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University of Wisconsin-Madison: Four Faculty Receive 2021 Hilldale Awards
MADISON, Wisconsin, April 13 (TNSAwa) -- The University of Wisconsin Madison campus issued the following news on April 12, 2021:
Each year, the Secretary of the Faculty recognizes four professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for distinguished contributions to research, teaching and service.
The Hilldale Awards go to one faculty member each from the arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and biological sciences, selected from nominations by department chairs. The winners were recognized at the April 5 Faculty Senate meeting and are awarded $7,500.
This year's Hilldale
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MADISON, Wisconsin, April 13 (TNSAwa) -- The University of Wisconsin Madison campus issued the following news on April 12, 2021:
Each year, the Secretary of the Faculty recognizes four professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for distinguished contributions to research, teaching and service.
The Hilldale Awards go to one faculty member each from the arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and biological sciences, selected from nominations by department chairs. The winners were recognized at the April 5 Faculty Senate meeting and are awarded $7,500.
This year's HilldaleAward winners are: Susan Ellis Weismer , Michael Fiore, Sabine Gross and Robert Mathieu.
Susan Ellis Weismer
Oros Family Chair and Professor of Communication Sciences & Disorders
Susan Ellis Weismer is an expert on language learning disorders in children. She has contributed new insights into three major language-associated disorders: Autism Spectrum Disorder, developmental language disorder, and children who are late to talk. Her work has uncovered previously hidden patterns of learning in children living with these disorders, which has contributed not only to a better understanding of their causes but also to their treatment.
Over her 37 years at UW-Madison, Ellis Weismer has taught 11 different courses, from large-enrollment undergraduate classes to high-level graduate seminars, for which she receives consistently high praise from students for her passion and expertise. She has mentored more than 30 students over her career, with many going on to make their own significant contributions to the field.
As a leader in the department, including as chair, Ellis Weismer helped grow the program through faculty searches and mentored several junior faculty. And for 11 years, she served as associate dean for research in the College of Letters & Science, steering the research enterprise before electing to return to the department as a full-time faculty member.
"The CSD department is delighted with the Hilldale award going to Professor Susan Ellis Weismer, an internationally renowned scholar in the area of childhood language development and disorders," says department chair Ruth Litovsky.
Michael Fiore
Hilldale Professor of Medicine
Michael Fiore has spent his career fighting to end the use of tobacco, the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. As the founding director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, Fiore has combined scientific research with public policy interventions to change how the medical system cares for tobacco users.
Fiore led the successful push to add tobacco use as a vital sign checked every day in doctor's offices around the country, which helps physicians identify smoking and intervene for the benefit of patients. He also led efforts to discover the best evidence-based methods to help people quit smoking. Smoking has declined considerably in the U.S. thanks in part to Fiore's work.
"His work has influenced the care provided by nearly every health care professional in Wisconsin and in the United States," says Department of Medicine Chair Lynn Schnapp.
Through the UW-CTRI, Fiore has trained hundreds of undergraduate students and dozens of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, preparing the next generation of physicians and researchers to continue treating tobacco use.
Sabine Gross
Griebsch Bascom Professor of German
Sabine Gross is a scholar whose research spans poetry, theater, literary analysis, philosophy and many other fields. She has authored dozens of publications on modern writers, Enlightenment thinkers, and visual culture. She helped spur the development of new fields of inquiry with wide-ranging and influential scholarship ahead of its time.
For a quarter-century, Gross has led a unique class in which students intensively study and then perform a German-language play. Through the course, Gross connects with other German programs across the UW-System and with German speakers in the state and often arranges a residency for German directors. For this and a diverse array of other undergraduate and graduate courses, Gross has received high marks from students and was awarded the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999.
Gross has also served as director of the Honors Program in the College of Letters & Science, which serves more than 1,500 students. Since 2015, she has worked to expand and update the program. Over the last year, Gross ushered the Honors Program through the pandemic, including by developing small-group seminars to maintain close student-faculty relationships.
"Sabine Gross is well known and admired for her brilliant interdisciplinary scholarship, her innovative and inspiring teaching, and her unparalleled service, both within the Department of German, Nordic and Slavic and across campus," says department chair Thomas DuBois.
Robert Mathieu
Albert E. Whitford and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Astronomy
Over more than three decades on campus, Robert Mathieu has helped refine and expand our understanding of how stars evolve. He has led international collaborations of astronomers to explain the evolution of stars known as blue stragglers, yellow giants and sub-subgiants. Mathieu is also an expert on the formation of binary star systems and has helped explain how these systems evolve in their early stages.
