The Bennion Center for Community Engagement Since 1987, the Bennion Center for Community Engagement has fostered lifelong learning and civic participation within the university community. The center was named for Lowell L. Bennion (BA ’28), a prominent educator, sociologist, and humanitarian, who was lauded as a “courageous, outspoken, and effective foe of religious prejudice and of racism, sexism, and materialism.” At the center’s dedication, then President Chase Peterson stated, “No university can rest merely with the transmission of old or the generation of new knowledge. It must also help students reach out to larger opportunities and responsibilities.” More than 35…

PHOTOS BY DAVE TITENSORScott Summers, PhD With the support of an endowed chair, Scott Summers is driving breakthroughs in diabetes treatment BY AUDREY MAYNARD Scott Summers, PhD, the William J. Rutter, PhD, Presidential Endowed Chair in Biochemistry, has been searching for a cure for diabetes since he was 14. Finding a cure for diabetes has been a lifelong pursuit for Scott Summers, PhD—one that began at the age of 14, when his father was diagnosed with the condition. His father’s diagnosis sparked within him a personal quest to understand the biological mechanisms that contribute to not just the disease but…

Pamela Shindano BY AUDREY MAYNARD “I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of injustice,” said Pamela Shindano, a sociology and family and consumer studies major at the U. “Growing up, I suffered a lot of unfair treatment because I wasn’t well educated enough to understand my rights.” Pamela was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and raised in South Africa before her family was granted refugee status in the United States in 2014. Now a senior, Pamela is pursuing a career in law to help advocate for people like her whose lives have been…

Two University of Utah Health Endowed Chairs Selected as National Academy of Inventors Fellows BY JULIE KIEFER AND AUDREY MAYNARD Photo courtesy of University of Utah HealthMichael L. Good, MD University of Utah Health is a pioneer in medical innovation. From implanting the world’s first artificial heart and identifying the gene that causes breast and ovarian cancer, to fostering the research of a Nobel Laureate in genetics, U of U Health has, for decades, been at the forefront of scientific discovery at home and throughout the world. Now, two University of Utah Health endowed chairs are among the latest to…

Gretchen Dietrich Marcia and John Price establish endowed directorship for the Utah Museum of Fine Arts Gretchen Dietrich wears many hats in her role as the Marcia and John Price Executive Director at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts: educator, art historian, curator, fundraiser, administrator, and more. But if you ask her what her primary–and most cherished–role is, she’s likely to say that of a builder. For nearly 15 years, Gretchen has been at the helm of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA), growing a team that collects, exhibits, interprets, and cares for more than 21,000 objects representing global…

An endowment gift that fuels research and mentorship of some of the future’s most promising cardiologists BY AUDREY MAYNARD For James C. Fang, MD, medicine is all about people. “It may sound like a medical school essay, but you’ve got to love people–nice ones, difficult ones, young or old, you’ve got to love people in all their dimensions.” It’s his inherent love for people that called Fang to a career in academic medicine. Since 2013, Fang has served as chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah. Fang is responsible for…