January Faculty and Staff Features

James P. McCullough Jr., Ph.D., Department of Psychology
McCullough, distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry and licensed clinical psychologist, is lead author of an article that evaluates the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) treatment for outpatients with early onset depression.

VCU students Benjamin D. Lord, M.D., Kathryn A Conley, M.S., and Aaron M Martin, M.S., co-authored “A Method for Conducting Intensive Psychological Studies with Early-onset Chronically Depressed Patients,” which appeared as a lead article in the winter 2010 edition of the “American Journal of Psychotherapy.”

McCullough’s research and clinical interests include treating chronically depressed patients and he has trained and supervised psychotherapists in VCU’s Clinical Psychology Training Program in the United States and abroad. McCullough developed the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy to train mental health professionals who treat chronically depressed outpatients.

The “American Journal of Psychotherapy” has offered articles providing information and varying viewpoints across a wide range of psychotherapies for more than 60 years. The journal is published quarterly.

Blue Wooldridge, Ph.D., professor of public administration, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs

Wooldridge participated in an international conference on governmental response to the global economic crisis. The conference, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Governance and the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration, took place Nov. 8 to Nov. 13 in Beijing and Nanning, China.

Wooldridge presented remarks titled “Sub-national Public Administration Response to the Global Financial Crisis: Implication for the Equitable Distribution of the Costs and Benefits of Public Services.”

“My presentation focused on concerns of social equity – how government response to the global economic crisis is affecting the safety net serving the world’s most vulnerable citizens,” Wooldridge said. “The Wilder School has a strong interest in the topic of social equity. We integrate the concept into many of our courses.”

Wooldridge, a professor of public administration in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, teaches courses in public and non-profit management, organizational behavior, governmental financial management, human resource management, principles of public administration, public administration theory, public policy analysis and formulation and implementation.

Wooldridge’s research interests include identifying and overcoming barriers to the success of programs designed to promote social equity, strategies for increasing the effectiveness of management education and training, issues in privatization, trends in local government revenues, procedures and content of local government budgets, strategies used to improve productivity, obstacles to the implementation of innovations in public organizations and learning styles of international and U.S. public managers.

Dhol E. Tuason, R.N., Cardiac Surgery ICU
Tuason, clinical coordinator in the VCU Medical Center’s Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit, has been recognized as Clinician of the Year by the Richmond sub-chapter of the Philippine Nurse Association. Her involvement with the PNA includes her leadership and commitment to the community through various activities such as the American Heart Association’s recent “Zumba for the Heart” fitness initiative.

John M. "Jack" Hettema, M.D., Ph.D., VCU School of Medicine and Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics

Hettema, associate professor in Department of Psychiatry, has been recognized by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch Essential Science Indicators as having the most-cited paper in the research area of psychiatry and psychology.

Hettema directs the VCU Anxiety Disorders Specialty Clinic and organizes residency training in the areas of anxiety disorders and research methods. His research interests focus on the genetic and non-genetic risk factors for anxiety disorders such as panic disorder and phobias and their relationship to depression.

The paper, “A population-based twin study of the relationship between neuroticism and internalizing disorders,” was published in the May 2006 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

“This study demonstrated that genetic factors underlying individual differences in the personality trait neuroticism substantially overlap with those that increase risk for a wide range of psychiatric (anxiety and depressive) disorders. We can use this in strategies for identifying which individual genes are involved in these conditions,” Hettema said.

Hettema was featured on ScienceWatch.com discussing psychiatric genetics research and the findings of the paper. Read the interview here.

Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch Essential Science Indicators is a comprehensive compilation of science performance statistics and science trends data that is based on journal article publication counts and citation data from the Thomson Reuters scientific database. Available as a 10-year rolling file, ESI covers 10 million articles in 22 specific fields of research, and is updated every two months.

Marcel Cornis-Pope, Ph.D., professor and co-chair, Department of English
The International Comparative Literature Association presented the "History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe,” which was edited by Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer of the University of Amsterdam, at the British Academy in London on Dec. 17.

The innovative, four-volume work is the product of an international cooperation among 130 experts on the literature of the region, working in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. Their work has been supported by Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, the Collegium Budapest and the International Comparative Literature Association.