Mathieu has also been a leader in science education. In 2003, he founded the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning with a $10 million National Science Foundation grant. The center and its learning community trains 500 future faculty each year to excel in both research and teaching. Mathieu helped expand the CIRTL network from three founding universities to 38 today.
For seven years, Mathieu served as director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research in the School of Education. He expanded the center's research portfolio and launched centers focused on reaching new populations. Mathieu was also a founding member behind the development of the WIYN Observatory in Arizona, a major addition to the astronomical research capabilities of the university.
"(Professor) Mathieu is a remarkable, transformative force within the University of Wisconsin-Madison; he has left significant, impactful and lasting marks through all of his engagements with the university's research, teaching and service missions," writes astronomy department chair Rich Townsend in his nominating letter.
University of Pennsylvania: Living in a Majority-Black Neighborhood Linked to Severe Maternal Morbidity
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, April 13 (TNSJou) -- The University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine issued the following news release:
Residents in majority-Black neighborhoods experience higher rates of severe pregnancy-related health problems than those living in predominantly-white areas, according to a new study of pregnancies at a Philadelphia-based health system, which was led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, published today in Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggest that neighborhood-level public health interventions
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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, April 13 (TNSJou) -- The University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine issued the following news release:
Residents in majority-Black neighborhoods experience higher rates of severe pregnancy-related health problems than those living in predominantly-white areas, according to a new study of pregnancies at a Philadelphia-based health system, which was led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, published today in Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggest that neighborhood-level public health interventionsmay be necessary in order to lower the rates of severe maternal morbidity -- such as a heart attack, heart failure, eclampsia, or hysterectomy -- and mortality in the United States.
The researchers retrospectively analyzed deliveries during a seven-year period at four hospitals within the University of Pennsylvania Health System and compared health outcomes to U.S. Census data. They found that the rate of severe maternal morbidity within a neighborhood increased by 2.4 percent with every 10 percent increase in the percentage of individuals in a Census tract who identified as Black or African American.
"Severe maternal morbidity disproportionately affects Black women. We know these differences are not genetic in etiology, but most likely due to structural racism and neighborhood-level risk factors," said senior author Jessica R. Meeker, PhD, MPH, who led the research as a third-year doctoral candidate in Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine. "We wanted to explore this further and discovered that where you live is a key factor that affects maternal health outcomes."
Pregnancy-related deaths in the United States have doubled between 1987 and 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Severe maternal morbidity -- defined as "unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term consequences to a woman's health" -- has risen by 75 percent over the past decade in the U.S., affecting more than 52,000 women annually.
While past studies have shown that the risk of severe maternal morbidity and mortality is markedly increased among women of color, individual risk factors alone -- such as medical comorbidities, maternal education, or income -- have not explained this disparity. Knowing that structural racism and historical segregation of neighborhoods are drivers of other poor health outcomes, such as diabetes risk, Penn Medicine researchers sought to determine whether neighborhood-level factors, like poverty, crime, and housing violations, contribute to severe maternal morbidity.
Using medical records, the research team analyzed all deliveries -- 63,334 in total -- between 2010 and 2017 at four hospitals in the University of Pennsylvania's Health System: the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Hospital, and Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, as well as Chester County Hospital, located in the Philadelphia suburbs. The health system presents an interesting case study, as it is large, and the four hospitals treat a racially- and economically-diverse patient population.
The primary outcome that the research team measured was severe maternal morbidity, defined as having at least one of the 21 indicators validated by the CDC. The team then obtained neighborhood-level information at the Census tract level from the U.S. Census Bureau and Open Data Philly, including poverty rate, violent and nonviolent crime numbers, rates of housing violations, and family income. Their study also included the percentage of those living in a given neighborhood who identified as white, Black, Asian, or Hispanic.
The researchers found that white race was the only statistically-significant, individual-level characteristic that was associated with lower odds of severe maternal morbidity. In terms of neighborhood-level factors, multiple characteristics were associated with an increased rate of severe morbidity. The most striking finding from the data was that, in the patient population studied, the rate of severe maternal morbidity increased by 2.4 percent in a given Census tract with every 10 percent increase in the percentage of individuals in the neighborhood who identified as Black or African American. Additionally, there was a 3 percent increase in the rate of severe maternal morbidity as the number of violent crimes in a given neighborhood increased.
