Initial recipient of Student Senate award
Diego Torres-Russotto, M.D., enjoys watching his students present their work.
"It's an amazing feeling," he said. "Seeing my students presenting their work, in international meetings, through posters and abstracts and platform presentations. You see how they are fielding these amazingly complex questions from the audience — questions that, before we started, they would not have been able to answer."
His commitment to his students is one reason Dr. Torres-Russotto was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Student Senate's Distinguished Mentor Award.
The award, the first of its kind given by the Student Senate, was "student-nominated and student-selected, 100 percent independent of any one given college and/or department on our campus," said Krupa Savalia, Student Senate president.
It was presented at an award reception and banquet on March 31, with UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., in attendance.
In one nomination letter, a student wrote: "Dr. Torres never became frustrated with my lack of knowledge or my lack of time. He coached me through the Institutional Review Board process, taught me how to put together a sound project and became my role model in our interactions with collaborators."
The Student Senate also noted Dr. Torres-Russotto's efforts to revitalize the Student Interest Group in Neurology (SIGN) on the UNMC campus. As a part of this effort, he helped to develop a program which put students in contact with other mentors in the department of neurology.
Both of Dr. Torres-Russotto's parents are professors, putting teaching in his blood, he said.
"I truly love education," he said. "Seeing how students grow, how they improve. What's even more important is that once the student learns something, it will produce a cascade of events that — although teachers are not involved anymore — will have implications through the generations."