VCU news

Gary R. Matzke, Pharm.D., professor and director of practice transformation initiatives, School of Pharmacy

The American Association for the Advancement of Science elected Matzke a fellow for his distinguished contributions to the understanding of renal insufficiency and its impact on drug pharmacokinetics, toxicity and efficacy. Fellows are selected by AAAS members because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

Matzke is the only clinical pharmacist and the only VCU faculty member to be elected a 2014 fellow. School of Pharmacy Dean Joseph T. DiPiro, Pharm.D., was honored by the AAAS in 2013 while serving as executive dean of the South Carolina College of Pharmacy.

Matzke will be inducted into the pharmaceutical sciences section of the AAAS and officially recognized during the Fellows Forum at the 2015 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Jose, Calif.

AAAS, founded in 1848, seeks to advance science and serve society through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education and more. The world’s largest general scientific society, AAAS publishes the journal Science as well as Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling and an online science news site called EurekAlert!

 

Pamela G. Taylor, Ph.D., professor, Department of Art Education, School of the Arts

Taylor received the Higher Education Division Art Educator of the Year award from the Virginia Art Education Association at its annual conference in Richmond on Nov. 8.

The VAEA promotes, supports and advances visual arts education through professional development, leadership, research and service. Its awards provide tangible recognition of excellence and achievement of the many outstanding individuals and programs of the VAEA. It also focuses professional attention on exemplary art educators and quality art education, and increases public awareness of the importance of quality art education.

Taylor extends her research through ideas related to data mining and visualization as she engages with the question, “What does (art) learning look like?” Along these lines, Taylor worked with colleagues in the School of Education on the project “eLASTIC: Electronic Learning and Assessment Tool for Interdisciplinary Connections,” which earned a National Priorities Research grant from the Qatar Foundation for $1.05 million and grant support from the National Art Education Foundation. Her National Art Education Association honors include the Edwin Ziegfeld award (2012), Distinguished Fellow (2011), Higher Education Art Educator of the Year (2010), Virginia Art Educator of the Year (2010), Southeastern Art Educator of the Year (2011) and Higher Educator (2007).

 

David Holland, director of grant coordination and entrepreneurship, School of the Arts

Holland was one of only 50 innovators worldwide selected to attend the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators in Austria last month. In addition, the 34-year-old was one of just six selected from the United States.

Holland cited his studies in international affairs, his experience living and working abroad for several years and his work with international agencies such as the European Cultural Foundation as factors that prepared him for the program.

The forum brings together young talent in the arts to anticipate and solve 21st-century problems. Attendees have the opportunity to develop both their ideas and skills.

Holland says the debate over the economic value of the creative field — such as arts, culture and advertising — has been ongoing for two decades.

“Now that’s filtered down to everywhere,” he said. “It’s important to move beyond that. We want to reassert the intrinsic value of arts and culture in themselves. How do we move beyond that to empower people not just as consumers, but … as citizens? What does it mean to move from the idea of a creative economy to a creative society?”

This year’s one-week program was the first in a planned 10 years of annual events.

 

Melanie Buffington, Ph.D., assistant professor and graduate programs coordinator, Department of Art Education, School of the Arts

Buffington has been nominated for the National Art Education Association’s national higher education Teacher of the Year.

Buffington has taught middle school art in Maryland and has interned in numerous museums. Her current research interests include museum education, emerging technologies, culturally responsive pedagogy, contemporary art, service-learning and pre-service teacher preparation.

“I can speak as a past nominee from the Middle Division Level that it is truly an honor to be picked out from such a talented field. But to make it to the national level, that is because Dr. Buffington truly stands out among her peers,” said Brent Tharp, a visual arts teacher at Manchester Middle School. “Melanie's tireless efforts not only bring great honor to herself and her program, but to all of Virginia Commonwealth University.”

The NAEA comprises visual arts educators. Members include primary, secondary and higher educators, researchers and scholars, teaching artists and students. The Teacher of the Year will be announced in the spring.

 

Sharon Zumbrunn, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Foundations of Education, School of Education

Zumbrunn received the prestigious American Psychological Association Division 15 Early Career Research Award for her professional organization of a longitudinal study on the development of children's writing skills.