"Since we found that neighborhood-level risk factors are independent predictors of severe maternal morbidity, this study gives further evidence that differences in race and maternal health outcomes are likely the result of historical and structural racism," said principal investigator Mary Regina Boland, PhD. "Improving our communities within the city of Philadelphia can help all individuals living in those neighborhoods, and may result in lowering rates of maternal morbidity for future generations."
Reducing maternal morbidity among Black women is a key goal of Penn Medicine. Efforts within the health system include standardizing procedures on labor and delivery, implicit bias training for physicians and staff, remote postpartum blood pressure monitoring, routine assessment of quality metrics including severe maternal morbidity stratified by race, and additional quality improvement efforts targeting disparities.
"This study gives us a blueprint for addressing racial disparities in health care at the neighborhood and population-level," said co-author Lisa Levine, MD, an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Penn. "Investing in neighborhoods that have been historically segregated, lacked access to government services, and subjected to racism will help to improve not only severe maternal morbidity, but also a host of other health outcomes for patients."
Penn authors Silvia P. Canelon and Ray Bai also contributed to this research, which was supported by Penn's Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Informatics.
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JOURNAL: Obstetrics and Gynecology https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/9900/Individual_Level_and_Neighborhood_Level_Risk.178.aspx
University of Montana Journalism School Welcomes Fall Pollner Professor
MISSOULA, Montana, April 13 (TNSPer) -- The University of Montana issued the following news release:
Award-winning journalist and editor Jan Winburn has been named the fall 2021 T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana's School of Journalism.
Winburn has edited stories that won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Livingston Award, among many other national honors.
While in residence at the School of Journalism this fall, she will lead a hands-on curriculum for young journalists about how to interact with victims of violence,
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MISSOULA, Montana, April 13 (TNSPer) -- The University of Montana issued the following news release:
Award-winning journalist and editor Jan Winburn has been named the fall 2021 T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana's School of Journalism.
Winburn has edited stories that won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Livingston Award, among many other national honors.
While in residence at the School of Journalism this fall, she will lead a hands-on curriculum for young journalists about how to interact with victims of violence,survivors and their families. Her course also will consider how journalists themselves are affected by exposure to trauma and tragedy. In 2009, Winburn received the DART Society award for editors "who understand how to navigate the emotional landscape of assignments on tragedy and trauma."
In applying for the position, Winburn said of her course proposal, "Even before graduation, student journalists grapple with stories of everyday trauma - car accidents, rapes, suicides, drownings. How do we do justice to these stories without doing harm? What skills do we need to cover the inevitable losses that mark a human lifetime?"
In addition to teaching a course, Pollner professors work closely with the staff of the Montana Kaimin, UM's independent student newspaper. T. Anthony Pollner, a 1999 School of Journalism alumnus who died in a motorcycle accident, was an engaged member of the Kaimin staff during his time as a journalism student from 1995 to 1999. In endowing the Pollner professorship in 2001, Pollner's parents, family and friends wanted to bring working journalists to the school to invigorate the scholarship and reporting of students and faculty members.
Winburn is currently a mentor in the University of Georgia's Master of Fine Arts program in narrative media. Previously she worked at CNN Digital, where she led a team of longform enterprise reporters and was an editor in the investigation unit. She also has worked as an editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant's Northeast Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Columbia (Missouri) Tribune.
"The School of Journalism is proud to welcome Winburn as the 28th T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor," said Denise Dowling, director of the school. "She follows in a long line of outstanding journalists who have taught courses that complement and enhance the journalism curriculum at UM."
University of Guelph Prof Receives National Teaching Award
GUELPH, Ontario, April 13 (TNSAwa) -- The University of Guelph issued the following news release:
University of Guelph biochemistry professor Dr. John Dawson is one of 10 educators across Canada to receive this year's 3M National Teaching Fellowship Award.
The award, sponsored by 3M Canada and the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE), celebrates extraordinary educational leadership and contributions to post-secondary teaching and learning.
"The University of Guelph is proud of our reputation for excellence and innovation in teaching and learning, and our history of having
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GUELPH, Ontario, April 13 (TNSAwa) -- The University of Guelph issued the following news release:
University of Guelph biochemistry professor Dr. John Dawson is one of 10 educators across Canada to receive this year's 3M National Teaching Fellowship Award.
The award, sponsored by 3M Canada and the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE), celebrates extraordinary educational leadership and contributions to post-secondary teaching and learning.
