The 2009-2010 Ambassador Scholars are (from left) Anna Mendez, Irene Juarez, Joe Dannenbaum, David Reese McKay and Parya Etebari.
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The Ambassador Scholars, a group of students who will represent the five UT Health Science Center San Antonio schools at events during the 2009-2010 academic year, were officially inducted April 21.

This year’s scholars, who will each receive a scholarship from the President’s Council, are Joe Dannenbaum, School of Medicine; Anna Mendez, School of Nursing; Parya Etebari, Dental School; David Reese McKay, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; and Irene Juarez, School of Health Professions.

Dannenbaum, ranked at the top of his class, is a second-year medical student and serves as a co-director of the recruitment committee for the Office of Admissions in the School of Medicine. In addition to serving in the Corps of Cadets and the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band, he was selected to serve as a unit commander in his senior year.

Mendez, a first-semester undergraduate nursing student, is an officer in the class of December 2010 and a member of the minority student mentoring program Juntos Podemos (Together We Can). She completed medical internships at Brackenridge Hospital, Seton Hospital and the Heart Hospital of Austin, and has practiced as a labor doula, a trained professional who provides non-medical childbirth support, through the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association.

Etebari, a third-year dental student, is co-founder and president of Chance to Smile, a non-profit organization that provides care to children born with a cleft lip or cleft palate. She is the vice president of the Hispanic Student Dental Association, the student representative on the Dental School Search Committee for the Associate Dean of Student Affairs, and a member of the American Student Dental Association and the Pediatric Dental Society.

McKay is a third-year doctoral student in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences’ radiological sciences program. His interests are in neuroimaging and he gave a presentation at the 2008 Computational Neuroscience Meeting in Portland, Oregon. This past year, he was the 2008 captain of the Health Science Center’s intramural champion basketball team.

Juarez, is a junior dental hygiene student who is active in the Student American Dental Hygienists’ Association. She served proudly in the army for four and a half years, including a tour in Operation Iraqi Freedom II, where she served in a leadership role as a Dental Section Leader, the only dental technician in her medical company.