MCW/Marquette Medical Alumni Association Awards
Each year, the MCW/Marquette Medical Alumni Association selects alumni for its highest honors to acknowledge their contributions to improving health through medicine, science and other means. On September 9, the Alumni Association honored five 2022 award recipients at the Alumni Weekend banquet.
2022 Award Recipients
Stephen W. Hargarten, MD '75, received the Humanitarian of the Year Award. Dr. Hargarten is a long-term member of the MCW faculty. He is Former Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Professor of Emergency Medicine, Founding Director of the Comprehensive Injury Center, Founding Dean for Global Health, and Former Global Health Pathway Director. He was also a Special Government Employee of the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
In 2010, Dr. Hargarten was appointed MCW’s Associate Dean for Global Health and has overseen the development of over 40, faculty-led affiliation agreements with academic medical centers and Ministries of Health in over 25 countries.
Dr. Hargarten is an internationally recognized figure in the study of injury and violence as a disease. He has carried the reputation of MCW with him as he currently serves on CDC’s Community Preventions Services Task Force and on the Executive Committee of the National Academies’ Transportation Research Board.
Dr. Hargarten co-authored the book: Reducing Injury and Death: A Public Health Sourcebook on Guns. In 2011, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (formally the Institute of Medicine) which is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. He is a past member of their Board on Global Health and the Forum on Global Violence and Prevention. In 2011, Dr. Hargarten received the Johns Hopkins Scholars Award for his contributions in Public Health.
Internationally, Dr. Hargarten has served MCW as Co-Principal Investigator on a large EMS training project in multiple countries beginning in Poland. Dr. Hargarten has served on the Violence and Injury Prevention Mentoring Committee for the World Health Organization. Dr. Hargarten has been actively engaged in global health and humanitarian activities, beginning in the 1980’s, serving as the chief physician from MCW assisting with care in a refugee camp in Northern Thailand. More recently, he has been actively engaged in strengthening emergency care in Belize. Currently, Dr. Hargarten is the co-founder of the Network to Prevent Gun Violence in the Americas. Dr. Hargarten is a true global injury prevention and control humanitarian leader. We are grateful to be able to honor Dr. Stephen W. Hargarten and his work with this award.
View video featuring Stephen W. Hargarten, MD ’75, the 2022 Humanitarian of the Year.
Gary L. Kolesari, MD '77, PhD '76, received the Distinguished Service Award. Dr. Kolesari is a proud MCW alumnus and was a long-term member of the faculty as Professor of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy for over 40 years. He is now Professor Emeritus and continues to train future physicians as a volunteer faculty member.
Dr. Kolesari taught Clinical Human Anatomy to over 8000 students. He made the Clinical Anatomy course one of the most memorable of all medical school courses. He received the MCW Distinguished Service Award in 2001. The senior medical student class presented him with the Harry Beckman Basic Science Teaching Award eight times. He was a charter member of the MCW Society of Teaching Scholars -- 1990. Year after year alumni share what a difference he made in their lives and how Clinical Human Anatomy helped make them the physicians they are today.
Dr. Kolesari also served on the Executive Committee of the Walter Zeit Fellowship for many years, inspiring others to help elevate the stature of MCW. He has also served on the Reunion Committee for the Class of 1977 helping to facilitate lifetime connections with his classmates and to MCW. For over twenty years he was a regular at the Saturday Clinic for the Uninsured, a primary care clinic run by medical and pharmacy students that offers free health services to the uninsured patients of Milwaukee. The Alumni Association is thrilled to honor Dr. Gary L. Kolesari with this award.
View video featuring Gary L. Kolesari, MD '77, PhD '76, 2022 Distinguished Service Award.
Cheryl A. Maurana, PhD, was named Honorary Alumna of the Year. Dr. Maurana serves as Senior Vice President for Strategic Academic Partnerships, Professor of Population Health, and Founding Director of the Kern National Network for Caring and Character in Medicine. For the last 27 years, she has been one of MCW's most effective thought leaders, ambassadors, and representatives.
Dr. Maurana joined MCW in 1995 to direct the statewide Area Health Education Center program. She founded MCW’s Center for Healthy Communities and served as the first MCW senior associate dean for public and community health. As the founding director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment, a beneficiary of Wisconsin’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield conversion, at MCW, she led the investment of $275 million in more than 475 initiatives focused on community health improvement, research, and health workforce education. In 2007, she developed and launched MCW’s PhD in public and community health, the first in the nation. In 2010, she served as the founding director for the Institute for Health and Society, now the Institute for Health and Equity.
