Cody Blumenthal was selected to play on the Maccabi USA Youth Men’s Basketball Team for the 14th Pan American Maccabi Games July 5-15 in Mexico City. Playing 16 games as a sophomore guard for Catalina Foothills High School varsity Falcons this season, he averaged 11.4 points per game and 2.6 assists. Tucson High School Sports named him to the 4A basketball all-star second team, and he received an All-Region Honorable Mention for the season from the Arizona Interscholastic Association. Blumenthal will be among more than 2,500 athletes from 19 countries at the games, and one of only 12 selected for the U.S. men’s youth basketball team. The Pan American Maccabi Games are a high-level athletic competition for Jewish athletes all over the world aimed at connecting Jews from the Diaspora.
Zoe Cohen, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, was honored for excellence in teaching and mentoring with the Margaret M. Briehl and Dennis T. Ray Five Star Faculty Award at the 2019 UA Awards of Distinction Ceremony. First presented in 1983, the award, sponsored by the UA Honors College, is the only award for UA faculty members that is determined by UA undergraduate students. At the 2017 UA Awards of Distinction Ceremony, Cohen received the Undergraduate STEM Education Teaching Excellence Award. She also has received Physiology Professor of the Year for the past four years by the Physiology Club; UA Club Advisor of the Year from the Associated Students of the UA; and the AMES (Academy of Medical Education Scholars) Excellence Award for Basic Science Teaching. Cohen is involved in undergraduate, graduate and medical teaching. At the College of Medicine – Tucson, she is the discipline director for physiology, serves on the admissions committee and is the incoming chair of the Tucson Education Policy Committee. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in exercise physiology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a doctorate in physiological sciences from the UA. She did postdoctoral work in platelet and red blood cell physiology with the Canadian Blood Services and at the UA. She is a faculty adviser for the Physiology Club, the American Medical Student Association – Undergraduate Chapter and the Love Your Melon Campus Crew Program.
