End of Semester Professional Notes

12/03/2020

A round-up of awards, presentations, papers and the other professional achievements of SLU faculty, staff members and students.

Faculty and Staff

Two faculty members have received the 2020 Dr. Norman A. White Award for Engaged Scholarship and Service.

Amber Johnson, Ph.D., of the Department of Communication, and Kira Banks, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, received the award at the annual Senate Kickoff Event on Tuesday, Oct. 6, via Zoom.

Johnson is an associate professor of communication whose work focuses on intercultural communication, social justice, art activism, and identity negotiation. Their scholarship centers on engaging communities to fight for structural change in ways that promote healing, justice, and transformation.

Banks is an associate professor of psychology with an emphasis in clinical psychology. Her research focuses on both the intersections of racial identity, discrimination and mental health, and how to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion efforts through improving inter-group relations and dialogue in communities and organizations.

The award is named for Norman A. White, Ph.D., an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice in the School of Social Work in the College for Public Health and Social Justice. A respected scholar-activist, White dedicated himself to helping vulnerable children and youth in the St. Louis region flourish in the face of poverty, violence and oppression. White died in 2017.

The award is one of two awards given by the SLU Faculty Senate and honors a faculty member’s contributions to the University and to the St. Louis community. Awardees are selected each year by a committee of SLU faculty from across the university.

The criteria for the award is a sustained record of engaged scholarship and service through university-community partnerships that focus on three priority areas: promoting healthy individuals, families, schools, organizations and communities; alleviating poverty, violence, injustice, illness, and inequity; advocating for social justice though policies, programs, and practices that focus on dismantling systems of oppression and increasing inclusion, well-being and empowerment of vulnerable populations.

The SLU-SSM Health Physical Therapy Orthopedic Residency earns American Board of Physical Therapy Residency and Fellowship Education (ABPTRFE) re-accreditation for a period of 10 years.  Per the ABPTRFE, “in receiving renewal of accreditation, the SLU-SSM Health PT Orthopedic Residency program demonstrated its commitment to educational standards and ethical business practices indicative of quality, accountability, and continuous improvement that enhances the physical therapy profession.” 

The SLU-SSM Health Physical Therapy Orthopedic Residency Program is an accelerated post licensure program to advance the orthopedic skills of physical therapists. It is the only ABPTRFE accredited orthopedic physical therapy residency in Missouri. Founded and accredited in 2014-2015, this unique collaboration between Saint Louis University Program in Physical Therapy and SSM Health Physical Therapy currently has 3 Residents and has graduated 13 licensed physical therapists. In addition to clinical practice and teaching in the entry-level DPT program, each resident completes over 150 hours of mentoring and over 300 hours of educational experiences. 

SLU Physical Therapy faculty members Chris Sebelski, Ph.D., Elissa Held Bradford, Ph.D., and Ann Hayes, DPT, published their article “The Intersection of Movement and Clinical Reasoning: Embodying “Body as a Teacher” to Advance the Profession and Practice” in the Physical Therapy Journal.

Oluwatoyosi Owoeye, Ph.D.,  from the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training, published “Dissemination and implementation research in sports and exercise medicine and sports physical therapy: translating evidence to practice and policy” in the BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine Journal.

Ronny O'Dwyer S.J. and Angela Moret, both of the School of Education, had an article published in the Journal of Catholic Education called A Spiritual Vision for Catholic Educator Prep in a Time of Disruption: A Reflective Essay. 

Anthony P. Breitbach, Ph.D., David Pole, Ph.D., Rachel S. Rauvola, Ginge Kettenbach, Ph.D. and Leslie Hinyard, Ph.D., had an article published in the Journal of Allied Health, “Longitudinal Assessment of Students’ Perceived Collaboration Skills at an Institution with a Structured Interprofessional Education Curriculum.”

Tobias Winright, Ph.D., of Theological Studies and Health Care Ethics, has published a new book, Serve and Protect: Selected Essays on Just Policing (Cascade 2020), which contains some of his articles and book chapters on the subject from the past 25 years, as well as some fresh material in the introduction and postscript. 

In a new paper in press with Cell Reports, a team of SLU researchers is investigating new ways to block the autoimmune process in its early stages as a means of helping slow the progression and effects of autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and type 1 diabetes.

