The Office of Graduate Education at UNC SOM gave Shout-Outs to four more PHCO Mentors, honoring Tim Elston, PhD, Gavin Schmitz, PhD , Sandra Zarmer, and Cole Martin. Congratulations to all! Connector “Tim’s commitment to foster an environment of collaboration and networking has had a profound impact on his students” Role Model “I have always known Gavin to be extremely generous with his time; he will never turn down the opportunity to help.” “His dedication and excitement for the science has pervaded the lab culture and makes me excited to go in every day.” “It truly feels like he cares not only for my academic success, but overall professional wellbeing and general happiness…His mentorship makes me want to pursue research more.” Role Model “Sandy frequently talks with me and our other labmates about our projects. She suggests thoughtful experiments and asks insightful questions that have ended up changing the direction of my research on more than one occasion.” General Mentorship “Not only does he help troubleshoot experiments positively and teach techniques in an understandable way, but he approaches his mentees with open curiosity in how they think about experiments and then builds off of their ideas to collectively form a plan for rigorous science. Cole treats everyone with the same amount of respect and assumes everyone, regardless of background, has something valuable to add to the conversation.” Update: There were twenty mentors honored in all, five of whom were members of the Pharmacology department, including the top honor! We are very proud of all our mentors! For more information about the shout-outs visit OGE website: https://ogefacultymentoring.web.unc.edu/mentoring-award/2023-mentoring-shoutouts/. They’re also posting them to Twitter and Instagram.
