Yasmen Simonian
Dr. Yasmen Simonian, employed at Weber since 1981
Yasmen Simonian was born in Tehran, Iran to Armenian parents. She lived in Tehran until the tenth grade, when her family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. It took twelve years for her family to get the necessary paperwork to emigrate to the U.S. When Yasmen moved to the U.S. she could speak Armenian, Farsi, and Arabic, and learned to speak English by first taking Spanish. Since there was not an Armenian church in Salt Lake City, the family went to the Greek Orthodox Church and she learned Greek. Growing up “my mother always said that whatever it is you want to do, you can do it. Just put enough effort behind it.”
Yasmen graduated with a bachelors and master’s degree in medical laboratory sciences in 1975 and 1981 from the University of Utah. While working on her undergraduate she worked three jobs to put herself through school. She received her Ph.D. in patient education and counseling at the University of Utah in 1998.
Yasmen began working as a professor at Weber State College in 1981 in clinical laboratory sciences. As a teacher, she felt it was her job to increase students’ creative thinking abilities, while nourishing them emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, and spiritually. She chaired the Medical Laboratory Science department for twelve years. Yasmen pioneered with her colleagues the first entirely online clinical laboratory sciences program in the nation. She became dean of the College of Health Professions in 2008.
Yasmen has received numerous awards throughout her career. She has received the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award from the Dr. Ezekiel R. Dumke College of Health Professions three times, was honored as the 2004 Crystal Crest Master Teacher, and received the John S. Hinckley Award in 2005. Also in 2005 Yasmen was awarded the U.S. Professor of the Year Award for Utah from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement of Support and Education. In 2007 she was appointed as a WSU Presidential Distinguished Professor, the first woman to receive that honor. In 2021 she was awarded the WSU Alumni Association’s H. Aldous Dixon Award.
Yasmen’s advice to students is to “educate yourself as well as you can because it gives you choices. Because if you are educated, it affects everything. And don’t give up. Don’t just limit yourself. Don’t put a lid on your abilities.”
Dr. Michael Beard, Dr. Yasmen Simonian, Gary Nielson, Denise Knight, and Roger Nichols, circa 1981-1987
Dr. Yasmen Simonian instructing two students, circa 1981-1989
Faculty and staff of the College of Health Professions, 2014-2015
Dr. Yasmen Simonian, Dean of the College of Health Professions, speaking at commencement, December 2019
Exhibit in the Stewart Library