Two exceptional female University of Iowa leaders and educators were awarded the Susan C. Buckley Distinguished Achievement Award for Staff and May Brodbeck Distinguished Achievement Award for Faculty at the University of Iowa’s annual Celebration of Excellence and Achievement Among Women on April 6.

Deborah Wessels, former associate research scientist in the Soll Lab in the Department of Biology, received the Susan C. Buckley Distinguished Achievement Award for Staff.

Loreen Herwaldt, professor of internal medicine–infectious diseases in the Carver College of Medicine, received the May Brodbeck Distinguished Achievement Award for faculty.

Susan C. Buckley Distinguished Achievement Award for Staff: Deborah Wessels

The Susan C. Buckley Distinguished Achievement Award for Staff recognizes an outstanding accomplishment, or a lifetime record of service and achievement provides a role model for women and/or girls. This year, the award recognizes the achievements of Deborah Wessels.

Wessels retired in January 2022 after working in the Soll Lab for 36 years. Wessels made several notable discoveries on cell motility in cancers and other diseases and helped develop state-of-the-art analyses for live video microscopy.

Wessels began her career in 1984 as a graduate student in the Soll Lab. Her discoveries contributed substantially to the initial funding and subsequent renewal for 24 consecutive years of the Program Project Grant on the Basic Biology of Cell Motility, a National Institutes of Health funded grant awarded to David R. Soll.

Working with a team of engineers and programmers, Wessels participated in the design and implementation of integrated systems for high-speed 4D imaging and image analysis — the first of its kind. The success of these efforts led to a $1 million award from the W. M. Keck Foundation to establish a facility to support the research of visiting scholars from around the world to take advantage of these capabilities available only at the University of Iowa.

Wessels discovered that breast cancer cells can crawl along the outside surface of blood vessels and then successfully identified treatments that inhibited these behaviors. In all these efforts, Wessels supervised the research of many female undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, and research scientists from diverse backgrounds who, under her leadership, earned co-authorship on papers published in peer-reviewed journals and advanced into successful careers in medicine or private industry.

May Brodbeck Distinguished Achievement Award for Faculty: Loreen Herwaldt

The May Brodbeck Distinguished Achievement Award for Faculty recognizes an outstanding accomplishment or a lifetime record of service and achievement that provides a role model for women and/or girls. This year’s award recognizes Loreen Herwaldt.

Herwaldt is a professor of internal medicine at the UI Carver College of Medicine and a professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health.

Herwaldt served as the hospital epidemiologist at the UI Hospitals & Clinics for more than 20 years. She does infectious diseases consults and continues to conduct research on health care-associated infections. She has investigated clusters of infections and she has studied the epidemiology of several organisms that cause health care-associated infections, including staphylococci and Legionella.

Herwaldt currently is the principal investigator for the UI's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Epicenter grant. In 2012, she received the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America’s mentor scholar award and in 2016, she received the UI Graduate College’s Outstanding Faculty Postdoctoral Mentor Award.

Jean Y. Jew Women’s Rights Award: Kelsy Drake, Christina Kaufman, Alexa Puccini, and Sage Ohlensehlen

The Jean Y. Jew Women’s Rights Award recognizes outstanding accomplishments and contributions to the UI; a longstanding record of leadership, effort, and activism; and accomplishments of national scope or impact.

Kelsy Drake, Christina Kaufman, Sage Ohlensehlen, and Alexa Puccini, members of the Iowa women’s swimming team, brought a Title IX noncompliance lawsuit against the university after it cut its men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis, and men’s gymnastics programs in 2020. As a result of the successful suit, the UI permanently reinstated the women’s swimming and diving program in February 2021 and added women’s wrestling as a Division I varsity sport beginning in the 2023-24 academic year.

Kelsy Drake, originally from Marion, Iowa, graduated with a degree in industrial engineering from Iowa in 2021, and is currently working in Coralville, Iowa. She won the Big Ten title in the 100-yard butterfly in 2020.

Christina Kaufman, from Chicago, Illinois, is a student majoring in business analytics and information systems at Iowa and was named to the Academic All-Big Ten team in 2020-2021.

Sage Ohlensehlen, of Bettendorf, Iowa, is currently attending law school at Southern Methodist University.

Alexa Puccini, originally from Naperville, Illinois, transferred to the University of Arizona and where she continues to compete.

Student Achievements

Nine students were recognized with scholarships to honor their work and commitment to women’s issues, diversity, and social activism.

Margaret P. Benson Memorial Award

• Claire Player, of Mount Vernon, Iowa, is a junior majoring in gender, women’s & sexuality studies and international studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• Dawn Thomas, of Chicago, Illinois, is a full-time master of arts in teaching (MAT) secondary English education graduate student at Iowa.

Wynonna G. Hubbard Scholarship

• Selveyah Gamblin, of Peosta, Iowa, is a third-year student majoring in political science, ethics and public policy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Stephen Lynn Smith Memorial Scholarship for Social Justice

• Oriette D’Angelo of Caracas, Venezuela, is a second-year doctoral student in Spanish & Portuguese with a graduate certificate in gender, women’s and sexuality studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences/Graduate College.
• Amira Nash of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a second-year doctoral student in educational policy and leadership studies: schools, culture, and society, College of Education/Graduate College.

Adah Johnson/Otilia Maria Fernandez Scholarship

• Shimin Park of Cheongju, South Korea, is a senior majoring in gender, women’s and sexuality studies, with a minor in sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Kristin K. Lippke Memorial Scholarship

• Claire Player from Mount Vernon, Iowa, is a junior majoring in gender, women’s and sexuality studies and international studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• Yasmina Sahir from Dyersville, Iowa, is a fourth-year student majoring in social justice and criminology, with a minor in philosophy and certificate in human rights, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Adele Kimm Scholarship

• Mengmeng Liu from Jinzhou, China, is a second-year doctoral student in communication studies as well as a certificate in gender, women’s, and sexuality studies and public digital humanities, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences/Graduate College.

Jane A. Weiss Memorial Dissertation Scholarship

• Hannah I. Rochford of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Health Management and Policy, College of Public Health/Graduate College.