"The University of Guelph is proud of our reputation for excellence and innovation in teaching and learning, and our history of havingfaculty members awarded 3M Fellowships," said Dr. Gwen Chapman, provost and vice-president (academic). "I am delighted to see recognition of Dr. Dawson's leadership in this area. He is not only a stellar teacher, but also a mentor and role model for his colleagues, extending the benefit of his expertise to students throughout biological sciences."
Dawson, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, is a leader in education research and is the inaugural faculty director of the College of Biological Science (CBS) Office of Educational Scholarship and Practice (COESP) - the only office in Canada focused on facilitating best teaching practices in biology.
He has focused on developing, implementing and assessing learning outcomes in the molecular life sciences, including mentoring educators to explore new approaches to education.
The greatest impact of this work has been building community within the college, said Dawson.
"Community is so important but something that's been particularly hard to achieve during this last year," he said. "It's challenging with remote learning to easily connect with students and colleagues but helping to guide our instructors with best practices for making connections during this form of learning has been very gratifying."
Dawson said he is "thrilled" to receive this national award.
"This is an endorsement of an educator's entire career, so for me to be counted among the country's finest educators is just an honour of a lifetime."
For Dawson, teaching is about helping people connect with new ideas.
"There is nothing more motivating than to see that moment when someone - whether it's a student or a colleague -- gets something you're teaching them."
CBS dean Dr. Mazyar Fallah said the award is "well-deserved recognition of Dr. Dawson's outstanding contributions to education at U of G and beyond.
"Dr. Dawson is a great asset and leader within the College of Biological Science. His research and teaching are exemplary, and as the founding director of COESP he has shown dedication, innovation and drive in supporting the evolution of biology teaching methods and practice."
3M National Teaching Fellows become lifetime members of STLHE and the Council of 3M National Fellows for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Earlier this year, Dawson received the John Bell Award for outstanding educational leadership at U of G.
Hinger Selected as Glenville State College Pioneer Mascot
GLENVILLE, West Virginia, April 13 (TNSAwa) -- Glenville State College issued the following news release:
Daniel Hinger, a junior from Nettie, West Virginia, has been named the Glenville State College (GSC) Pioneer Mascot for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Hinger is an active member of campus as president of Sigma Omega Beta fraternity, parliamentarian for GSC's chapter of the National Association for Music Education, Student Government Association senator, and a member of GSC's eSports program. He also participates in several musical ensembles on campus, including Concert Band, Pep Band, Marching
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GLENVILLE, West Virginia, April 13 (TNSAwa) -- Glenville State College issued the following news release:
Daniel Hinger, a junior from Nettie, West Virginia, has been named the Glenville State College (GSC) Pioneer Mascot for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Hinger is an active member of campus as president of Sigma Omega Beta fraternity, parliamentarian for GSC's chapter of the National Association for Music Education, Student Government Association senator, and a member of GSC's eSports program. He also participates in several musical ensembles on campus, including Concert Band, Pep Band, MarchingBand, Brass Ensemble, Trumpet Ensemble, and the GSC Jazz Big Band.
"I'm looking forward to being able to spread school spirit and really engage everyone as the GSC Pioneer," Hinger said. "I hope to see people out at games and at different activities keeping the excitement up."
As the GSC Pioneer, Hinger will attend GSC football and basketball games, tournaments, and other school events. The Pioneer is charged with working with GSC students, faculty, and staff to positively promote and support the college. The official uniform of the GSC Pioneer mascot is a set of buckskins, a coonskin hat, and a musket. An ongoing tradition for over 80 years, Hinger becomes the 81st student to portray the Pioneer Mascot.
Sophomore Kateland Clark will serve as the alternate Pioneer for the 2021-2022 season.
FDIC and Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering Announce Strategic Partnership to Promote Innovation
DURHAM, North Carolina, April 13 (TNSPar) -- Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering issued the following news on April 12, 2021:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering today announced a strategic partnership to support technological innovation in the banking and financial services sectors.
"This exciting collaboration will amplify our efforts to drive innovation in the banking ecosystem and within the FDIC," said Sultan Meghji, FDIC's Chief Innovation Officer. "We share a common interest to better understand the opportunities
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DURHAM, North Carolina, April 13 (TNSPar) -- Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering issued the following news on April 12, 2021:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering today announced a strategic partnership to support technological innovation in the banking and financial services sectors.
"This exciting collaboration will amplify our efforts to drive innovation in the banking ecosystem and within the FDIC," said Sultan Meghji, FDIC's Chief Innovation Officer. "We share a common interest to better understand the opportunitiesand the risks of new technologies and to build a first-of-its-kind strategic innovation program."
