Dr. Judy Warren receives Superior Service Award for distinguished career
BRYAN — Dr. Judith “Judy” L. Warren has received a Superior Service Award in the category of distinguished career from the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
Superior Service Awards recognize AgriLife Extension faculty and staff members who provide outstanding performance in Extension education or other outstanding service to the agency and to Texans. The award was presented Jan. 12 during the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Conference awards dinner at the Brazos Expo Center in Bryan.
According to the nomination, in her nearly 35 years with the agency, “Dr. Warren has exemplified professionalism, leadership and service in her distinguished career with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.”
Beginning in 1981 as an Extension gerontology specialist, Warren progressed to become a program leader for the family development and resource management unit, associate director for human sciences and then special initiatives coordinator. Her efforts have been recognized through the Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award in Extension by the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University, three Extension Superior Service Awards, an impact award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and several other forms of recognition.
The nomination also stated that early in her career Warren had a “deep understanding of the need for an interdisciplinary focus to Extension’s health-related programming,” and that her earliest grants related to health and well-being, including worksite wellness safety, healthy communities, immunization, cancer risk reduction education and cancer risk reduction in rural communities.
During her time as a gerontology specialist, she conducted 648 county programs reaching over 30,000 individuals and provided 106 agent trainings reaching 4200 county agents. She continued to support the growth of interdisciplinary health programming by specialists in her role as a program leader and associate director for human sciences.
“Dr. Warren has the rare ability to translate the latest research into an educational experience that connects the learner with what they need to know,” the nomination stated. “Disseminating the instructional development and evaluation strategies that result in programs reaching intended outcomes has been a focus of her leadership philosophy.”
Although she has a 100 percent Extension appointment, Warren is also a member of the adjunct graduate faculty in the Texas A&M School of Public Health, a Faculty Fellow in the Texas A&M College of Architecture, is on the graduate faculty of the Texas A&M College of Education and has served on graduate committees in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, as well as in architecture, geosciences and education. She also has served on training collaborations with wide-ranging groups, including Texas Department on Aging, Texas Department of Health, Health Care Financing Administration, Texas State Board of Insurance, Alzheimer’s Association, Arthritis Foundation, and Area Agencies on Aging.
She is a highly recognized Extension professional in the field of gerontology and has greatly advanced understanding of the aging process, challenged myths and enhanced prevention practices leading to elders continuing productive lives, the nomination states. She was instrumental in the dissemination of the multimedia Minority Peer Educator Project, funded by the Administration on Aging and implemented in over 100 Texas counties and adopted in 26 other states. Through this initiative, African-American and Hispanic peer educators taught about managing hypertension, diabetes, obesity and depression, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recognized this project with an Impact 2000 award.
As co-principal investigator of Volunteer Mental Health Paraprofessionals Serving Nursing Home Residents: Project OASIS — Older Adults Sharing Important Skills — she developed a 40-hour, multimedia, interactive training program to enhance counseling skills and support older volunteers as paraprofessionals to help improve the mental health of nursing home residents.
Warren was also cited for her ability to secure outside grants and contracts, including the USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture-funded project known as Texas Grow! Eat! Go!, a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional project to address childhood obesity, which was one of the single largest grants ever awarded to Extension.
According to the nomination, Texas Grow! Eat! Go! collaborators from the University of Texas School of Public Health describe Warren as “…always seeking additional ways to leverage our work in the community… her networks helped facilitate this initiative, but Dr. Warren is one of the few people that could actually make this happen!”
Throughout her Extension career, Warren has made 42 invited presentations, more than 51 peer-reviewed presentations, developed more than 70 educational resources, including program kits, program manuals, numbered Extension publications, educational curricula, videotapes and audio-visual resources, exhibits, handouts, instructional and program guides, and over 187 un-numbered Extension publications.
Warren has served on more than 75 Extension, Texas A&M University System and national committees, task forces and inter-agency work over her career. She is a member of more than a dozen professional associations and has held leadership roles in several.