Faculty Excellence in Engagement Award

Chief Engagement Officer Sara Woods (left), Chancellor Joanne Li, Sofia Jawed-Wessel, Excellence in Engagement Award recipient, Interim Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Deborah Smith-Howell, and Dean Nancy Edick.

Faculty Excellence in Engagement Award

The Faculty Excellence in Engagement Award recognizes excellence in global or community engagement. Global engagement refers to the myriad ways faculty work to connect UNO to the world through their teaching, research and creative activity, and service. UNO defines community engagement as the “collaboration between the University and its local, regional, national and global communities for the exchange of knowledge and resources.”

Sofia Jawed-Wessel, Ph.D., MPH School of Health and Kinesiology College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences

Sofia Jawed-Wessel, Ph.D., MPH, teaches and generates new knowledge in the area of public health as an associate professor of health and kinesiology and as the Director of the Midlands Sexual Health Research Collaborative. Her work centers broad philosophical, cultural, and political implications of existing in a gendered and sexist world. Community engagement is crucial to her pedagogical and scholarly work; receiving this award is both affirming and motivating. Dr. Jawed-Wessel is a social justice advocate who has provided expert testimony for the Nebraska Unicameral, the Nebraska School Board of Education, and the Omaha Public School Board of Education. She was recognized in 2017 with a Ten Outstanding Young Omahans (TOYO) award and has also been honored by her colleagues with the 2017 Outstanding Achievement Award and the 2015 Mary Ann Lamanna Award for Excellence in Women and Gender Studies.

Dr. Jawed-Wessel joined UNO in 2012 with a commitment to serve the wider Omaha community because of her deeply held public health values. Her engaged research, teaching, and service, all of which focus on sexual health education and advocacy, is exemplary. Her engaged research has included needs assessments for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland to a multi-million-dollar, multi-year federal grant project that evaluated sexual education curricula across several states, including Nebraska. Dr. Jawed-Wessel and her team then communicated the findings back to the educators, youth, and health care providers who participated in the research. This reciprocal benefit represents the best of engaged scholarship and is an ongoing theme in Dr. Jawed-Wessel’s highly collaborative research in the community. Dr. Jawed- Wessel’s other engaged projects include condom distribution for Omaha Women’s Fund Adolescent Health Project, design and data collection for the HIV Community Needs Assessment Study and developing and launching the Midlands Sexual Health Research Collaborative (MSHRC), which has conducted research and outreach related to HIV education and prevention. Through the MSHRC, Dr. Jawed-Wessel designed and launched Huespring, a leadership development program tailored for LGTBQIA+ professionals. Dr. Jawed-Wessel is committed to improving public health through better public policy and has provided expert testimony on sexual health-related matters. She includes her students in her engaged work through service learning, mentorship, and graduate assistantships.