University Of Virginia’s Health And Wellness Efforts Receive National Designation

The National Consortium for Building Healthy Academic Communities honored the University of Virginia as the inaugural recipient of its new “Healthy Academics” designation.

The consortium initiated the program to recognize universities and colleges that demonstrate best practices in sustaining wellness cultures and promoting population health and well-being in students, faculty and staff.

The designation program measures an academic institution’s population health and well-being practices in three key areas: institutional engagement, alignment, and culture; student, faculty and staff population health and well-being; and demonstrated outcomes improvement.

UVA earned gold-level status through the designation measurement process.

“This recognition and distinction from BHAC substantiates our progress toward achieving our vision to be recognized as a national leader of university employee well-being programs and guides us in our pursuit to attain the benchmarks of a healthy academic community,” Victor Tringali, UVA’s manager of employee well-being, said. “We are honored to be a recipient and remain steadfast in our efforts to deliver resources and opportunities that enable our community members to thrive.”

Professor Elected to Leadership of World-Renowned Institute for Math, Physics
The preeminent institute for theoretical math and physics has elected Ken Ono, Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics, to its board of trustees. Ono, who also chairs UVA’s Department of Mathematics, will begin a three-year term on the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study Board of Trustees on Jan. 1.

Located in Princeton, New Jersey, the institute is the academic home of Albert Einstein and a collection of the world’s most influential scholars in mathematics and physics since its founding in 1930. More than 8,000 members have been affiliated with the IAS, including 34 Nobel Laureates and 42 Fields Medalists.

Ono’s own connections to the institute date back to the distinguished research career of his father, Takashi Ono.

“I was essentially born at the Institute for Advanced Study, when my father was a member in the School of Mathematics. My postdoctoral years at IAS launched my career. IAS represents my heaven on earth,” Ono said. “It is my honor to use my experience to pay forward my good fortune in the service of future IAS members.”

Ono joined UVA’s faculty in 2019. In 2020, Academic Influence named him one of the world’s 15 most influential mathematicians. Ono also has won the Presidential CAREER Award and was named a Distinguished Teaching Scholar by the National Science Foundation.

In the classroom, Ono specializes in number theory and studies highly abstract problems involving patterns and properties of numbers that have perplexed mathematicians for centuries. His work has earned him coveted Sloan, Packard and Guggenheim fellowships, as well as leadership roles as vice president of the American Mathematical Society and as chair of the Mathematics Section in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

His work has been used by cryptographers and physicists studying black holes and quantum gravity. An avid swimmer and accomplished cyclist who competed three years as a Team USA member in the International Triathlon Union World Cross Triathlon Championship, Ono also applies his research to the realm of competitive swimming.

Women’s Lacrosse Coach Earns Lifetime Achievement Honor
The Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association awarded UVA head coach Julie Myers its 2022 Diane Geppi-Aikens Memorial Award at the association’s Hall of Fame and Honors Banquet Dinner on Nov. 17.

Candid photo of Julie Myers
Women’s lacrosse coach Julie Myers called the Diane Geppi-Aikens Memorial Award “the honor of a lifetime.” (UVA Athletics photo)
The award is named in honor of a legendary Loyola College coach who courageously battled cancer, and recognizes lifetime achievements in the women’s college game.

“To receive an award in Diane Geppi-Aikens’ name and to be recognized by my peers is truly an honor of a lifetime,” Myers said. “I competed against Diane as a player and as a coach, and every time we matched up, she brought out an energy and a passion in herself and in her players that made the game electrifying. She is the epitome of being a great coach with a strong mind and a will to win and to live like no other.”

James Madison University assistant coach Colleen Shearer, who presented Myers with the award, said, “What impresses me the most about Julie is the way she handles adversity. She is calm and handles obstacles with dignity. She has guided hundreds of kids through the most special, but difficult, times of their lives, and has helped them understand the importance of education, honor, humility, honesty, friendship and competitiveness.”

Another presenter, University of Maryland-Baltimore County head coach Amy Slade, added, “One of Julie’s greatest assets is her passion and love for her players and the game. Everyone who has played for her is fortunate enough to be cared for by someone who truly puts the game and her players before herself.”

Myers has led UVA to 25 NCAA tournament appearances, making the NCAA Tournament every year it has been contested during her tenure. Heading into her 28th season, Myers ranks third all-time in tournament victories and games coached. She is a three-time NCAA champion, winning titles as a player (1991), assistant coach (1993) and head coach (2004). With the victory in 2004, Myers became the first woman to win an NCAA national championship as both a player and coach.

Virginia Business Names Nursing Dean a ‘Top Person to Meet in 2023’
In its annual year-end issue, Virginia Business named School of Nursing Dean Marianne Baernholdt to its list of “Top 100 People to Meet in 2023.”

Baernholdt is the Sadie Heath Cabaniss Professor of Nursing and a first-generation college attendee. She is a fierce advocate for healthy work environments and a leading scholar of care quality and safety, with an emphasis on health care in rural and global environments. Baernholdt, who arrived as the School of Nursing’s seventh dean in August, has dedicated her nursing career to teaching and mentoring students and junior faculty.

Though early in her tenure, Baernholdt has set her sights on expanding the school’s undergraduate and graduate student populations, determining ways to encourage more working nurses to consider graduate degrees, and attracting and educating more nursing faculty.

