October Professional Notes
10/02/2020
A round-up of awards, presentations, papers and the other professional achievements of SLU faculty, staff members and students.
Faculty and Staff
John James, Ed.D., associate professor of educational leadership in the School of Education was the keynote speaker for the 13th Annual Speaker Series for Area Educators at St. John Vianney High School in St. Louis on Friday, Sept. 25. His topic was, “Our Faithful Response in a Global Pandemic.”
Anthony Breitbach Ph.D., of the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training in the Doisy College of Health Sciences, presented with Gert Ulrich Dr. Phil, of the Careum Foundation of Zurich, Switzerland, as part of a webinar, “Perceived Job Satisfaction and Interprofessional Collaboration in International Sports Science and Sports Medicine,” hosted by the World Federation of Athletic Training and Therapy on Wednesday, Sept. 23.
Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, Ph.D., of the Department of Theological Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, led an online workshop on liberation theology and its relevance for the world today as part of the Briarwood Leadership Center's “Conversations @ Briarwood,” a ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in Texas. The event, hosted online on Aug. 13, was attended by more than 50 participants nationwide.
Tobias Winright, Ph.D., of the Department of Theological Studies and Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, published a book chapter, “The Costs of Jus ante Bellum and Jus post Bellum,” with Nathaniel Hibner, Ph.D., (Grad A&S ’19), in The Business of War: Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Military-Industrial Complex, edited by Matthew A. Tapie, James W. McCarty III, and Justin Bronson Barringer (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2020), pp. 193-206.
The article "GPR183-oxysterol axis in spinal cord contributes to neuropathic pain" from the Salvemini lab in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology in the School of Medicine, was accepted to be published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics’s November issue.
Oluwatoyosi Owoeye, Ph.D., of the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training, published a new paper in the Sports Medicine - Open Journal. The review paper, “Reducing Injuries in Soccer (Football): an Umbrella Review of Best Evidence Across the Epidemiological Framework for Prevention,” provides stakeholders (coaches, parents, policymakers, knowledge broker, college/school/club administrators, sports medicine practitioners and researchers) all they need to know about mitigating injury risk in soccer.
The Institute for Healing Justice and Equity (IHJE) has published a new report, “Racism is a Public Health Crisis.”
Jason T. Eberl, Ph.D., director of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, and doctoral student Chris Ostertag, recently published an article, “Conscience, Compromise, and Complicity.” The article is about the debate over whether health care institutions or individual providers should have a legally protected right to conscientiously refuse to offer legal services to patients who request them has grown exponentially due to the increasing legalization of morally contested services.
Terri Rebmann, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and biostatics, director of SLU’s Biosecurity Institute in the College for Public Health and Social Justice, and special assistant to the president, was a researcher on “Impact of SARS-CoV-2 on hospital acquired infection rates in the United States: Predictions and early results,” published in July.
Joseph A. Schafer, Ph.D., associate dean of research and professor of criminology and criminal justice in the College for Public Health and Social Justice, was quoted in a recent edition of Time Magazine in an article, “America's Policing System Is Broken. It's Time to Radically Rethink Public Safety.” Schafer was also on-air recently with the “Art and Jennifer Show” on 550-AM KTRS about police expectations.
Jason T. Eberl, Ph.D., of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, was interviewed by Crux in its article, “Bioethics must ‘break out’ of ivory tower and engage society, academic says.” The interview is about his newest publication, The Nature of Human Persons: Metaphysics and Bioethics.
Students
On Saturday, Sept. 26, five SLU McNair Scholars presented their research during the annual Heartland McNair Research Conference. Typically held in Kansas City, MO, the conference took place virtually this year due COVID-19 restrictions.
The presenters included Fatima Al-Hanoosh and Hope Conyers, both students at Saint Louis University, Beth Asnakew and Miguel Campos of Washington University in St. Louis, and Tekahla Flint, a student at Harris-Stowe State University.
In addition, two SLU McNair alumnae, Maria Garcia and Wendy Teal, both 2019 SLU graduates – served as moderators for the conference.
Jamie D. Motley, Ph.D., director of the McNair Scholars Program at SLU, and Anthony Parker-Gills, academic coordinator, helped to organize this year’s virtual conference and served as presentation hosts.
“I am extremely proud of our group for having a strong presence during this conference and contributing at all levels, from coordinating to moderating and presenting,” Motley said. “Despite the inability for us to come together in person, which is always a rich experience, we still managed to capture much of the same magic that this conference holds each year for McNair Scholars and staff in region.”
Allie Bodin, a Master of Public Health degree candidate in the College for Public Health and Social Justice (A&S ’20) recently co-authored an article in Neurology.
Interviews, Op-Eds and Media Appearances
Billy Critchley-Menor, S.J., a graduate student in the Department of American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and Jesuit Scholastic, wrote an article for the Jesuit Post responding to claims about the religiosity of current racial justice movements in the U.S.
The McNair Scholars Program (SLU McNair) has continued its “Gateway to McNair Scholars Program,” under the leadership of program staff and graduate assistant Sunita Manu. Manu has coordinated the program since its inception in the spring of 2018.
Also referred to as “Gateway” or the “Gateway Scholars Program,” it offers students the opportunity to be paired with both a graduate school mentor and current McNair Scholar, as well as participate in programs and activities designed to help them make an informed decision regarding whether graduate school is the right option for them.
As SLU McNair is largely tailored to sophomores and juniors, director Jamie D. Motley, Ph.D. and her staff decided to develop a program that would engage freshmen who are interested in becoming McNair Scholars in the future.
Gateway provides opportunities for students to make personal and academic connections with their mentors. This is accomplished by making the interactions unique to each student’s major and interests.
“Gateway graduate mentors have gone above and beyond to build a relationship with their mentees,” Manu said. “I have seen them take a personal interest in the growth and success of their mentees.”
Manu is not the only one who has seen the benefits of the Gateway Scholars program; Natalia Harris has experienced them firsthand. Harris is sophomore studying biology at Harris Stowe University.
“Having a mentor affected my education hugely,” Harris said. “My mentor taught me how to keep a planner, take notes, and much more. Sometimes I feel like I wouldn’t have made it through my spring semester without her.”
While COVID-19 has provided challenges such as the need to socially distance, The Gateway Scholars Program is still supporting its students. Gateway and McNair staff and volunteers have worked hard to transition to online programming and mentoring so that students are able to enrich their undergraduate education safely.
“Through the pandemic, everyone in the program has shown how much they care for one another,” Harris noted.
The McNair Scholars program at Saint Louis University (SLU McNair) helps first-generation, Pell-eligible and underrepresented college students pave their own path to graduate school. One of eight TRIO programs federally funded by the U.S. Department of Education, it is formally known as the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program.
SLU McNair has a broad reach in that it is open to students at Saint Louis University, Fontbonne University, Harris-Stowe State University, University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL), Washington University in St. Louis and Webster University.
SLU McNair offers its students extensive programming such as GRE preparation, professional development workshops and activities and faculty mentoring. It also provides a McNair Summer Research Internship Program each year, which allows up to 12 McNair Scholars to participate in research alongside their faculty mentor and subsequently publish their work in the program’s online research journal.
The Gateway Scholars Program offers a safe space for students to explore different paths to the Ph.D. as well as career options for Ph.D. degree holders. The work being done through the program is just one more way that SLU McNair is helping to develop a more diverse pool of prospective graduate students.
Gateway is currently accepting applications. For more information, contact Sunita Manu.