Postdoc: University of Florida Department of Neurology 

Ph.D.:  University of Pennsylvania, Anthropology 

MA: Hunter College, Creative Art 

BA: Bard College, Fine Art 

2018 Accomplishments  

During the 2018 calendar year, Dr. Blonder has had significant effort devoted to teaching and service.  In the Spring semester of 2018, Dr. Blonder taught a fully online upper level undergraduate course entitled “Introduction to Integrative and Alternative Medicine,” for the first time.  Dr. Blonder received faculty development funds from UK Analytics and Technology to develop this course.  She also served as a preceptor in Introduction to Clinical Medicine (MD 811) during the Spring and Fall 2018 semesters.  Dr. Blonder is currently developing a hybrid version of her undergraduate course on integrative and alternative medicine to be taught to junior and senior undergraduates as an Honors College section in the Spring of 2019.  Twenty students have registered for this class.  In addition, Dr. Blonder and Dr. Neena Thomas-Eapen in the Department of Family and Community Medicine received a grant from the Weil Foundation to offer the fully online University of Arizona Integrative Medicine in Residency program here at UK.  Two residents and one residency director have enrolled in the program.  Dr. Blonder is also course director (Dr. Thomas-Eapen, co-director) of a fourth-year medical student rotation on integrative medicine to be offered in March of 2019.  Dr. Blonder served on the committees of four students who received their doctoral degrees in May of 2018.  At present she is on three doctoral committees and served as a mentor for an undergraduate Honors student who completed her capstone project and graduated in the Spring of 2018. With respect to research and scholarly activity, Dr. Blonder is the author of a manuscript based on Parkinson’s disease that was published in the Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in May of 2018.  She also has a chapter accepted for publication in a forthcoming book. Dr. Blonder’s service activities are extensive. She continues to serve on the Board of Trustees, having been elected by the UK faculty in 2016.  During 2018, Dr. Blonder continues as a member of the Academic and Student Affairs Committee, the Human Resources & University Relations Committee, and the Finance Committee of the Board.  She is an ex-officio voting member of the University Senate (meeting monthly) and is an elected member of the University Senate Council (meeting weekly).  She was one of several Senate Council members nominated to be the next Senate Council chair but declined that nomination to continue her work as a trustee.  At the college level, Dr. Blonder is an elected member of the College of Medicine (COM) Faculty Council (2017-2020) and serves on the COM Wellness Committee.  At the state level, she is a member of the Coalition of Faculty Senate Leadership. Nationally she served as a consultant reviewer for the Loan Repayment Programs for both the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Drug Abuse.  She is also actively involved in the peer-review of manuscripts for various journals.