2019 Employee Service Awards — The Honorees
| Twenty-three UAMS employees are being honored this year for their four decades or more of service. We want to thank them for their years of dedication to improving the health and well-being of all Arkansans.
Click here for details about this year’s awards receptions.
Click here for the full list of employees who are being honored at this year’s awards.
45 Years of Service
James Suen, M.D., is a distinguished professor in the College of Medicine’s Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. He began his career at UAMS in 1974 as a professor and two short years later became chair of the Department of Otolaryngology. In addition, he was one of the co-founders of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute (then called Arkansas Cancer Research Center) and served as the executive director from 2002-2007.
Suen’s ties to UAMS go back even further. He received his medical degree from UAMS in 1966. Throughout the 60s and 70s, he completed an internship in San Francisco at San Francisco General Hospital, completed residency programs in both general surgery and otolaryngology at UAMS, served as an advanced senior fellow in head and neck surgery at M.D. Anderson and completed a training program in Otolaryngic Pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington D.C.
Suen enjoys spending time with his grandchildren, sculpting and being an amateur magician. When asked what principles he lives by he says, “treat others the way you would want to be treated” and “always stay humble”.
Linda McGhee, M.D., is residency faculty at the Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville and previously served as program director for the Northwest Family Medicine Residency program. She joined UAMS in 1974 as faculty in the College of Medicine, and in 1977, she was promoted to associate professor in the Department of Family and Preventative Medicine.
McGhee graduated from UAMS in 1971 and is double board certified in Pediatrics and Family Medicine. Since 1992, she has been the medical director of the Washington County HIV Clinic, the first county HIV clinic in Arkansas. She was a past president of the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians and has served on the Arkansas State Board of Health and the Arkansas State Medical Board. She previously served as vice chair of the Arkansas Minority Health Commission. In 2017, she received the Asklepion Award from the Arkansas Medical Society and the Leonard Tow Award for Humanism in Medicine.
McGhee lives in the country outside of Fayetteville and has two children and two grandchildren. Some of her interests include independent studies, traveling, community service, reading and gardening, particularly of old and rare roses.
Phyllis Lloyd (right) with Provost Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed.D.
Phyllis Lloyd, registrar, began working at UAMS in July of 1974 as the registrar for the College of Health Related Professions (now College of Health Professions). When she arrived at UAMS, her office was located in the University Tower complex, where she remained until the early 80s when the college moved to the main campus. The college’s office had a small staff, and she recalls that there was no summer enrollment at that time. Registrations occurred in-person on the eighth floor of the building. She also remembers picking up paychecks from the main campus to deliver to the University Tower building.
In 2014, the central Office of the University Registrar opened.
When she started, Lloyd said she never imagined staying 45 years at UAMS because the position here was so different from anything she had done before.
“It has been a good experience for me probably because I take each day as it comes and do what I can to help the student or faculty get what they need.”
40 Years of Service
- Elizabeth Bausinger
- FeFe Bolden
- Katherine Brock
- Rebecca Goins
- Betty Greenwood
- Thomas Hart
- Gwenn Higginbotham
- Vickie Lane
- Terry Morris
- Jeanette Perkins
- Carol Price
- Rita Sanders
- Teresa Shaddock
- John Shock, M.D.
- Nancy Smith
- Virginia Thomas
- Linda Todd
- Randy Towell, Ph.D.
- Judy Whaley
- Avis Wilson