VCU news

By Brian McNeill and Mary Kate Brogan

Two Virginia Commonwealth University professors have been named recipients of 2022 Outstanding Faculty Awards, Virginia’s highest honor for faculty members, recognizing superior accomplishments in teaching, research and public service.

The awards, which are sponsored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and Dominion Energy, have been bestowed annually since 1987 to faculty members of Virginia’s public and private higher education institutions. Each recipient will receive a $7,500 gift from Dominion Energy at a ceremony on March 1.

Among this year’s 12 recipients are Jay Albanese, Ph.D., a professor of criminal justice in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at VCU, and Rising Star award recipient Michelle Doll, M.D., an assistant professor of internal medicine in the VCU School of Medicine and associate hospital epidemiologist at VCU Health.

“Dr. Doll and Dr. Albanese are exceptional representatives of VCU’s mission,” said VCU President Michael Rao, Ph.D. “Their service as educators, clinicians and researchers reaches a diverse community and helps so many lead better-informed and safer lives. Recognition of their outstanding service is well-deserved, and I join the entire VCU community in expressing gratitude for their transformational work to serve humanity.”

Albanese is a globally renowned expert in organized crime, corruption and professional ethics with a record of performance in teaching, scholarship and service.

“I am grateful for this recognition. I appreciate the opportunity I have had to impact the lives of students, carry out research with public policy impacts, and perform public service to my profession, the government and the United Nations,” Albanese said. “I am also thankful, knowing I should not take too much credit for my success, recognizing the intellectual and personal debts that we all owe to all those who provided mentoring, encouragement and support and contributed directly to who we are today.”

For over three decades, Albanese has advanced the field of criminal justice through transformative investigations of human behavior, which include the groundbreaking application of risk assessment methodology to combat criminal activity. His research spans contemporary issues associated with organized crime, including human trafficking; global, environmental and social changes; and corruption.

Albanese served as chief of the National Institute of Justice's International Center, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice that is responsible for developing and executing transnational crime and justice research and evaluation, as well as coordinating with United Nations efforts in these areas. He is a past president of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, former executive director of the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime and served on the executive board of the American Society of Criminology, where he now serves as United Nations liaison.

He is the author and editor of 20 books on organized crime, ethics, corruption, transnational crime and criminal justice. He has delivered invited presentations in 24 countries and is the recipient of numerous awards, including VCU’s Distinguished Teaching Award; VCU's Elske Smith Distinguished Lecturer Award; the Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology Division of International Criminology for significant contributions to criminology internationally; the Gerhard O.W. Mueller Award for research contributions from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences International Section; and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime.

Doll, a specialist in infectious diseases, said being named a recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Awards is an incredible honor. She is one of only two of the 12 recipients to earn the Rising Star designation.

“I still cannot believe that I was selected as a 2022 Rising Star,” she said. “I believe it is a testament to the many opportunities that VCU has given me to develop my career thus far. It is also a great example of the value the state of Virginia places on education. Beyond this, I think my selection for this award acknowledges the importance of public health, as this is the area of my expertise. I am deeply grateful for the privilege of teaching the next generation of health care providers and public health practitioners, and for all the mentorship that I have received.”

Doll is course director for “Contemporary Issues and Controversies in Public Health,” a VCU Master of Public Health program awarded “Best Elective” by graduate students in spring 2020.

She chairs the Virginia Healthcare-Associated Infections Advisory Group, a collaboration of stakeholders in infection prevention composed of Virginia Department of Health, Health Quality Innovators and the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.

Doll is co-principal investigator of a $6 million grant from the Virginia Department of Health to establish a statewide infection prevention training center. Doll is also medical co-director of that center, the Virginia Infection Prevention Training Center, which will work in tandem with health care facilities and public health to strengthen infection prevention and control expertise and provide universal infection prevention and control training to front-line providers.

During the pandemic, Doll has been a leading voice for VCU Health in helping to educate the public about COVID-19, speaking with VCU and VCU Health News to answer questions about emerging variants, breakthrough infections and more.

She completed a research fellowship in hospital epidemiology and her Master of Public Health degree at VCU. She completed her infectious diseases clinician fellowship at the University of Maryland and her internal medicine residency at Temple University Hospital where she served as a chief medical resident.

Albanese and Doll are among eight winners of Outstanding Faculty Awards from VCU over the past decade. Past recipients include Supriyo Bandyopadhyay, Ph.D., Commonwealth Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, in 2018; Lawrence Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D., the Charles and Evelyn Thomas Professor of Medicine and chair of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology, in 2015; Everett L. Worthington Jr., Ph.D., Emeritus Commonwealth Professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences, in 2016; Albert Farrell, Ph.D., Commonwealth Professor in the Department of Psychology, in 2015; David X. Cifu, M.D., chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and associate dean of innovation and systems integration at VCU School of Medicine, in 2014; and Shiv N. Khanna, Commonwealth Professor and chair of the Department of Physics, in 2013.