MACON — Roger Alan Williams, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Mercer University School of Medicine and the staff of the Psychology Assessment Center were chosen as recipients of the Partner Agency of the Year Award for 2009 by the Georgia Department of Corrections. The awards ceremony was held at the new Department of Corrections headquarters in Forsyth recently and was accepted by Lin Howland, director of Mercer Medicine, on behalf of Dr. Williams.
For the past five-plus years, Dr. Williams and the psychology team (Tonya Williams, Renee Sullivan and Gill Hanania) have worked with the Macon Transitional Center providing evaluation and counseling services as consultants to the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. The Transitional Center program enables inmates, during the final six months of their prison sentence, to more successfully re-enter society and the work place. Educational, job training and substance-abuse services offered there have been identified by the state as primary interventions to reduce recidivism.
The Transitional Center has also been an essential training venue for the Mercer third-year medical students as part of their psychiatry clerkship. This helps the physicians-in-training learn about the correctional system and challenges of incarceration. Mercer medical faculty and students have generously donated needed clothing and personal supplies to the inmates — essential to community re-entry.
Dr. Williams has an active practice at the Mercer Medicine Psychological Assessment Center, located on the first floor of the School of Medicine, and has been on the faculty for 15 years. He continues to receive donations for inmates and can be contacted at (478) 301-2107.
About Mercer University School of Medicine
Mercer University’s School of Medicine was established in 1982 to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the primary care and health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. The School only accepts Georgia residents into its medical degree program. Students entering Mercer University School of Medicine will be graduated from a school that utilizes a problem-based medical education program that provides early patient care experiences. Such an academic environment fosters the early development of clinical problem-solving and instills in each student an awareness of the place of the basic medical sciences in medical practice. In the fall of 2008, the University expanded its two-year clinical program at Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah into a second full, four-year doctor of medicine program. The School also offers master’s degrees in public health, family therapy, family services and nurse anesthesia.
About Mercer University
Founded in 1833, Mercer University is a dynamic and comprehensive center of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. The University enrolls more than 8,000 students in 11 schools and colleges – liberal arts, law, pharmacy, medicine, business, engineering, education, theology, music, nursing and continuing and professional studies – on major campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah and at three regional academic centers across the state. Mercer is affiliated with two teaching hospitals — Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah and the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and has educational partnerships with Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Warner Robins and Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. The University operates an academic press and a performing arts center in Macon and an engineering research center in Warner Robins. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia to field an NCAA Division I athletic program. For more information, visit www.mercer.edu.
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