Suzanne Holland, University of Puget Sound religion department chair and professor of ethics, has been appointed Philip M. Phibbs Research Professor for a three-year period, 2008–11, which provides a research award in addition to the title. Additionally Puget Sound has honored Holland with its 2008 President’s Excellence in Teaching Award, based on her “passion for teaching, ability to inspire, capacity to motivate students, and enduring intellectual capacity.”

Holland graduated from the Graduate Theological Union in 1997 with a Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory.  Since then she has established herself as a bioethicist, nationally and internationally. Her scholarship focuses on the ethics of new genetic technologies; biotechnologies; science and technology; stem cell research and ethics; and religion, gender, and culture.

Currently she is collaborating with colleagues at University of Washington (UW) on the topic of justice, genetic medicine, and the medically underserved (particularly Native Americans).  She is writing a book with her UW fellows, Genetics in Translation: Achieving Benefit and Justice Along the Translational Pathway, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.  Holland is co-editor of the first book published on the stem cell issue, The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics, and Policy (The MIT Press, 2001).