Bulik receives mentoring award from women's leadership council

Dr. Cynthia Bulik

The Carolina Women’s Leadership Council on Thursday (Feb. 26) honored University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professors Cynthia Bulik and Kathleen Rounds for being great mentors. The awards were presented during the council’s annual meeting at the Carolina Inn.

Bulik, the William R. and Jeanne H. Jordan Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders in the department of psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine and professor of nutrition in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and School of Medicine, received the council’s faculty-to-faculty mentoring award. Rounds, a professor in the UNC School of Social Work, received the faculty-to-student award.

The Carolina Women’s Leadership Council, a volunteer committee formed during the Carolina First Campaign – the University’s major fund-raising drive that ended Dec. 31, 2007 – sponsors the awards. The council continues to be engaged with the University, and council members have raised $230,000 to endow the mentoring awards as an effort to bolster faculty support.

The awards, which carry a stipend of $5,000 each, recognize outstanding faculty members who go the extra mile to guide, mentor and lead students or junior faculty members as they make career decisions, embark on research challenges and enrich their lives through public service, teaching and educational opportunities.

Bulik directs the UNC Eating Disorders program, where she mentors more than a dozen junior faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and several advanced graduate students. She also has mentored junior and senior colleagues outside UNC by sponsoring visiting scholars and by spearheading initiatives designed to increase student and junior faculty participation and provide direct educational and mentoring services to attendees of the Academy of Eating Disorders and Eating Disorders Research Society annual conferences.

One of Bulik’s nominators said she “single-handedly debunks the myth that exceptional scientists have neither the time nor the proclivity for being exceptional teachers. On the contrary, she wholeheartedly embraces her role as mentor and relishes every opportunity to help others spread their wings and fly.”

Another described working with Bulik as “like hooking myself to a star… (she) seems to see the potential in each person and then nurtures that potential in ways that few senior faculty do.”

Another said simply: “If there were more mentors like Cindy Bulik, I think there would be more women in science.”

First presented in 2006, the mentoring awards will be an ongoing recognition program, open to tenured and tenure-track faculty, as well as fixed-term faculty who have taught at UNC for at least three years. Nominations may be submitted by anyone from the UNC community, including current and former faculty, staff and students. A selection committee appointed by the provost and on which Carey serves reviews and recommends the award recipients.

The Carolina Women’s Leadership Council is a nationwide network of women. Along with providing financial support, members volunteer their time and share their expertise, champion UNC in their regions and serve on boards that further the University’s mission.

The council is co-chaired by Mary Anne Dickson, class of 1963; Molly Dewar Froelich, class of 1983; and Drucie French, classes of 1971 and 1978.