Congratulations to University of Washington School of Public Health faculty Grace John-Stewart for receiving the 2024 Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award! The Landolt Award recognizes faculty who exemplify excellence in graduate student education. John-Stewart along with the other UW award recipients will be honored on June 6, at the annual UW Awards of Excellence Ceremony.
“Mentoring is important to me because I benefitted from amazing mentorship, and I have found mentoring incredibly fulfilling,” said John-Stewart. “As a mentor, you get to be a part of the journey of unique and remarkable people. Throughout the journey, ideas are developed, projects are birthed, and paths emerge, which transforms both mentee and mentor.”
John-Stewart is a professor in global health, epidemiology, pediatrics and medicine, and director of the Center for Integrated Health of Women, Adolescents and Children (Global WACh), and her interdisciplinary expertise in these areas has led her to make a profound impact on those of whom she has mentored.
“I was Dr. John-Stewart’s first mentee and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been placed in this position,” said Carey Farquhar, interim chair of global health. “She is one of the most intelligent and insightful people I know and yet she was somehow able to make the process by which she arrived at her decisions accessible to me during my early years of training. Twenty-four years later I consider her to be the most influential person in my career development at UW.”
Throughout her 25-year tenure at the UW, John-Stewart has mentored 135 individuals, spanning from undergraduates and master’s degree students, through pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellows, to junior and mid-career faculty, with a strategic and thoughtful approach. Her commitment to diversity and inclusivity is also evident in her mentorship, with 87 of her mentored graduate students identifying as women, and 33 international students from nations across Africa.
“The impact of Dr. John-Stewart’s ongoing research and mentoring continues to multiply, partly because many of her mentees, the “second generation” mentees of those mentees, and now a few “third generation” mentees have, themselves, become outstanding mentors and researchers,” said Farquhar.