Professional Notes: Back-to-School 2017

08/14/2017

A round-up of this summer's awards, presentations, papers and the other professional achievements of SLU faculty, staff and students.

FACULTY AND STAFF

Awards

Ethel Frese DPT. Submitted photo

Ethel Frese, DPT, professor of physical therapy, was named a 2017 Catherine Worthingham Fellow of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), the highest honor the organization awards. Frese was honored at the NEXT APTA Annual Conference and Expo in Boston. "I felt so very humbled and honored to be named a Catherine Worthingham fellow," Frese said. "It was certainly not something that I ever thought I would receive."

Brandon Blue, M.D., a resident in hematology, was selected to participate in the 2017 American Society of Hematology Clinical Research Training Institute. The year-long educational and mentorship program is designed to prepare hematology and oncology trainees and junior faculty for careers in patient-oriented research.

LeAnn Upton, office assistant for the School of Law's Legal Clinics, received an award from Missouri Lawyers Weekly for her work furthering legal education. Patricia Lee, J.D., of the School of Law, nominated Upton for the honor.

While individual members of DPS were honored by the Dept. of Defense program earlier this summer, the Aug. 17 award honors DPS collectively. Photo by Amelia Flood

SLU's Department of Public Safety (DPS) received a Department of Defense Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (DOD ESGR) "Above and Beyond" award for its efforts to support its members who are also active in National Guard or Reserves service. According to Bob Schure, the ESGR representative who presented the award on Aug. 17, Schure nominated SLU for the award after being impressed by the number of individual DPS members nominated for a previous ESGR honor earlier this summer. The Aug. 17 award is one of less than 25 that Schure has presented at that level in 12 years.

Dan Hoft, Ph.D., professor of internal medicine-infectious diseases, was nominated as a Biomedical Research Exemplar through the P.I. Program. He was nominated by Joel Eissenberg, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular microbiology. The program recognizes leaders in research in biomedical sectors.

Flavio Esposito, Ph.D., looks at how "chains" of software create network infrastructure in an award-winning paper. Submitted photo

Flavio Esposito, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science, won Best Paper for his paper "Catena: A Distributed Architecture for Robust Service Function Chain Instantiation with Guarantees" from the IEEE, the world's largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology, at its 2017 NetSoft Conference. The paper describes a network orchestrator that has some guarantees no the performance of a chain - an ordered sequence of pieces of software that are used to manage a network and its services. Esposito also gave an overview of the paper that was published by IEEE.

(Left) Kathryn Mitchell Pierce, Ph.D., and historian David Schultz of the Long Island University-Riverhead. Submitted photo

Kathryn Mitchell Pierce, Ph.D., assistant professor of educational studies in the School of Education, received the Lifetime Membership Award from the WLU at the 2017 Literacies for All Summer Institute in Tucson. The WLU, an affiliate group of the National Council of Teachers of English and Pierce received the award to honor her contributions to whole language instruction and the Whole Language Umbrella.

Readings and Conference Presentations

Hal Bush, Ph.D., professor of English, will read from and discuss his first novel, The Hemingway Files, as part of the "Mining Books" series at the University of Texas El Paso in September.

(First row) Milta Little, M.D. (Second row, left to right) Max Zubatsky, Ph.D., Helen Lach, Ph.D., Marla Berg-Weger, Ph.D., Dan Stewart. Submitted photo

SLU students and faculty members presented at the 21st International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics World Congress on Gerontology and Geriatrics in San Francisco from July 23 to 27. The conference is held in the United States every 32 years and was the largest gathering of geriatrics practitioners with over 6,000 in attendance. SLU's presenters spoke on geriatric assessment; interprofessional geriatric education; non-pharmacologic interventions for people with dementia; frailty; home monitoring; fear of falling; cancer screening; hospice; and older immigrants and refugees. SLU's presenters were:

John Morley, M.D., Department of Geriatrics.
Milta Little, D.O., Department of Geriatrics.
Marla Berg-Weger, Ph.D., School of Social Work and Department of Geriatrics.
Max Zubatsky, Ph.D., Family Medical Therapy.
Dan Stewart, School of Social Work.
Helen Lach, Ph.D., School of Nursing.
Elaine Osterbur, Ph.D., Department of Health Science and Informatics.
Lisa Willoughby, Ph.D., Department of Psychology.

Academic Appointments

Amy Harkins, Ph.D. Submitted photo

Amy Harkins, Ph.D., has been named as the new chair of the newly-formed Department of Biomedical Laboratory Sciences (BLS) in the Doisy College of Health Sciences. The new department combines seven bachelor's degree programs and a master's program.