Twenty-six women were recently honored for their service across the country and around the world.

As part of Women’s History Month, three SIU organizations — University Women’s Professional Advancement, the Carbondale branch of the American Association of University Women and the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program — held the 17th annual Celebrate Women Honoring Inclusive Excellence award ceremony March 7. The recipients will use their award money to fund projects, which range from teaching to healthy living.

During the ceremony, the University Women’s Professional Advancement presented mentoring awards, a new award given to eight faculty members. The mentoring awards can be presented to men or women, but all other awards given are only offered to women, said Melinda Yeomans, event coordinator. This award is granted to anyone who has held doors open to women and minorities, she said.

Recipient and psychology professor Lisabeth DiLalla said her students united together to nominate her.

DiLalla said her focus extends beyond academics and profession; she concentrates on mentoring her students for life decisions and barriers they may reach. Women are often told they can’t have a family and a career, which isn’t true, she said. Everything is about compromise, and a person can always do and have what they want if they want it bad enough, she said.

DiLalla said she believes a professor who doesn’t reach beyond the academic world to connect with his or her students is missing out.

“It’s what makes the job fun,” she said. “I am so grateful for my students.”

The next award, $1,000 Research, Scholarly and Creative Activity Awards, went to seven female faculty members.

Rehabilitation Institute Assistant Professor Valerie Boyer said her research award will fund equipment to analyze data from a pilot project that promotes language and literacy with children who are learning English in Head Start programs.

This project is in its second year, Boyer said. Graduate and undergraduate students in the department of communication disorders and sciences spend time with 4-year-olds teaching aspects such as vocabulary and the alphabet.

“We just felt like this was an area where we could be helpful,” she said.

Boyer said the program has had four undergraduate students and one graduate assistant work with 40 children since its beginning. Previously, everyone used Boyer’s university office. The program will now host its own office because of the grant, which she said will help her balance duties as a professor and program director.

WGSS presented seven scholarships, and one recipient said she applied for it not for traditional financial needs, but to help others in another country.

Lindsay Strieker, a junior from Cape Girardeau studying dental hygiene, said she has participated in Give Kids a Smile Day and Give Adults a Smile Day, which provide free annual cleanings and fillings, she said. With this experience, Strieker said she seeks to take this idea a giant leap forward.

Strieker said she will use the her award funds for a May mission trip to Mexico. Participants will provide dental cleanings for both faculty and staff, at a Puebla, Mexico, orphanage, she said. This location does not offer very many dental benefits regularly, she said, so volunteer work is vastly needed.

This mission trip is sponsored by the First Baptist Church of Cobden, Strieker said.

“The orphanage is connected to an organization in Wisconsin where they’ve had dentists go down (to Mexico),” she said. “But the dentists keep saying that they need dental hygentists, because the dentists don’t do cleanings.”

Strieker said she is happy to help because the dentists emphasized that children and staff needed cleanings to prevent dental hygiene issues.

“I love doing mission trips,” she said, “I love going down and helping other people.”