Daniel Hawiger, M.D. Ph.D., of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine, Dale Dorsett, Ph.D., of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, together with fellow researchers and students Adeleye Opejin, Ph.D., Alexey Surnov, Ph.D., Ziva Misulovin, Michelle Pherson, Cindy Gross, Courtney A. Iberg, Ian Fallahee and Jessica Bourque, detailed their findings about the role of complex autoimmune processes and the mechanisms responsible for the formation of self-reactive T cells, a key type of immune cell that can potentially impact autoimmune functions in “A two-step process of effector programming governs CD4+ T cell fate determination induced by antigenic activation in the steady state.”

Autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and type 1 diabetes have a severe impact on the well-being of affected individuals and inevitably lead to broad socioeconomic costs. Over the recent years, our understanding of the pathogenesis of specific autoimmune diseases has grown tremendously. However, despite this progress, autoimmunity continues to frustrate therapeutic efforts. The mechanisms responsible for the formation of self-reactive effector T cells remain unclear.

The team’s recent research shone light how certain autoimmune effector T cells may initially form in healthy subjects. Hawiger and his team revealed a two-step process starting with induction of effector precursors that express a transcription co-factor Homeodomain only protein (Hopx) and are imprinted with multiple instructions for their subsequent terminal effector differentiation and autoimmune functions.

This research might therefore eventually lead to new ways of blocking the autoimmune process in its early stages and could also help to modulate the course of more advanced autoimmune disease. Opejin and Surnov, post-doctoral fellows in Hawiger lab, share the first authorship with Hawiger.

Lisa Dorsey, Ph.D., Ginge Kettenbach, Ph.D., Carol Beckel, Ph.D. and Tricia Austin, Ph.D., presented Dec. 2 through the Association of Schools Advancing Health Professions 2020 Live Virtual Series. The title of the presentation is Implementation of Hyflex Professional Physical Therapy Education Curricular Models within the COVID-19 Blindspot.

Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, Ph.D., of the Department of Theological Studies, was part of an international conference Nov. 18-25, “Christ Among the Disciplines,” which featured renowned scholars Stanley Hauerwas, N.T. Wright and Kathryn Tanner.

On Nov. 13, Whitney Postman, Ph.D., of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, gave the keynote lecture for the 5th Annual UMSL Neuroscience Research Showcase, hosted by UMSL’s Center for Neurodynamics. Her lecture is “Why Now Is the Best Time Ever to Study the Neural Substrate of Motor-Speech Performance in Neurologically Intact Individuals and in Cases of Stroke, Brain Injury and Fronto-Temporal Degeneration.”

Lisa L. Dorsey, Ph.D., the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training, in the Doisy College of Health Sciences, was interviewed by APTA Magazine about empowering women in the physical therapy profession and a program she developed at SLU.

Ana Santos Rutschman, J.D., of the School of Law, wrote a piece for the “Health Affairs Blog” that was distributed nationwide about the attempts by Facebook to address vaccine misinformation.

Harold Braswell, Ph.D., of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, was invited on the podcast “The Hospice Chaplaincy Show” to talk about his book “The Crisis of US Hospice Care.”

Students

McNair Scholar Ro Sandoval received the Undergraduate Student Poster Presentation Award from the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) for presenting research during their National Diversity in STEM Virtual Conference, held Oct. 19-24. The poster presentation was titled “Dissecting the role of dorsal hippocampal circuits in the formation and retrieval of opioid-paired contextual memory and reinforcement” (Sandoval R., Massaly N., Ibrahim, K., Markovic, T., Morón-Concepción, J., 2020).

Sandoval also presented this research during the 2020 Annual Biomedical Conference for Minority Students, which was held Nov. 9-13.

Hope Conyers and Dietrich Olibrice presented research posters during the 8th Annual Black Doctoral Network Virtual Conference on Oct. 29-31. Conyers’ presentation, “The Effects of Chemotherapy on Language While Treating Breast Cancer,” highlighted research that she has been conducting under the supervision of her faculty mentor, Mitzi Brammer, Ph.D.

Olbrice, mentored by Chris Arnatt, Ph.D., presented “Structure-Activity-Relationship of novel GPR183 antagonists” (Latzo, N., Olibrice, D., Braden-McInerney, K., Deleon, C., Salvemini, D., Arnatt, C.).

Joanna Williams and Grace Kanary published “Saint Louis University Undocuweek: Bridging the Gap and Community Empowerment” on the Ignatian Solidarity Network. The story published online Nov. 11, however, the story was written in March 2020, following SLU’s Undocuweek in February.