Four Lifetimes Honored
A quartet of longtime Miller School faculty members received awards this year for their service to the field of medicine
By Robert S. Benchley
Photographs of Drs. Nash, Altman and Vogel by Tom Salyer
Photograph of Dr. Quencer by Jorge R. Perez
Dr. Mark S. Nash
Dr. Norman Altman
Dr. Charles L. Vogel
Dr. Robert M. Quencer
Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Norman Altman, V.M.D., professor of pathology and laboratory science and the Miller School’s ombudsperson, who has been a member of the faculty for 45 years.
Dr. Altman also received the James W. McLamore Outstanding Service Award from the University of Miami Faculty Senate, presented to members of the UM community who go above and beyond the call of duty. He has held many significant roles at the University including vice provost for research, director of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the National Institutes of Health Primate Center.
“Service is what we do with, and for, others,” said Dr. Altman, who has also served on numerous Faculty Senate committees, was speaker and chair of multiple committees on the Medical School Faculty Council, and instituted a University-wide compliance program.
Mark S. Nash, Ph.D., professor of neurological surgery, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and physical therapy, and associate director and a founding principal investigator at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, was selected by the Board of Governors of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine to receive the organization’s John Stanley Coulter Award.
The award is named for the acknowledged “Father of Rehabilitation Medicine,” and it recognizes a professional whose lifetime achievements have contributed significantly to the field of rehabilitation. In receiving the award, Dr. Nash joined a list of the most distinguished clinical and research representatives of the rehabilitation profession. He credits colleagues from his 35 years at the Miller School with setting the bar high.
“I would never have envisioned during my training years that I would ultimately spend my career working with medical visionaries and research giants the likes of Barth Green, Dalton Dietrich, Richard and Mary Bunge, Allan Levi and Åke Seiger,” he said.
Robert M. Quencer, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Radiology, received the Gold Medal from the American Society of Spine Radiology. The ASSR’s highest award, the medal was presented at the ASSR’s 2019 Annual Symposium in Miami. “I was proud to be recognized by my colleagues from across the country and around the world,” Dr. Quencer said.
Charles L. Vogel, M.D., director of the Women’s Center at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at Deerfield Beach, received the AXA Advisors Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Health Care Heroes Awards event presented by the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Vogel, a professor of medicine at the Miller School, has devoted most of his 53 years in medical oncology — 20 of them as a faculty member — to researching and treating breast cancer. But while he has been published in a multitude of medical journals and involved in the development of medications that have advanced the treatment of breast cancer, those are not what he considers his greatest accomplishments.
“I am most proud of how I deal with patients. I will do anything to make my patients more comfortable physically and emotionally,” he said.
