Faculty/Staff Newsletter

The College of Public Health’s Learning Laboratory for Community Health hosted the first in-person Learning Lab Challenge, which showcased graduate student-led intervention development.

New findings published in the Journal for Applied Gerontology by Megumi Inoue suggest that personalized music intervention is effective at reducing the use of medication, alleviating agitation levels, and enhancing mood and social engagement among nursing home residents living with dementia.

Research from Lucas Prieto found an indirect relationship between internalized gay ageism and older gay men’s sexual satisfaction when mediated by body image, but internalized gay ageism does not influence their erectile dysfunction.

Research from Michael Bloom and doctoral student Rooshna Mohsin and funded by NIEHS studied the association between trace amounts of elements in ovarian follicular fluid and ovarian response during in-vitro fertilization (IVF). 

The first wave of migrated courses is available in Canvas. Some cleanup is required including repairing broken links, removing Blackboard references and instructions, re-establishing weighted grades, consolidating pages, and reconnecting Mindtap and other 3rd party products. Changes made after May 10 may not have migrated. Training and support is available throughout the summer: 

College of Public Health office hours begin with a brief 5-10 minute demo of a Canvas feature followed by general Q&A.

Calling all Wage, Research Staff, Classified Staff, and A/P Faculty: Voting is now open for both ratifying the Staff Council Bylaws and electing a council person to fill departing member Samba Pathak's position. Ratifying the bylaws requires a simple majority of 51%, or 79 votes.  

Vote to ratify the bylaws

Vote in the staff council special election

Congratulations to Carol Cleaveland, Department of Social Work, on her new two-year award from the Thomas F. and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust's Program in Health Equity Research for her project "Building Enclave Solidarity to Improve Health Outcomes."  

Congratulations to Emily Ihara, Department of Social Work, who will be working with VCU on their five-year HRSA-funded "Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program."

Congratulations to Janusz Wojtusiak, Department of Health Administration and Policy, for his award from the Virginia Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases Research Award Fund for his project  "An Artificial Intelligence Solution to Social Isolation and Longlines of Caregivers of People with Dementia."

Does your data have missing information on race and/or ethnicity? If so here are two resources you might consider for addressing the missing information. One is a publicly available dataset that will provide probabilities for five race and ethnicity groups (i.e., nonHispanic Asian or Pacific Islander; nonHispanic Black; Hispanic any race; nonHispanic other race; or nonHispanic White), using first name and surname. The dataset is based on voter files for 37.8 million voters in six Southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina) and contains race and ethnicity probability distributions for over 136,000 first names and 338,000 surnames. More information is available in this article.

Another tool was developed by the RAND Corporation using 2020 Census Bureau data and has been shared publicly as the Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG) Tool. RAND provides information on their tool. how it was tested, and several applications here.

August 22 | 8:30 am | Beacon Hall Conference Center, Sci-Tech Campus 

The goal of the retreat is to finalize the College's mission and values. The Dean will present some thoughts and ideas about a new vision for the College, which we will have the opportunity to discuss. Your active participation is crucial in our ongoing efforts to foster a positive and engaging environment.

For those who cannot attend in person, an online participation option will be provided. Registration link to come.

Agenda

Save the date for August 21. More details to come.

This week you may notice a new look to the newsletter. We're trying out a new template with the new branding. The newsletter may change some throughout the summer. Like something about it? Find it difficult to read? Please provide feedback to mcunni7@gmu.edu. Thanks!

Next newsletter is Monday, July 22.

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Access the CPH brand toolkit, including new CPH logos here.

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