ADEAGies Foundation Announces René Syler as Host of the William J. Gies Awards for Vision, Innovation, and Achievement

ADEAGies Foundation Announces René Syler as Host of the William J. Gies Awards for Vision, Innovation, and Achievement
Awards to be Presented at Celebration in Conjunction with the 86th American Dental Education Association Annual Session

WASHINGTON, DC (February 3, 2009)—The ADEAGies Foundation will honor the winners of the 2009 William J. Gies Awards for Vision, Innovation, and Achievement on Saturday, March 14, 2009. We are pleased to announce that René Syler will serve as the host of this year’s event. The Gies Awards, named after dental education pioneer William J. Gies, Ph.D., honor individuals and organizations exemplifying dedication to the highest standards of vision, innovation, and achievement in global oral health and dental education, research, and leadership.

René Syler is a former co-anchor of CBS News’ The Early Show and author of Good-Enough Mother. She conducted one-on-one interviews with former First Lady Laura Bush, Colin Powell, and Senator John McCain as well as a host of other celebrities, and covered events and ceremonies ranging from hurricane aftermaths to presidential funerals. Previously, Syler anchored newscasts at KTVT and WFAA-TV in Dallas and WVTM-TV in Birmingham, as well as served as a reporter at KOLO-TV and KTVN-TV in Reno. She is an active member of the National Association of Black Journalists and American Women in Radio & Television. She was honored with a Gracie Award in 2004 for her very personal breast cancer series. Even before her breast cancer scare, Syler was active in numerous breast cancer causes and is in her second year as a Breast Cancer Ambassador for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The Gies Awards will be presented at a highly anticipated celebration in conjunction with the ADEA AnnualSession and Exhibition. The 86th ADEA Annual Session and Exhibition will be held March 14-18, 2009, in Phoenix, Arizona; the Gies Awards will be conferred on March 14, 2009. The sponsorship by Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Products, Division of McNEIL-PPC, Inc., and OraPharma, Inc., of the 2009 Gies Awards program is part of the companies’ overall support of ADEAGies Foundation initiatives for advancing excellence in dental education in the nation’s dental schools. The Gies Awards are presented by the ADEAGies Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Dental Education Association. For more than 50 years, the ADEAGies Foundation has enhanced the oral health of the public through programs that support dental education, research, leadership, and recognition. Tickets for the celebration are $125 and can be purchased online at www.adea.org. Sponsored tables are available. For more information, please contact Julia Cockren at 703-506-3260.

About The William J. Gies Foundation: The William J. Gies (pronounced guys) Foundation was established in 1950 by colleagues and admirers of Dr. Gies with seed funds raised by the American College of Dentists. It was a private foundation and the first U.S. foundation to support dental education and scholarship. In 2002, it joined with the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) to form ADEAGies Foundation, a public foundation.

About William J. Gies and the Gies Report: William Gies was a Columbia University biochemistry professor and founder of the College of Dental Medicine at Columbia University where he was interested in dental education, science, and clinical applications. In 1926, as part of a series of studies on U.S. professional education funded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Dr. Gies published a landmark report that established the importance of dentistry as a healing science and an essential component of higher education in the health professions. The Gies Report, Dental Education in the United States and Canada, took five years to research and write. It consists of 250 pages of text and more than 400 pages of appendices, including lengthy descriptions and evaluations of the existing dental schools, each of which Dr. Gies visited. Since the Gies Report, there have been many other reports on dental education in the context of health professions education. However, Dental Education in the United States and Canada remains to this day the most relevant survey of dental education and critical issues within the field.

About ADEA: The American Dental Education Association (ADEA) is the voice of dental education. Its members include all U.S. and Canadian dental schools and many allied and postdoctoral dental education programs, corporations, faculty, and students. The mission of ADEA is to lead individuals and institutions of the dental education community to address contemporary issues influencing education, research, and the delivery of oral health care for the health of the public. ADEA’s activities encompass a wide range of research, advocacy, faculty development, meetings, and communications like the esteemed Journal of Dental Education, as well as the dental school admissions services AADSAS and PASS.