Gina Baral Abrams (photo: Denise Applewhite)
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Spotlight
Name: Gina Baral Abrams.
Position: Director for health promotion and wellness services in University Health Services. Overseeing the development of health promotion programs for faculty, staff and students. Conducting research to assess campus health needs. Supervising a team of professional health educators, program support staff and student workers. Coordinating the Healthier Princeton advisory board.
Quote: “I’m grateful to work at a university where public health initiatives are supported, because the institution wants to be proactive and make the campus community healthier.”
Other interests: Earning her doctorate in public health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Spending time with her husband, Eric, and their kitten, Sacha.
Appointment
Diedrick (D.A.) Graham, formerly the student ombudsman at San Diego State University, has been named Princeton’s associate ombuds officer.
Graham, whose appointment was effective Feb. 15, will provide assistance to campus community members who have concerns, complaints or other issues regarding their work or studies. The ombuds office offers confidential consultations and can help develop solutions to problems through mediation, individual coaching, group facilitation or training, or referrals to other University services.
Diedrick (D.A.) Graham
Graham worked at San Diego State for two years. Prior to that, he was a U.S. Navy chaplain, serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom and receiving the Military Chaplains Association Chaplain of the Year Award.
A graduate of the University of Alabama, Graham holds a master of divinity degree from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta and a master of human relations degree, with a specialization in mediation and negotiation, from the University of Oklahoma. He is a member of the International Ombudsman Association, the Association for Conflict Resolution and the American Society for Training and Development.
Graham succeeds Nicholas Diehl, who left to work for the National Institutes of Health.
Briefs
Orley Ashenfelter, Princeton’s Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, has been named a distinguished fellow by the American Economic Association, an honor bestowed each year upon no more than three economists in the United States and Canada.
Ashenfelter was cited for his influential research in labor economics, his service to the profession and his mentoring of outstanding graduate students. He was recognized along with Lloyd Shapley, a Princeton graduate alumnus and a professor emeritus of economics and mathematics at the University of California-Los Angeles, and Oliver Williamson, a professor emeritus of economics and business at the University of California-Berkeley.
Ashenfelter earned his Ph.D. from Princeton and joined the University faculty in 1968. He is known for developing the “natural experiment” method that has become the standard in studying social programs and various topics in economics and other fields.
