Drexel University College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership is pleased to announce that the 2014 Marion Spencer Fay Award recipient will be Phyllis A. Dennery, MD.
Dennery is a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the chief of the Division of Neonatology and Newborn Services at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
The national Marion Spencer Fay Award, now in its 51st year, is presented annually to a woman physician and/or scientist who has made an exceptionally significant contribution to health care as a practitioner, medical educator, administrator and/or research scientist and who exhibits significant future potential.
Dennery will be honored by the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership on Tuesday, October 21, 2014, at 11:30 a.m. in the Bossone Research Enterprise Center on Drexel’s campus in Philadelphia. She will deliver the annual Marion Spencer Fay Award lecture and receive the award, which includes a $10,000 honorarium.
In addition to her prominence as educator, mentor, and clinician, Dennery is also a superb scientist who has pioneered in the area of neonatal oxidative lung disease and who continues to distinguish herself by securing continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health.
She rose through the academic ranks at Stanford University and was tenured there. She was then recruited to Penn in 2003. She holds the Werner and Gertrude Henle Endowed Chair in Pediatrics from CHOP. Dennery graduated from Howard University College of Medicine (1984) and McGill University (1980). She trained in pediatrics at George Washington University/Children’s Hospital National Medical Center and completed a fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine from Case Western Reserve/Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital.
From 2005 to 2006, Dennery participated in the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine® (ELAM) program in Drexel University College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership.
“We are pleased to honor Dr. Dennery for her clinical skills and her scholarship,” said Lynn H. Yeakel, director of the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership. “Because of her accomplishments in both areas, she was selected from a distinguished group of nominees from across the nation.”
"I feel deeply honored to receive the 2014 Marion Spencer Fay Award,” said Dennery. “Dr. Fay was a remarkable pioneer, scientist and leader, and I am thrilled to be a part of celebrating her legacy.”
Marion Spencer Fay, PhD, was dean and president of Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (a predecessor institution of Drexel University College of Medicine) from 1946 to 1963. The National Board for Women in Medicine established this award in her name in 1963 to recognize her pioneering leadership. Drexel University College of Medicine maintains the traditions of the Woman’s Medical College and the Medical College of Pennsylvania that reflect a 160-year legacy of excellence.
Past Marion Spencer Fay Award honorees include Nancy C. Andrews, MD, PhD, dean, Duke University School of Medicine; Nancy Adler, PhD, University of California, San Francisco; and Julie Overbaugh, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.