UofL’s Transformation Tea for Women of Color and their allies is an open forum for diverse populations of women to share concerns, issues and positive suggestions. The awards were presented earlier this spring.

Jones is associate dean of academic affairs and professor of pediatrics.

She is also a practicing pediatrician. Her nomination letters noted that Jones is widely respected in the area as a physician who value her patients and their life experiences. As an administrator, her efforts to bring underrepresented ethnic and geographic students to the School of Medicine and to support those students as they continued on their path was commended.

“Faye wears many hats and I’m amazed at how she strives to balance them all.  She’s a wife and mother of five (three adopted), devoted daughter and sibling, pediatrician, medical school administrator, a member of several committees for the medical school and in the community and is also a mentor and instructor,” wrote one of her nominators. “She comes from rural Kentucky and left Metcalfe County to become a physician.  She didn’t allow her race, gender or rural background to discourage or hold her back.  She graduated from the University of Louisville’s School of Medicine in the 1980s and never forgot her roots.”

Also at the event, communication professor Margaret D’Silva, received a certificate of appreciation for her teaching, mentoring and advising students of color and other staff and faculty members. “She has found new and innovative ways to keep students excited about intercultural communication and global issues,” one of her nominator’s wrote.