January 30, 2008

Andreea Seritan, an assistant clinical professor in the UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has been selected to receive a Chancellor’s Achievement Award for Diversity and Community for 2007-08.

Selected in recognition of her contributions to enhancing inclusiveness and diversity at UC Davis, Seritan, along with other award recipients, was honored at a reception on Tuesday, Jan. 29, at the residence of UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef. A $750 monetary prize accompanies the award.

Seritan founded the women’s faculty development group in the psychiatry department and has served as chair of the Society for Women in Academic Psychiatry since its inception in 2005. The society’s educational activities include poster presentations at the Association for Academic Psychiatry and the American Association of Medical Colleges, a paper published in Academic Psychiatry, and grand rounds presentations and events with nationally known speakers.

For the UC Davis Women’s Midlife Assessment Program, Seritan created an elective clinical rotation for fourth-year residents. She also developed a research project with the program and presented its results at the North American Menopause Society meeting in October 2007. Seritan also has developed a new gender and sexuality curriculum for fourth-year psychiatry residents, to start in spring 2008.

Seritan has been a scholarly mentor for senior psychiatry residents and a medical student on projects related to women’s mental health, such as postpartum depression and the relationship of vasomotor symptoms with depression and anxiety in midlife women.

In October 2006, Seritan founded a residents’ group, the Central California Psychiatric Women’s Health and Careers Committee, which conducts community outreach and education on women’s mental health. The committee coordinated the psychiatry department’s participation in the Mental Health Walk in October 2007, the largest community outreach project involving the department’s residents in many years.

Seritan is a member of the UC Davis School of Medicine’s Women in Medicine Executive Committee, and serves as its director of special events. She also is a member of the school’s Office of Diversity Advisory Council for 2007-08.