Dean's Monthly Communication: December 2006

Message from Dean Woods
Where in the world is the UW SON?

At first glance, this question may seem silly—last time I checked we were located in the T-wing, in the U District Building and at Northgate. Looked at another way, though, the answer to that question can change nearly daily.

On any given month, our students and faculty can be found just about anywhere on the globe. For example, Josephine Ensign, assoc. prof., Dept. of PCH, accompanied by 12 BSN students, just returned from a quarter in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where she and Michael Kennedy, affiliate prof., Dept. of PCH, co-taught classes at a university there. She called it "the most wonderful teaching experience of my career." Next month, Catherine Carr, assoc. prof., Dept. of FCN, leaves with another group of BSN students for a quarter in Costa Rica. Last year, nearly one-third of our graduating seniors had an international study experience. Please see the Traveling Scholars section below to learn about more of SON's global health endeavors.

How are we doing this? With our usual ingenuity and commitment -- and lots of help from Josh Fliegel, our director of international programs and a former Peace Corps volunteer. Along with Patricia Butterfield, chair and prof., Dept. of PCH, Josh recently led a retreat to discuss how to implement our strategy for global health. The energetic participation by faculty and staff at the retreat convinced me that we will continue to grow our experiences for international students, visiting faculty from foreign countries, and our own faculty and students as they engage in projects around the world.

There is much more to come in the future as we begin building our relationship with the new UW Department of Global Health. For the moment, I want to extend my profound thanks to everyone who is making this work possible. It really does take everyone’s commitment to make these highly complex experiences possible.
 —Nancy Fugate Woods, PhD, RN, FAAN


Campaign UW: Creating Futures Update
Professorship Appointments
Gail Kieckhefer, prof., Dept. FCN, is the first recipient of the new Joann Montgomery Endowed Professor in Nursing. Kieckhefer, a UW SON faculty member since 1990, is an expert in childhood chronic illness and has focused her career on conducting research and educating future nurses about childhood asthma.


New Grant Awards
Please join me in congratulating the following faculty for receiving new grant awards.

Jerald Herting, research assoc. prof, Dept. of PCH, recently received two more years of funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York for "Teaching for a New Era." The program focuses on designing high-quality education programs to prepare educators for the future of classroom learning.

Basia Belza, prof., Dept. of BNH
Project: Research to Practice Symposium: Disseminating and Sustaining Physical Activity Programs for Older Adults
Sponsor: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Brooke Randell, Research Assoc. Prof., Dept. of PCH
Project: Disseminating CAST—A Suicide Prevention Intervention, Phase II
Sponsor: Reconnecting Youth Company

Karen Snedker, research scientist, Dept. of PCH, and Jerald Herting, research assoc. prof, Dept. of PCH
Project: Effect of Social Context on Adolescent Distress
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health


Staff
Please welcome Alison Miller, recently hired by Academic Services as the new School of Nursing receptionist in T310. Alison is an Evergreen College graduate who, as a student, worked in a busy advising office while also taking linguistics courses at the UW! We are pleased to have Alison working with us.

Ashley Wiggin recently assumed many of the duties previously performed by Andrea Perkins, such as composing and editing confidential and time-sensitive correspondence for the dean’s signature, preparing PowerPoint presentations, editing the Dean’s Monthly Communication, and attending and recording minutes from meetings. Her new title is assistant to the dean. Congratulations, Ashley.


Faculty
Joachim Voss, asst. prof., Dept. of BNHS, has been invited to give one of the three keynote lectures at the 50th Anniversary Meeting at Western Institute of Nursing, Portland, OR, in April 2007. He will discuss the concept of sustainability principals in nursing, focusing on the professional mechanisms and ways to sustain the nursing profession in the 21st century.

More than 100 UW SON faculty, students, alumni and colleagues attended the Western Schools of Nursing reception 59th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) in Dallas, TX, in November. The reception was co-sponsored by the UW SON, OHSU Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence and the University of California Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence. The conference also featured presentations by gerontology faculty from around the UW SON, including Barbara Cochrane, associate prof., Dept. of FCN, and deTornyay Term Professor for Healthy Aging; Pamela Mitchell, Elizabeth Sterling Soule prof., Dept. of BNHS, and assoc. dean for research; and me, Dean Nancy Woods.


Traveling Scholars
Lauren McClelland, MPH ’04, and Ann Kurth, asst. prof., Dept. of BNHS, hosted a four-day workshop in Mombasa, Kenya, in November called "Helping People Live with HIV: Positive Counseling for Nurses." Attended by 100 nurses from throughout Kenya, the workshop launched a new counseling protocol to support antiretroviral adherence and secondary HIV prevention among persons living with HIV. It was part of the Pambazuko study funded by the National Allergy & Infectious Diseases Center for AIDS Research. Current Infectious Disease Program graduate student Marta Storwick was instrumental in helping plan and develop the workshop.

Barbara Mcgrath, research assoc. prof, Dept. of PCH, recently returned from an eight-week trip in the South Pacific. While in Tonga, she met with the minister of health and discussed research projects needed in Tonga and how the University of Washington might collaborate on them. One exciting project already under way is to develop a protocol for reviewing research projects involving human subjects.


Academic Services
Thailand Academic Exchange
This month the School of Nursing welcomes back to campus the following 12 BSN students who have completed the fall quarter study abroad program at Chiang Mai University (CMU) in Thailand:

• Abudakar Abdul-Rahman
• Megan Arhart
• Elise Del Terzo
• Taryn Eng
• Douglas Hartman
• Amanda Heffernan
• Appalachia Martine
• Ana Phommachanh
• Eunice Soh
• Parisa Sutanthavibul
• Lisa Tran
• Joyce Yoon

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