➤ FA C U LT Y AWA R DS
Accolades & Achievements Aristotle is credited for saying what our faculty are proving: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Howard W. Houser, PhD, Professor Emeritus, UAB Department of Health Services Administration, has been selected as a member of the Alabama Healthcare Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020. His career at UAB spanned 45 years, from 1965 until his retirement in 2010. Even though he is officially retired, Dr. Houser still contributes to the Department in many ways – he’s even on our departmental Zoom huddles each Friday. His first assignment, as a young administrator, was to orchestrate the desegregation of UAB Hospital in 1965. Dr. Houser went on to train and develop numerous graduate and postgraduate students in health administration and is beloved by all that he taught and mentored. He and Dr. Mathew McNulty developed a curriculum that has educated students in both the Master's and Doctoral programs. Dr. Houser was instrumental in laying the foundation for UAB’s Master of Science in Health Administration (MSHA) program that is now ranked #1 in the country by US News & World Report. These students have effectively led community hospitals for over 55 years. Among other international efforts, Houser created a four-year program to educate Chinese students in health administration, graduating the first class in 1989. Since then, he has hosted more than 100 visiting students, scholars and medical delegations and helped establish a state-of-the-art pediatric hospital in China. ■
Berner, Borkowski Earn University-Wide Professor Appointments Eta S. Berner, EdD, was named University Professor in the Department of Health Services Administration in the School of Health Professions. Berner became a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics in 1999, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in 2006 and the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics in 2019 and has published articles in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Academic Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2
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Nancy M. Borkowski, DBA, CPA, FACHE, FHFMA, was named Distinguished Professor in the UAB Department of Health Services Administration. A certified public accountant who is board-certified in health management and has over 20 years’ experience in health care, Borkowski joined UAB in 2014 and is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Healthcare Financial Management Association. She is the author of four books, including Organizational Behavior in Health Care, which was named 2005 Book of the Year for nursing leadership and management by The American Journal of Nursing. ■