The $7,500 award recognizes her evolving work for “Writing Teacher Beliefs, Motivation, and Instructional Practices and Student Writing Perceptions, Motivation, Self-Regulation, and Achievement: A Longitudinal Investigation.” Over three years, approximately 1,500 students in grades third through ninth and their teachers from nine schools in one large, metropolitan Southeastern public school district will be followed.

Classrooms are dynamic settings comprised of many influential factors, including interactions between teachers, students and peers, and engaging instructional activities, which provide students with resources for writing development and success. This longitudinal study will examine factors that may foster or inhibit the development of student writing perceptions, motivation, self-regulation and achievement. Unlike many studies in this area, many social processes that may influence student adaptive writing beliefs and behaviors and  writing success from elementary through high school will be examined over six waves of data collection: teacher writing beliefs, motivation and instructional practices, and student writing classroom perceptions, motivation and self-regulatory behaviors.

As a former elementary teacher, Zumbrunn’s work addresses understanding student learning and motivation, and the contexts that foster student success. Her current projects include longitudinal, experimental and mixed method investigations that examine student writing motivation and self-regulation across developmental levels (elementary through college), as well as explore teachers’ feelings about teaching writing and the instructional practices they typically employ in their writing classrooms.

 

PonJola Coney, M.D., senior associate dean for faculty affairs and professor of obstetrics and gynecology, School of Medicine

Coney was one of five alumni to be inducted into the University of Mississippi Medical Center Medical Hall of Fame at an awards dinner held in August in Jackson, Mississippi.

A native of McComb, Mississippi, Coney made history in 2002 when she became the first UMMC School of Medicine graduate to be appointed dean of a medical school – Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

Brought up on a farm, Coney was the first person in her family to attend college. She received a bachelor’s degree in medical technology from Xavier University of Louisiana before completing her M.D. at UMMC. She was elected vice president of the class of 1978.

At the University of North Carolina, she completed an obstetrics and gynecology residency and did a reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) fellowship at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. Early in her career, Coney held faculty positions at four successive institutions where she established academic programs of assisted reproduction while directing clinical and research activities and training residents and fellows in REI: the University of Oklahoma, the University of Nebraska, the University of Arizona and Southern Illinois University, where she was professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

As dean of the medical school at historically black Meharry Medical College, she guided the school through a period of growth. During her tenure, she obtained funding to establish two centers: an EXPORT Center, which engaged the community on issues concerning health disparities and access to care, and a Center for Research in Women’s Health.

In her academic career spanning some 30 years, Coney has contributed numerous articles to peer-reviewed journals, written book chapters and abstracts, and acquired funding totaling more than $27 million from the National Institutes of Health and industry.

In 2012, in recognition of her groundbreaking contributions to women’s health and health disparities, Coney was elected to the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

 

Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., Rachel Brown Banks Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, professor of human genetics, School of Medicine

Kendler was the inaugural speaker of the Oxford Loebel Lectures and Research Programme on Oct. 15 and 16 at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

The Oxford Loebel Lectures were established to encourage researchers to consider how biological, psychological or social factors interact in their contribution to mental illness, rather than focusing on them as independent factors.

Kendler’s research is relevant to this approach. Several of his more than 800 publications address the relationship between biological, psychological and social contributors to psychiatric and substance use disorders.

During two well-attended lectures, Kendler first described how recent studies in genetic epidemiology and molecular genetics illustrate the complex causal pathways to mental illness. In his second lecture at the Oxford Martin School Lecture Theatre, he proposed new goals for psychiatric research and a new framework for conceptualizing and classifying disorders.

Videos of Kendler’s lectures are available online at the Oxford Loebel Lectures and Research Programme website.

 

Curtis N. Sessler, M.D., Orhan Muren Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine

The American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) named Sessler president of the medical association, effective Nov. 1.

Sessler was elected president-designate of CHEST in 2012. He is the medical director of critical care and the medical respiratory intensive care unit at the VCU Medical Center.

Sessler has received a variety of teaching awards at VCU, including the School of Medicine’s Educational Innovation Award. He is past president of the Virginia chapter of the American Thoracic Society and has served on several committees for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including serving as chair of the Pulmonary and Allergy Drug Advisory Committee.

