Stephen Higgins, Ph.D., professor and vice-chair of psychiatry and founding director of the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health, has been appointed the inaugural Virginia H. Donaldson M.D.’51 Professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.
A member of the UVM faculty since 1986, Higgins is an accomplished researcher whose work has attracted some of the most significant funding ever achieved at the University. His 30 years of addiction research includes groundbreaking work in contingency management – a psychological strategy designed to change behavior using modest financial incentives – which he developed and used in his long-term treatment studies on cocaine abuse and smoking among pregnant women. Higgins has published widely, with more than 270 peer-reviewed papers to his name, and is the recipient of several national awards, including a highly prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
After her death in 2013, Virginia Donaldson’s $3.5 million endowment bequest established the Virginia H. Donaldson M.D.’51 Professorship to support a faculty leader who demonstrates a commitment to translational science and actively contributes to the goal of promoting the impact of biological science on clinical medicine.
“Dr. Donaldson was a pioneer in medicine, who had a distinguished career as a clinician with a deep interest in research and education,” said UVM College of Medicine Dean Frederick Morin, M.D. “It is entirely fitting that Dr. Higgins, with his record of accomplishment as a leader in translational science, should hold the professorship that bears Virginia Donaldson’s name.”
In October 2013, Higgins his colleagues secured a total of $34.7 million in funding from the NIH and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to establish and support research at the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health (VCBH), an interdisciplinary center of research excellence with members from across seven colleges at UVM and five outside universities, all focused on investigating relationships between personal behaviors and risk for chronic disease and premature death.
Higgins received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas, and served a postdoctoral fellowship in behavioral pharmacology/addiction at Johns Hopkins University and a research fellowship in the Addiction Research Center of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Donaldson’s many contributions to her field after her 1951 graduation from the UVM College of Medicine included a distinguished career as a pediatric hematologist. She was known for her work in identifying a key inherited deficiency involved in an often-fatal disease called hereditary angioneurotic edema. Donaldson was a longtime philanthropic supporter of the UVM College of Medicine who established an endowment to promote the impact of the biological sciences on clinical medicine. She was recognized with the UVM Medical Alumni Association’s Distinguished Academic Achievement Award in 1981 and with the 2006 A. Bradley Soule Award, the highest alumni honor at the College. After her death in 2013, her $3.5 million bequest included funding for the Donaldson Professorship and also the first full-tuition scholarship at the College of Medicine.