Dr. Maurana served as the founding director of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education and the Kern National Network for Caring and Character in Medicine. The Kern Institute is dedicated to transforming faculty, students, and curriculum within MCW and beyond. The Kern National Network focuses on fostering culture and systems change in medical education and the practice of medicine. She continues to lead the Network, expanding its growth beyond the seven founding members (Dartmouth, Mayo, Vanderbilt, UCSF, UT Austin, UW Madison and MCW). Total giving to MCW from the Kern family and the Kern Family Foundation for the institute and network now stands at $87.9 million, including a $37.9 million investment in 2017 that originally launched the Kern Institute and the Kern National Network. Most recently the Kern Family Foundation renewed its support with a $50 million gift to MCW. This gift designates $10 million as a matching opportunity to inspire additional support.
In 2019, Dr. Maurana led a strategic campaign that promotes gender equity through fostering change in systems and social norms. This campaign, IWill MCW, emphasizes the power of individual responsibility for positive change. The MCW/Marquette Medical Alumni Association is profoundly grateful to Dr. Maurana for the impact she has had and will continue to have as MCW pioneers pathways to a healthier world. We are so thrilled to welcome Dr. Cheryl A. Maurana as an Honorary MCW Alumna.
View video featuring Cheryl A. Maurana, PhD, 2022 Honorary Alumna of the Year.
Sachin C. Patel, MD '06, PhD '04, was named the Graduate School Alumnus of the Year.
Dr. Patel trained in clinical psychiatry at Vanderbilt where he also continued his research training in translational neuroscience. He joined the faculty at Vanderbilt where he rose to the James G. Blakemore Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of the Division of General Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Dr. Patel is now the Chair and Lizzie Gilman Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Services at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and psychiatrist-in-chief at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Norman and Ida Stone Institute of Psychiatry.
An internationally recognized expert in the field of psychiatric neuroscience, Patel is a respected physician-scientist who combines a deep background in cellular, molecular and behavioral neuroscience with clinical expertise in psychiatry and addiction medicine.
Dr. Patel is also a prolific scientist: he has published many peer-reviewed papers, books, chapters and review articles in journals including Biological Psychiatry, Nature Neuroscience and Neuron, and amassed nearly 6,000 citations. He has consistently secured grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and numerous foundations for his work studying the biology and pathophysiology of the endocannabinoid system. We are so pleased to honor Dr. Sachin C. Patel with this award.
View video featuring Sachin C. Patel, MD '06, PhD '04, Graduate School Alumnus of the Year.
Anna M. Ledgerwood, MD '67, was named the Medical School Alumna of the Year.
As a clinician, researcher, and teacher, Dr. Anna Ledgerwood has forged a remarkable journey. She was one of three women in the 1967 graduating class of Marquette University School of Medicine, MCW’s predecessor institution. Her first exposure to Surgery was during her third year of medical school while a student on Dr. Edwin Ellison’s Blue Surgery Service at the Milwaukee County General Hospital. Dr. Ledgerwood matched for a rotating internship at Detroit General Hospital followed by a residency in General Surgery at Wayne State University where she was recruited as a faculty member and continues there today. She has been at the forefront of the development of the specialty of trauma surgery – partnering with Dr. Charles Lucas at Detroit Receiving Hospital to provide emergency surgical care for decades. Together, they developed groundbreaking techniques in resuscitation from hemorrhagic shock, instituting clinical trials in the care of patients with traumatic injuries.
Dr. Ledgerwood has made significant contributions to academic surgery as a leader in the profession. She has served as a Governor and First Vice-President of the American College of Surgeons. She was elected President of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma in 1998 and in 2014 was the first woman to be selected President of the American Surgical Association, one of the oldest and most prestigious professional surgical organizations in the country.
Since graduating from our medical school fifty-five years ago, Anna Ledgerwood has provided unwavering compassionate care to patients with the most complex surgical diseases and severe traumatic injuries. She has been an inspirational educator for generations of students of surgery, advancing the art and science of the profession at a pace and intensity unmatched by few others. We are so pleased to honor Dr. Anna M. Ledgerwood with this award.
View video featuring Anna M. Ledgerwood, MD '67, Medical School Alumna of the Year.
Make Your Nominations for the 2023 Awards!
Distinguished Service
Graduate School Alumnus or Alumna of the Year
Honorary Alumnus or Alumna
This award is presented to non-alumni whose commitment to MCW is unwavering and whose continued support of the college’s education, research, patient care and community engagement efforts are pervasive and demonstrable.