Campus News: Nursing Building, Research Center Directors Appoined

NEW HEIGHTS: Three new floors at the School of Nursing’s Helen Wood Hall will add 26,000 square feet of experiential learning and student-centered spaces, where instructors and students can engage in real-life learning opportunities. (Photo: Matt Wittmeyer for the University of Rochester)

Nursing students, faculty, and staff celebrated the opening of a new $15 million addition that’s expected to transform nursing education at Rochester for generations of future health care providers.

Joined by University leaders, supporters, and state elected officials and staff, the School of Nursing in May unveiled a three-story vertical expansion above the Loretta Ford Education Wing of Helen Wood Hall.

Designed to accommodate the school’s continued growth, the expansion includes 26,000 square feet of state-of-the-art space for collaborative and active learning. The original home of the University’s nursing program, Helen Wood Hall served as a dormitory in its early years, with its residential space later converted to classrooms, clinical learning spaces, and private offices.

The Loretta Ford Education Wing, named for the school’s founding dean and cocreator of the nurse practitioner role, was added in 2006.

The school has grown by more than 50 percent since 2016 with enrollment reaching an all-time high of more than 800 students last fall.

Plans Are Under Way to Expand Emergency Department
Patients at Strong Memorial Hospital will be examined and treated in a much larger emergency department as part of a project announced by the Medical Center this spring.

The project includes a nine-story tower that will provide 175,000 square feet of clinical space as well as floors for diagnostic and treatment services at the hospital. The work will roughly triple the size of the emergency department and add about 100 private inpatient rooms to Strong.

Designed to help address chronic bed shortages and overcrowding issues at health care facilities affecting the Rochester community in recent years—issues that were further highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic—the project is taking place in phases through its projected completion in 2027.

The plans for the expansion are subject to change and require approval from the University’s Board of Trustees as well as the New York State Department of Health.

First-Ever Study Looks to Predict Tooth Decay in Early Infancy
Researchers at the Eastman Institute for Oral Health are embarking on the first-ever study of early-life biological factors that affect severe tooth decay among underserved racial and ethnic minority groups. Funded with a $3.5 million grant from NIH’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the five-year study will examine saliva samples previously collected from a cohort of minority mothers and babies with the aim of sequencing oral microbes, including bacteria and fungi, that contribute to tooth decay.

Led by Jin Xiao, an associate professor at the institute, researchers will use that analysis to build prediction models by integrating a range of data and other information. Although largely preventable, severe tooth decay among young children affects one-third of socioeconomically disadvantaged and racial and ethnic minority preschool children in the United States.

While bacteria in the oral cavity is known to cause decay, the relationship between an individual, the bacteria, and each person’s environment affects its onset and severity.

Steve Gill, a professor of microbiology and immunology, and Tong Tong Wu, an associate professor of biostatistics and computational biology, are also principal investigators for the project, which includes researchers from family medicine, nursing, and other departments.

Northwestern Dean Presented with Frederick Douglass Medal
An award-winning author and performer and dean of Northwestern University’s School of Communication received the University’s Frederick Douglass Medal this spring.

E. Patrick Johnson, who is also the Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern, was recognized for his leadership as a scholar in Black studies and for his engagement as a teacher, performer, and community member.

The author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke University Press, 2003) and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (University of North Carolina Press, 2008), Johnson is an essayist and public performer. He is also the founder and director of Black Arts Initiative at Northwestern, a multicultural collaboration of Black artists and scholars.

His work has earned recognition from the National Communication Association as well as from the Chicago Black Theater Alliance and other theater organizations.

The Douglass Medal is a joint initiative of the Office of the President and the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies. Established in 2008, the medal is presented to recognize outstanding achievement, scholarship and engagement that honors the legacy of Frederick Douglass.

New Director of Anthony Institute Named
June Hwang, an associate professor of German and film and media studies, has been named director of the University’s Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies.

One of Rochester’s major interdisciplinary initiatives, the institute includes faculty from all of the University’s academic units.

A member of the faculty since 2007, Hwang received her PhD in German studies, with an emphasis in film studies, from the University of California, Berkeley.

After receiving her BA in comparative literature from Yale University, she spent her time in the United States, Germany, and Austria, including two years studying in Germany at the Universität Konstanz and another two at the Freie Universitat Berlin.

Laboratory for Laser Energetics Introduces New Director
One of the University’s premier scientific facilities has a new director. Christopher Deeney, who had led the Laboratory for Laser Energetics in an interim role since December, was named director in May. He succeeds Michael Campbell in the role.

Known as a scientific and innovation leader with direct experience running complex operations, Deeney is the former chief science and technology officer for the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He joined the Laboratory for Laser Energetics as deputy director in 2021.

A fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Deeney received his PhD in plasma physics from Imperial College in the United Kingdom.