He is an active member of CHEST, having served on the Board of Regents and as chair of the Critical Care Section, chair of the Council of Sections, chair of the Critical Care Institute, and program chair for the 2003 CHEST annual meeting.

 

Jane Laverne, operating room clinical coordinator, VCU Health System

The Virginia Department of Health awarded Laverne the Governor’s Award for the nurse with outstanding contributions to emergency medical services at the Virginia EMS Symposium on Nov. 8.

Laverne is a member of the Powhatan Volunteer Rescue Squad, a part-time volunteer with the Southside Virginia Emergency Crew and a member of the Emergency Services Board of Middlesex County. As president of the Deltaville Volunteer Rescue Squad, Laverne has been instrumental in developing processes to ensure the safety of the town’s residents in the event of severe weather.

In 2004, Laverne was appointed by former Governor Mark Warner as commander of the State Disaster Team. She is also the committee chair of the Virginia Association of Volunteer Rescue Squads EMS Exchange Program, where she was responsible for the Germany exchange program, and is a member of the Pan American Health Organization exchange program at VCU.

 

Cathy J. Bradley, Ph.D., associate director for cancer prevention and control, VCU Massey Cancer Center

Bradley has been awarded the Theresa A. Thomas Memorial Foundation Chair in Cancer Prevention and Control in recognition of her contributions to Massey Cancer Center’s research mission. Bradley also serves as program leader for Massey’s Cancer Prevention and Control research program, as founding chair of the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Healthcare Policy and Research and as interim chair of VCU’s Department of Social and Behavioral Health.

She is an expert in health and labor market outcomes and socioeconomic health care disparities. As one of only a few health economists with an emphasis on the effects of cancer, Bradley has led international research related to cancer and its effect on employment.

The Theresa A. Thomas Memorial Foundation Chair was established in 2002 and was previously held by Laura A. Siminoff, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Health.

 

John F. Duval, CEO, MCV Hospitals, VCU Health System

Duval has been elected as chair of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s executive committee.

Duval was elected to the ACGME board of directors in 2008. He is currently a member of the American Hospital Association, where he serves on the Maternal and Child Health Governing Council, and is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives.

As hospital CEO, Duval is responsible for the overall management of the hospital, including administration, strategic planning, development and community outreach.

Duval has a Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Science in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine.

The ACGME is a private, nonprofit organization that assesses and advances the quality of resident physicians’ education.

 

Van R. Wood, Ph.D., professor of marketing and Philip Morris Chair in International Business, School of Business

The Virginia International Business Council awarded Wood the 2014 Global Excellence Award at the Virginia Conference on World Trade last month.

The award recognizes the work Wood has done for more than 20 years with Virginia’s international business community. Wood has worked to foster an international perspective within the School of Business and to encourage collaboration between students, faculty, businesses and the community.

Wood is a major contributor to the partnership between Virginia Commonwealth University and Christ University in India and he continues to advocate for a stronger global business environment. He is past president of the VAIBC and is a member on both the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce and the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The VAIBC serves the region's international trade professionals through programs, engaging speakers and as a forum for the promotion of global commerce.

 

Jason Smith, Ph.D., interim executive director, Bridging RVA

Smith, currently manager for evidence-based decision-making at Bridging RVA, will become interim executive director effective Dec. 16, replacing Kelli Pamley, who was recently appointed as the vice president of administration at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Stanford, California.  She will begin her new role in January 2015.

Smith has been with Bridging RVA for nearly two years, using improvement science and results facilitation to advise funders, government and nonprofit organizations on measurement and program strategy. Prior to joining Bridging RVA, he served as a program evaluation manager and community health liaison for Bon Secours Richmond.

Smith holds undergraduate degrees in biology and religious studies from VCU, a Master of Divinity degree from Baptist Seminary and a Ph.D. from VCU’s School of Education.

Bridging RVA engages its regional partners from the education, business, government, civic and philanthropic communities to facilitate community vision and agenda for college and career readiness, establish shared measurement and advance evidence-based decision-making, align and coordinate strategic action and mobilize resources and community commitment for sustainable change.