Meet the Advisory Board
External Advisory Board
Steve Shelton, MBA, PA-C
Steven R. Shelton is Assistant Vice President for Community Outreach at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He combines over thirty years of experience as a primary healthcare physician assistant, health professions educator, and administrator of programs such as the East Texas Area Health Education Center (AHEC) to improve the health of individuals and communities. Mr. Shelton’s interests and expertise include an in-depth understanding of health workforce development issues, local health system challenges and opportunities, health literacy and the needs of both rural and metropolitan underserved populations. His work includes activities to promote a deeper understanding of the psycho-social and economic root causes of health disparities as a means to address the need for better health for all through principles of equity and social justice. He is active in community service, and has served in numerous leadership roles at the regional, state, and national level. He is an alumnus of Angelo State University, and the University of Texas Medical Branch, and holds a master of business administration degree from the University of Houston Clear Lake.
Ann Bynum, Ed.D.
Ann Bynum, Ed.D. has been a member of the SW Ag Center Advisory Board since 1999. She currently serves as the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Regional Program and Director of the Rural Hospital Program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). Ann is also the Co-Director for the UAMS Center for Distance Health, Associate Director for the Arkansas Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) and is an Assistant Professor at the UAMS Clinton School of Public Service and at the Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health. Ann’s comprehensive education includes a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Health Education from the University of Arkansas and a doctorate in Higher Education from Nova Southeastern University in Miami, Florida. Ann also earned her associate’s degree in Respiratory Therapy from Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida and is a Certified Distance Learning Administrator from the Teletraining Institute in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Cheryl Taylor, RN, Ph.D.
Roberta Baer, Ph.D.
Dr. Roberta Baer joined the SW Ag Center in 2006 as an Advisory Board Member. She spent many years teaching elementary and secondary school in various cultural environments, including the Navajo reservation in Arizona, a Chicano migrant population in Colorado, and in Guatemala. She discovered that in addition to teaching, she also had a passion for learning about different cultures. This interest led her back to graduate school where she earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Much of her early work described cross cultural dietary patterns, which later led her to study cross cultural health in general. Dr. Baer is now a Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida in Tampa where she has taught since 1984. Dr. Baer’s primary objective is to help ensure that all the SW Center’s training programs, educational materials and practical interventions effectively reach their intended audiences by taking cultural influences into consideration.
Raymond Huhnke, Ph.D., P.E.
Internal Advisory Board
Sharon Cooper, Ph.D.
Deborah Helitzer, Sc.D.
Tim Struttmann, MPH