provide care is to communicate and share with each other.”
The award recognizes excellence in mentorship to students, faculty and administrators and was presented to Clark for his more than three decades of teaching at URI and his dedication to the field. Clark specializes in aging and disability, health promotion with older adults and ethical issues in geriatric care.
Clark doesn’t just talk about collaborative mentorship, he embraces it, according to College of Health Sciences Assistant Professors Skye Leedahl and Melanie Brasher, who nominated him for the award.
“He not only mentors many individuals personally, but he also creates networks of teams designed to support one another,” the pair wrote in their nomination letter, noting Clark routinely mentors not just students but colleagues as well.
To date, Clark has lead projects that total $17 million in grants from such organizations as the National Institutes of Health, Bureau of Health Professions, Administration on Aging, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education and the Rhode Island Foundation.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey or contact her via email, gowdey-backus@pbn.com.
