November faculty and staff features

Nelson Wikstrom, Ph.D., professor of political science and public administration, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
The County of Henrico Historic Preservation Advisory Committee honored Wikstrom for his book “County Manager Form of Government in Henrico, Virginia: Implementation, Evolution, and Evaluation,” an examination of the administrations of Henrico’s seven county managers. Wikstrom received the award at the committee’s Awards of Merit Ceremony on Oct. 30.

Joyce O. Beckett, Ph.D., professor emerita, School of Social Work
Beckett’s new book, “Lifting Our Voices: The Journeys Into Family Caregiving of Professional Social Workers,” was published in August by Columbia University Press. 

The book focuses on the dual roles of professional social workers who are also family caregivers and includes the experiences of 10 professionals who describe the frustrations of navigating the social work system and the rewards of family caregiving.

It is the only work of its kind in which the majority of writers are African American and includes contributions from VCU School of Social Work Associate Professor Shirley Bryant, D.S.W., and Professor F. Ellen Netting, Ph.D.    

Beckett is a reviewer for “Families in Society” and is a board member of the Music Action Council for Friends Association for Children. She retired from VCU in 2005.

Edward F. Ansello, Ph.D., director, the Virginia Center on Aging, School of Allied Health Professions

Ansello was the keynote speaker at the first “Down Syndrome and Alzheimer’s Disease Conference” held earlier this month in Devens, Mass. Organizers plan to make the conference an annual event.

Jointly sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association of Massachusetts and New Hampshire and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation, the conference, titled “Honoring the Person Within,” recognized recent extraordinary increases in life expectancy for individuals with Down syndrome and the challenges and opportunities that they present to health and human services systems when they acquire Alzheimer’s disease in their longer lives.

Ansello discussed strategies for successfully bringing together agencies without a history of previous collaboration, drawing upon his experiences in Virginia. He leads the Area Planning and Services Committee, a coalition in metropolitan Richmond of two dozen agencies and individuals that train family caregivers and direct service providers about aging with lifelong disabilities and try to find creative solutions to unprecedented problems.

The following School of Medicine faculty members received recent honors:
John Pellock, M.D., vice chair of the Department of Neurology, has been elected as Second Vice President (2009), Vice President (2010) and President (2011) of the American Epilepsy Society.

Jasmohan Bajaj, M.D., of the Department of Internal Medicine received the award for excellence in clinical research and a Poster Award from the American College of Gastroenterology.

Mitchell Shiffman, M.D., of the Department of Internal Medicine has been named to the Editorial Board of Liver International, and to the Board of Trustees of the American College of Gastroenterology.


Susan T. Gooden, associate professor and director of graduate programs
Blue Wooldridge, professor of public and nonprofit management
L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
The Journal of Public Affairs Education awarded Gooden and Wooldridge its Best Article Award for "Integrating Social Equity into the Core Human Resource Management Course" from the Journal of Public Affairs Education, Volume 13, No. 2. They received the award during the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration's annual conference last month in Charleston, S.C.