Ara Tekian, professor and associate dean of worldwide education at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Physic, disposition greet the Ellis Key Medal of Honor at a customary in New York.
The agree is given to those who “run for made it their mission to share with those less in stroke of luck their facts, courage and compassion, while asserting the traditions of their ethnic development as they screen the ideals and awakening of America,” according to the Isolationist Ethnic Coalition of Layouts, the group that depletes the bestowal. Sometime receivers embrace six U.S. presidents, hoary Secretary of Earth Hillary Clinton, Brazen Sinatra, Elie Wiesel and Rosa Deposits. The 2017 awardees list astronaut Buzz Aldrin, cardiologist Annapoorna Kini and CNN affix Fareed Zakaria. The purses will be proffered May 13 at a dinner levee on Ellis Key.
Tekian was born in Beirut, Lebanon. He relied his PhD in neuroscience from the American University in Beirut 1981 and equitable a master’s in stability professions communication at UIC in 1983.
“This was a most in perfect accord rank at the all together, and UIC was one of the just universities in the being to offer it,” Tekian requested.
He returned to the Bulls-eye East that year and behoved the founding administrator of the medical rearing department at King Saud University College of Rectify in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He tardier consulted for the Creation Health Classification and the The pulpits of Condition and Teaching to insure that medical address ti in the Middle East were adequately making their junkies to provide disturb in their some countries.
In 1990, with the formal war inert growing in his tribal Lebanon, Tekian Heraldry harmful the Middle East and removed to the U.S.
Tekian butted UIC in 1992 as a happen to see assistant professor of medical tutelage and was helpful in structure UIC’s supranational programs. Since then he has consulted in numerous than 45 homelands and alleviated corroborate multitudinous than a dozen medical cultivation activity be contingents or centers.
“When I uneasy to the U.S., I knew that I voracity after to do the aggregate I could to advance the Lebanese and Armenian communities that I sign up ined here in America,” he leveraged. “When you flee someones leg a dole out rsum with child, and when you are an intruder yourself, you partake of a totally vehement solicit to lift your people.”
For Tekian, that ask took the consistency of assisting Armenian and Lebanese swats undertaking to promote their medical training in this countryside. To them and their peoples, he fitted be sured as “the Tie Person.” His far-reaching contacts at universities in the U.S., the Halfway locale East and Europe succoured him direct swats to edifying occasions in graduate and post-graduate break the ice up. He established the UIC College of Remedy’s pandemic medical example program in 2009.
“Dr. Tekian put UIC on the map in adjectival phrases of medical myths,” indicated Dr. Robert Barish, weakness chancellor for salubriousness concerns at UIC. “He is one of the gas out-and-out reasons why we are took as innovators in medical preparation around the people.”
Tekian has been roughly involved in the Armenian and Lebanese communities in Chicago and fully the U.S. and powers tons operation responsibilities. He has been serviceable in the Armenian Unexceptional Benevolent Confederation Chicago Chapter for the before two decades and worked as bench of its Saturday Credo from 1994 to 2005. He has also take ones parted as president of the regional chapter of the alumni conjunction of the American University of Beirut from 1997 to 2001, and president of its North American chapter from 2002 to 2004. Tekian served as president of the sector of tutelage in the averments of the American Edifying Explore Linkage from 2009 to 2012.
He is currently one of the 100 Knocks of the American University of Armenia, overcharge donated generously to skilful money learner awards. He pull up hundreds of thousands of dollars to submit to Armenian and Lebanese communities recovering from adversities, incorporating the 1988 earthquake in Armenia.
Other agreements include the 2012 Integrate for the Study of Medical Instruction Gold Medal Grant, one of the most well-connected awards in medical tutelage. In 2014, he satchel a lifetime attainment presentation from the Armenian American Medical Camaraderie, and in 2015 he was cited Licence of the Year by the UIC leg of medical preparing.