October Professional Notes
10/31/2019
A round-up of awards, presentations, papers and the other professional achievements of SLU faculty, staff and students.
FACULTY AND STAFF
Awards
SLUCare orthopedic surgeon Adam Streit, D.O., and SLUCare orthopedic surgery nurse Amy Distler, RN, were recently recognized at department meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 9, for offering exceptional patient care. The two demonstrated compassion and concern in providing care for a patient who faced medical issues outside the realm of orthopedics.
Robert Wilmott, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs, and Karen Davis, interim SLUCare COO presented Streit and Distler with a Fleur de Lis Certificate of Excellence.
Debbie Dill Garvin, events manager with the Office of Alumni Engagement, has been chosen as the winner of this year’s Joyce Huelsmann Outstanding SAC Member Award. Garvin received the award for her dedication to the Staff Advisory Committee (SAC). SAC Chair Cyn Wise presented the award to Garvin.
Garvin was honored for her role in spearheading all SAC events over the past two years, including for her involvement in coordinating the SAC Bicentennial 5K run, which raised more than $6,000 for the University’s Helping Our Own Fund.
The award was established to honor founding SAC member, Joyce Huelsmann, a SLU staff member from 1963 to 2010). The award recognizes a member of the Staff Advisory Committee who has best exhibited the qualities necessary for the type of leadership, service and positive spirit that were a hallmark of Huelsmann and her involvement at Saint Louis University, and more specifically, SAC.
Appointments
Jean Gilman Cox, assistant vice president and dean of admission, has been elected as president-elect of the National Catholic College Admission Association. After serving 2019-2020 in that role, she will lead the organization as president during 2020-2021 academic year.
Established in 1959, the National Catholic College Admission Association (NCCAA) is a nonprofit organization of Catholic colleges and universities committed to promoting the value of Catholic higher education and to serving students, parents and counselors. More than 140 Catholic colleges and universities are member institutions. The NCCAA is led by a board of directors comprised of an executive director, admission and enrollment leaders from member institutions and secondary school counselors from Catholic high schools.
Publications
Emily Lutenski, Ph.D., of the Department of American Studies, in the College of Arts and Sciences, published an article in the latest issue of American Studies, “Dickens Disappeared: Black Los Angeles and the Borderlands of Racial Memory.”
Terri Rebmann, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Biosecurity in the College for Public Health and Social Justice, SLUCare physician Rachel Charney, M.D., Travis Loux, Ph.D., of the Biostatistics Program in the College for Public Health, along with doctoral students James Austin Turner and Dominic Nguyen, published an article in Health Security, “Firefighters’ and Emergency Medical Service Personnel’s Knowledge and Training on Radiation Exposures and Safety.”
In the article, the team’s findings indicate that many first responders are not receiving training on naturally occurring and man-made radiological events nor participating in exercises that involve a radiological scenario.
Presentations
Farzana Hoque, M.D., and Joshua Mayer, D.O., SLUCare physicians and hospitalists from the Section of Hospital Medicine, attended the 2019 American College of Physicians Missouri Chapter Scientific Meeting in Osage Beach, Missouri. Both presented posters during the conference, which ran from Thursday, Sept. 19, through Saturday, Sept. 21.
Hoque presented a poster on “A Cloud on the Horizon – A Deadly Complication of Norepinephrine” and Mayer presented a poster on “Whether Cocaine or Sepsis, Know Your Source: A Case of Saint Louis Cocaine.”
Alexis Bruce-Staudt, executive director of the Grant Operations (GO) Center, and Cyn Wise, post-award specialist III, of the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), presented sessions at the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) Regional Meeting in April, in Columbus, Ohio, and at the NCURA National Conference in August, in Washington, DC.
Their presentation, “Grant Operation (GO) Centers: Re-Envisioning Research Support on a University Campus,” outlined for participants the planning and implementation of Saint Louis University's GO Center 1, focusing on how to create a resilient research infrastructure to support faculty needs, and how to identify opportunities, challenges, and benefits to re-organizing research support.
Jim Greathouse, of the Learning and Development Program in the Division of Human Resources, spoke to the St. Louis Gateway Chapter of Advancing Data Center and IT Infrastructure Professionals (AFCOM) in September about time management. Members of SLU’s Department of Information Technology and Services (ITS), along with IT professionals throughout the St. Louis area held their September meeting on campus in the Boileau Hall. Greathouse discussed ways of tracking daily activities to compare against goals, identifying time wasters, along with a fun exercise related to multi-tasking.
Community Partnership
Saint Louis University’s Medical Family Therapy (MedFT) program has started a new partnership with Casa de Salud. The MedFT program has joined the Mental Health Collaborative, a group of participating organizations that work with Casa de Salud to expand the range of therapy services to individuals, couples and families from underserved and under-represented areas in St. Louis.
A collaborative internship position was developed this year for a master’s family therapy student to provide counseling services to a range of populations with medical, emotional, and/or familial issues. This position will help address a gap in services. The partnership will look to collaborate on future research projects and grant submissions on comprehensive mental health services to diverse populations on several issues such as depression, anxiety, trauma and substance use.
Casa de Salud is a non-profit community health and wellness center in St. Louis that facilitates access for mental health services to local underserved and foreign-born communities, with a historical emphasis on the St. Louis Latino community, by providing on-site, partner-provided mental health care. Saint Louis University provided the building in which Casa still operates today.
Casa provides primary care for illness and injury, mental health counseling, case management, care coordination and home health visits for as many as 500 patients per month.
The Medical Family Therapy Program is in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at SLU. The program offers both a master’s in couple and family therapy and a doctorate in Medical Family Therapy. Master’s students are trained to provide psychotherapy and family counseling in several community-based settings including community health, schools, non-profit agencies, child and family services and private practice. Doctoral students receive advanced training in integrated care and behavioral health skills in medicine, with opportunities to intern in primary care, specialty care, community mental health and hospital settings.
Symposia and Conferences
Scholars and writers from across the world convened at SLU-Madrid for an international conference, entitled Yo no invento nada, focused on the Republican exile of 1939 and how it has affected both film and literature.
Organized by SLU-Madrid’s Verónica Azcue, Ph.D., and Fernando Larraz, Ph.D., of the Universidad de Alcalá, the conference was sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Justice and GEXEL, an academic group for the study of the literature of the exile.
Paul Vita, Ph.D., director and academic dean of SLU-Madrid, inaugurated the event alongside Larraz, Azcue and Olga Muñoz, Ph.D., SLU-Madrid Spanish programs director.
Participants hailed from Brazil, Chile, France, Hungary, Mexico, the United States and Spain, and included notable figures from various facets of Spanish culture including playwrights Jerónmo López Mozo and Antonia Bueno, novelists Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga and Aroa Moreno, and some of the most widely recognized experts on the study of the Spanish Republican exile of 1939.
The conference also covered a theatrical performance by Ana Millás, who performed Manolita en la frontera by Antonia Bueno. Participants held engaging discussions addressing topics such as the differences between testimony and fiction, poetic imagery during the exile and how it is portrayed in both contemporary and current novels and the graphic forms that represent it.
STUDENTS
Presentations
Emily Quartarone, a doctoral student in the Department of American Studies, presented a poster at the annual Oral History Association conference in Salt Lake City in October, “Interviewing Immigrant Narrators during the Trump Era.” The research was based on Quartarone’s work with the International Institute of St. Louis, conducting oral histories with area immigrants and refugees.