Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award

Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award

This award is intended to publicly acknowledge the tremendous effort on behalf of our faculty in teaching professional DVM students, graduate professional MPVM students, graduate academic students and/or residents. We wish to recognize those individuals who distinguish themselves as outstanding teachers.

Woutrina Smith

Woutrina Smith - 2020 SVM Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award Winner

Dr. Woutrina Smith is recognized for excellence in teaching population health and epidemiology in professional and graduate programs; for graduate advising/mentorship, for innovation in undergraduate curricula in global One Health, and for training faculty peers in online teaching methodology. 

A Professor in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology and the One Health Institute, Smith received her DVM (2001), MPVM (2001), and PhD (2004) from UC Davis. Joining our faculty in 2007 in the Adjunct Professor series, she was appointed as an Associate Professor in 2013. Smith serves as Co-Director of the Planetary Health Center of Expertise in the UC Global Health Institute (UCGHI). 

Smith is a veterinary epidemiologist, internationally recognized for her expertise in infectious disease epidemiology, especially transmission of zoonotic water-borne and food-borne diseases between human and animal environments in developing countries. 

Training the next generation of leaders and health professionals is one of Smith’s indelible passions. Through her UCGHI role, she coordinated development of a library of interactive case studies using multi-media technologies to bring case-based learning to life. She leads a Summer Experience Program matching students with state agencies or UC Cooperative Extension staff, and co-leads the Rx One Health Summer Institute in Tanzania. This immersion approach to experiential learning is transformative for students who are provided a safe intellectual space to push their boundaries and discover new paradigms. 

In an even broader teaching role, as PI of the USAID One Health Workforce –Next Generation grant, Smith leads a global consortium bringing together faculty and students from 15 African and Southeast Asian countries to develop innovative training and research methods to address global health security risks related to zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance, and to build capacity for regional One Health university networks in Africa and Southeast Asia. 

Smith was pivotal to our school’s adoption of all on-line teaching formats in Spring 2020. She provided three instructional sessions for faculty colleagues on how to use the Zoom platform for instruction. Her own course, VET414, led with two of her colleagues, received very high praise from the students and was offered by student representatives to our Curriculum Committee as the example of how to do distance learning well.

  • Past Recipients

  • 2019    Kate Hopper
    2018    David Maggs
    2017    Patty Pesavento
    2016    Bill Vernau
    2015    Julie Dechant
    2014    Joie Watson
    2013    Munashe Chigerwe
    2012    Christine Kreuder Johnson
    2011    Steven Hollingsworth
    2010    Alan Conley
    2009    Phil Cass
    2008    Bob BonDurant
    2007    David Hird
    2006    Kent Pinkerton
    2005    Irwin Liu
    2004    Rance LeFebvre
    2003    Robert Higgins
    2002    Gerald Ling
    2001    Jim Jones
    2000   Joe Zinkl
    1999    Philip Koblik
    1998    Ian Gardner
    1997    Thomas Farver
    1996    Niels Pedersen
    1995    Peter Ihrke
    1994    Not Awarded
    1993    Not Awarded
    1992    George Stabenfeldt