"The opportunity to partner with the FDIC, and in particular Sultan, will allow our students to work on the cutting edge of finance, risk management, credit and emerging asset classes," said Jimmie Lenz, director of Duke's Master of Engineering programs in FinTech and Cybersecurity. "Our FinTech and Cybersecurity graduate students will be leveraging the applied learning that defines these programs and students, to develop and deliver solutions to assist the largest bank insurance organization in the world. This partnership highlights the dramatic changes taking place in finance, and recognition by the FDIC of the key role Duke Engineering is playing in this dynamic environment."
The agreement announced today builds on a longstanding relationship between the FDIC's Center for Financial Research and Duke University. It provides a roadmap for the FDIC's Tech Lab (FDiTech) and Duke faculty and students to collaborate in a number of areas focused on innovation, including artificial intelligence, risk management, quantitative research and cybersecurity.
Duke Engineering is home to a range of programs that apply technology to enterprise innovation, including master's degree programs in FinTech, Cybersecurity, AI for Product Innovation and Engineering Management. These bring together faculty from across the university for teaching and research in critical areas of interest to the FDIC, including: artificial intelligence; machine learning; automation; digitizing business; enterprise data management; forward-looking security (e.g., zero trust architecture) and emerging and advanced data technologies.
Augusta University: NIH Training Grant Enhances Opportunities for Biomedical Graduate Students
AUGUSTA, Georgia, April 13 (TNSGra) -- Augusta University issued the following news release:
Augusta University has received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to help support the graduate education of future scientists whose focus is cardiometabolic diseases -- like hypertension and diabetes -- which disproportionally affect minorities.
The training grant (1HL155011-01A1) will support four graduate students in its first year, and scale up to six students per year by year four of the five-year grant. It will offer aspiring PhDs and MD/PhDs the opportunity to learn from
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AUGUSTA, Georgia, April 13 (TNSGra) -- Augusta University issued the following news release:
Augusta University has received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to help support the graduate education of future scientists whose focus is cardiometabolic diseases -- like hypertension and diabetes -- which disproportionally affect minorities.
The training grant (1HL155011-01A1) will support four graduate students in its first year, and scale up to six students per year by year four of the five-year grant. It will offer aspiring PhDs and MD/PhDs the opportunity to learn from43 federally funded scientists focusing on different aspects of cardometabolic disease related to minority health. Student recruitment has just started.
Graduate students will learn more about metabolic processes that initiate disease, how the diseases manifest in humans and the complications that drive sickness and death.
The training grant enhances the caliber of the educational experience The Graduate School at AU provides students as it provides more dollars to pay an annual stipend to the students who are a critical biomedical workforce at a research university, says Dr. Jennifer Sullivan, interim dean of The Graduate School.
It expands opportunities and interest in AU and the Medical College of Georgia for students and scientists alike, says Dr. David Stepp, vascular biologist and Leon Henri Charbonnier Endowed Chair in Physiology in the MCG Vascular Biology Center. The NIH grant is also another objective indicator of MCG's nationally recognized research in cardiometabolic disease, Stepp says.
Stepp and Sullivan, a pharmacologist and physiologist in the MCG Department of Physiology, are co-directors of the Cardiometabolic Training Program. Both are NIH-funded investigators pursuing topics like gender differences in blood pressure regulation and the impact of high glucose in obesity.
Program faculty will include established investigators and educators across a variety of research disciplines. Faculty represent the MCG departments of Physiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Cellular Biology and Anatomy, Medicine, Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, as well as the Vascular Biology Center and Georgia Prevention Institute, Stepp says.
Heart disease is the most common cause of death in the United States and cardiovascular diseases like heart attack and stroke, as well as related cardiometabolic conditions like diabetes and obesity, are the top-funded research focus at MCG.
Cardiometabolic diseases are even more prevalent, and often more severe, in minorities, and the conditions tend to overlap and compound the severity of each other.
The Graduate School's PhD in Biomedical Sciences Programs include Biochemistry and Cancer Biology, Cellular Biology and Anatomy, Genomic Medicine, Molecular Medicine, Oral Biology and Maxillofacial Pathology, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Physiology and Vascular Biology. Seven of these graduate programs have faculty studying cardiometabolic disease, Stepp says.
Sullivan additionally is director of the first-year biomedical sciences program and has directed the first-year graduate course Experimental Therapeutics since 2007. Stepp regularly gives lectures to medical and graduate students and has directed The Graduate School's Core Course in Integrated Pathophysiology and served on the council which oversees faculty development and curriculum for the graduate school.
