Honorary Life Membership

The University of Wisconsin Medical Alumni Association Honorary Life Membership Award honors a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health or University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics employee who has been particularly supportive and helpful to students and alumni.

2012 Honorary Life Membership Award Recipient

Gloria V. Hawkins, PhD

Dr. Hawkins is the Assistant Dean for Multicultural Affairs at the School of Medicine and Public Health. In this position, she develops and coordinates programs to enlarge the pool of medical students from diverse racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. She has created
pipeline programs for middle school, high school and college students as well as recruitment and retention programs for medical students.

Dr. Hawkins also developed a program that brings students from Spelman College to the UW-Madison campus for a summer medical research program. She received the UW-Madison Student Personnel Association's Norman Bassett Award for her leadership in developing and implementing this program. Dr. Hawkins was the first director of the Summer Collegiate Experience (SCE) at UW-Madison's College of Letters and Science.

She developed, planned and administered the 8-week summer academic program for incoming minority freshmen. Twenty-five years later, SCE is known as the premier program for helping students from diverse backgrounds transition into the UW-Madison community. She has personally mentored hundreds of students from the very beginning of her career.

Last spring, she was one of the recipients of the 2011 Dane County YWCA Women of Distinction awards. Also, she was one of the Madison Academic Staff Association Award recipients. Additionally, she is the past recipient of the UW-Madison Women of Color Award.