Dr. Roy Hamilton, a clinician with the Penn Memory Center, has been selected as the recipient of the Leonard Berwick Memorial Teaching Award.
The award, given to “a member of the medical faculty who in his or her teaching effectively fuses basic science and clinical medicine,” is typically given to a junior faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania.
Hamilton is an assistant professor of neurology, co-director of the Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation and is the associate director of Penn’s Clinical Neurosciences Training Program.
Hamilton said that he fits the “general mold” of the award, but believes he was selected for his focus on mentorship and outreach to minorities in the community.
“What’s unique is that a lot of the teaching that I do centers around mentorship and pipeline development for minorities,” he said.
For 10 years, Hamilton served as curriculum director of Penn’s Neuroscience Pipeline Program, which focuses on mentorship and outreach for underserved high school students in West Philadelphia. He also helped to found and develop a curriculum for the university’s Summer Mentorship Program in Medicine for talented but disadvantaged high school students. He also serves as Assistant Dean for Diversity and Inclusion for the Perelman School of Medicine, and in that context has helped many minority medical students succeed in a field where they remain very much underrepresented.
The Penn Memory Center, where Hamilton sees patients, also has a focus in reaching out to minority communities, specifically older African-Americans with the goal of educating and raising awareness about brain health and importance of participating in Alzheimer’s disease research. The center also mentors college students from LDI’s Summer Undergraduate Minority Research Program interested in public health.
“The distinguished awardees exemplify our profession’s highest values of scholarship and teaching, innovation, commitment to service, leadership, and dedication to patient care,” wrote J. Larry Jameson, dean of the Perelman School of Medicine, in an annoucement to staff.