Distinguished Contribution to Ethnic Minority Issues

The Division offer this award for distinguished contributions to the interests, goals, and purposes of Division 44 in the area of ethnic minority lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender psychology. The winners of this award have each studied and worked with the realities of LGBT people of color, locating scholarship and practice at this intersection of identities.

2009 winner

Karina L. Walters, MSW, Ph.D. - Dr. Walters holds citizenship in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma as well as the United States. She received her MSW in 1990 and her Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the William P. and Ruth Gerberding University Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work and Director of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, which she founded. Since her graduate school days, Dr. Walters has been committed to the study of LGBT and Native American health and mental health. She has some 40 academic publications and over 200 presentations to her credit. She has served on countless committees and won numerous awards for her work.

She has received almost $6 million in federal and state grants to study Native American health and mental health. In 2007-2008 she held a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research on indigenous health in New Zealand. She is a world-renowned scholar on the lives and experiences of two-spirit persons--sexual and gender minorities of Native American heritage. Her record of accomplishments leads her to be most deserving of our Award for Distinguished Contribution to Ethnic Minority Issues.

2008 winner

Margaret Rosario, Ph.D. - Dr. Margaret Rosario is currently Associate Professor in Psychology CUNY, The City College and Graduate Center. She achieved her Doctorate in Community Psychology at New York University and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University's HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies.

With over 120 publications and presentations to her name, Dr. Rosario has devoted her research talents to exploring identity development and its implications for mental and physical health. Her research finds that identity development is difficult for all individuals, but particularly for those whose identity is stigmatized by society. In examining LGBT adolescent identity development, she has also investigated the intersection of multiple identities such as gender, ethnicity, and religion because sexual identity development does not occur in a vacuum; it is influenced by other aspects of the individual and by context. Her work has furthered our understanding of minority youths' psychological symptomatology, substance use, and sexual risk behaviors by comparing the experience of sexual identity development for African American, Latino and Caucasian peer groups. Future application of her theoretical model involves an in-depth assessment of the challenges, coping strategies, and consequences experienced by LGBT youths as compared with those of their heterosexual peers in multiple settings of family, peer groups, romantic relationships, school, work, and civic engagement.

Her work has been recognized and funded by prestigious sources such as the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Cancer Institute, and National Institute of Mental Health. She is a Fellow of Division 44, as well as, Division 27: The Society for Community Research and Action. She has furthered graduate students' understanding of the complexity of identity by teaching classes at CUNY on LGBT, racial and minority health issues.

Based on her significant contribution to our understanding of multiple identities for human development, Division 44 wishes to honor Dr. Margaret Rosario for her Distinguished Contribution to Ethnic Minority Issues.

2007 winner

Arlene Noriega - Dr. Noriega is an adjunct clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and Director of Practicum Training for Stonewall Psychological Associates. She received her PhD. in clinical child psychology in 1991 from the University of Miami and completed prestigious pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at the Boston Children's Hospital of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Noriega devotes her professional work to pediatric HIV/AIDS and health issues of Latino children and their families, and has received a great deal of recognition for her achievements in these arenas. But surely one of her shining professional moments to date - and the reason we are honoring her today with our deepest gratitude and respect - is her exceptional leadership as our division coordinator for the 2007 National Multicultural Conference and Summit. As we all know, forging alliances across boundaries of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, class, and other differences is incredibly difficult, and our collective journey with our Summit brothers and sisters has been marked with some pain and disappointment along the way. But thanks to the outstanding work of Dr. Noriega, this journey has now become an experience of triumph for all of us. For two long years she toiled on behalf of a bruised and wary constituency. But Dr. Noriega's calm presence, her keen interpersonal insight, her persistent and patient understanding, and her capacity to hold, accommodate, and ultimately honor difference have made her an extraordinary bridge-builder, and our division has benefited immeasurably from her leadership.

Past winners

  • 2006 no award
  • 2005 Gary W. Harper
  • 2004 no award
  • 2003 José Toro-Alfonso
  • 2002 no award
  • 2001 Angela R. Gillem
  • 2000 Oliva Espin
  • 1999 Bart Aoki
  • 1998 no award
  • 1997 no award
  • 1996 Cynthia Gomez
  • 1995 Alex Carballo-Dieguez
  • 1994 Connie Chan
  • 1993 no award
  • 1992 Beverly Greene
  • 1991 Oliva Espin & Eduardo Morales

Nominations

Please send nominations for this award to the President-Elect.