Dr. Mishtal Wins LIFE @ UCF

Life@UCF award - Dr. MishtalThe College of Sciences is proud to announce that Associate Professor of Anthropology, Joanna Mishtal, Ph.D., was awarded one of the “Life @ UCF Awards” that was presented by the CSWF at a ceremony on Feb. 19.

The UCF Center for Success of Women Faculty (CSWF) awarded four women the “Life @ UCF” Women Faculty Excellence Award. Each year the “Life @ UCF” award theme changes to align with one of the university’s five goals. This year, the award focused on contributions to the globalization of curricula at UCF.

This celebration was for women faculty at UCF who have promoted UCF President John Hitt’s Strategic Goals. This year the CSWF focused on one his university’s goals of “providing an international focus to our curricula and research programs.”

Dr. Mishtal is a cultural and medical anthropologist. What made her contributions stand out was her role in the globalization of UCF’s curriculum by developing a new Anthropology of Global Health certificate program.

She additionally developed the anchor course for the certificate titled: Global Health in Anthropological Perspective. The certificate program was approved in late 2014 and launched in the fall of 2015, with the new core class enrolling 26 excited students that same semester.

“My medical anthropology courses draw a lot of interest not only among anthropology and other social science students, but also students interested in public health and medical education. The Global Health Certificate was my response to many of my students asking me over the last few years about deepening their education in global health,” Dr. Mishtal explained.

“This Certificate is less than a year old and it is already our most popular Certificate we offer.”

Dr. Mishtal expressed how “…grateful I am to the L.I.F.E.@UCF organization and the Center for the Success of Women Faculty for recognizing me with the Excellence for Global Achievement Award. It’s very gratifying to have one’s work appreciated with an award like this and I look forward to expanding this program.”

The CSWF’s mission is to help increase women faculty representation and to promote the success of all UCF faculty. Dr. Walters leads this charge to strengthen our recruitment, development, and retention of strong UCF women faculty.

“As we face new and re-emerging health problems, with recent examples including the Ebola and Zeka epidemics, the area of global health is rapidly expanding as a career direction, graduate and professional education, and international research as well as intervention programs. UCF students are eager to pursue global health education and I’m happy to be able to offer them a concentration in this area, regardless of their major, through the new Anthropology of Global Health Certificate.”

Dr. Mishtal’s research has been supported by the Fulbright Scholarship, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Devaney Fellowship, the Ellertson Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.



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