“In the U.S., we are turning away about 80,000 students every year who want to be nurses,” she said, due in part to too few clinical practice placements in area hospitals and too few nursing faculty to teach and mentor students. Baernholdt also said that UVA “needs to make it easier for nurses to consider graduate education in the first place – financially, schedule, and course-wise,” and is examining new modalities and sources of financial support to better aid their return to the learning space while also working.

Baernholdt has also kick-started a new strategic planning process – the first in more than 15 years – to map the school’s vision, mission and path through 2030, and has launched a new Messaging Task Force to reimagine and improve the inclusiveness of physical spaces. A new series of “Breakfasts with the Dean” have aided in this work, as has her proximity to fellow UVA Health leaders Kathy Baker, chief nursing officer; Dr. K. Craig Kent, executive vice president for health affairs; and CEO Wendy Horton.

The Virginia Business list – which includes innovators from Virginia across 10 categories, also includes UVA first-year student Evan Niel, founder of “Planting Shade,” which has planted more than 12,000 trees from the U.S. to Costa Rica.

Critic Chooses Historian’s Book as Best of 2022
Brian Vickers of the influential Times Literary Supplement selected “That Tyrant, Persuasion: How Rhetoric Shaped the Roman World,” by UVA history professor J.E. Lendon, as his choice for “Book of the Year.”

“Drawing on vast erudition, Lendon writes beautifully,” Vickers wrote. “He deserves to be widely read.”

“That Tyrant, Persuasion,” published by the Princeton University Press, traces the influence of rhetoric on Roman public life.

It earned much acclaim from Lendon’s peers.

“This is an original and significant book with a seemingly effortless combination of knowledge and readability,” Henriette van der Blom of the University of Birmingham wrote. “Arguing that the rhetorical education of the ancient Roman elite had a pervasive influence on their actions, ‘That Tyrant, Persuasion’ treats readers to thought-provoking accounts of Roman monuments, Roman law, and even the murder of Julius Caesar.”

“Lendon guides us once again into the deepest recesses of the Roman elite mind, revealing a set of springs and gears that caused the real world to tick,” wrote Michael Peachin of New York University, “but this was a movement that had been flawlessly regulated by the professor of rhetoric. No wonder, then, that a flesh-and-blood dictator, Julius Caesar, was handled just like all the fantastical tyrants whom Brutus and his companions had spent their school days dutifully and heroically eliminating. This book is a must-read for all who want to understand why a Roman aristocrat thought, said, and, ultimately, did what he did.”

ACC Honors Hagans and Barnett With UNITE Award
The Atlantic Coast Conference recently honored current associate head football coach Marques Hagans and former women’s rower Hailey Barnett as UVA’s recipients of the 2022 ACC UNITE Award.

An initiative of the ACC’s Committee for Racial and Social Justice, the award was created to honor individuals affiliated with the league who promote and encourage racial equity and social justice through education, partnerships, engagement and advocacy. “Those selected have helped create meaningful, lasting change by improving systems, organizational structures, policies, practices and attitudes or have been pioneers and/or helped pave the way for minorities either at the institution or in the community,” according to the league’s announcement.

Hagans played football at UVA from 2002 to 2005 and recently completed his 11th season at a member of the coaching staff, serving as the Cavaliers’ wide receivers coach in addition to his responsibilities as associate head coach. He was recognized for promoting and encouraging racial equity and social justice through his work with the athletics department’s Groundskeepers organization and Charlottesville-based Prolyfyck Run Crew.

As one of the founders of Groundskeepers, Hagans encourages his student-athletes to learn and educate themselves about racial inequities. The group organized the “Groundskeepers Walk” that student-athletes, coaches, staff and community members can take to learn and reflect. The three-mile walk starts at Heather Heyer Way – the street named in honor of the woman who lost her life when a white nationalist purposefully drove into a crowd of people peacefully counter-protesting the Unite the Right rally on Aug. 12, 2017 – in downtown Charlottesville, stops on Grounds at the Memorial for Enslaved Laborers, and concludes at the Rotunda.

Additionally, Hagans has been involved in the Prolyfyck Run Crew. During the summer of social unrest, a group of men in the Charlottesville community decided to create a space for people of color to feel safe running, choosing a route through predominantly Black communities to claim a space for a Black-led running group. Hagans was an early member of the group’s runs and helped spread its message and increase participation in Prolyfyck among community members.

Barnett, who rowed for the Cavaliers from 2018 to 2022, participated in multiple initiatives as a student-athlete. Selected as a Contemplative Sciences Center Athletics Fellow, she worked on a three-pronged fellowship project to provide anti-racist education resources to student-athletes, spearhead a collaborative development of steppingstone memorials to UVA’s enslaved laborers, and facilitate more local volunteer opportunities for her fellow student-athletes.

Barnett organized multiple food drives for the local area food bank and involved her team and the entire athletic department to help close the gap in food insecurity in Charlottesville. She and her twin sister, Myla, who played women’s lacrosse at UVA, created an Instagram account to allow athletes to voice their thoughts and opinions about racial injustices. Barnett has also spoken about being a Black student-athlete in a predominately white sport, giving advice to future rowers on how she got to where she is.

Pediatrician Elevated to Society Membership
Dr. Ann Kellams of the School of Medicine is one of 95 new members of the American Pediatric Society.

Founded in 1888, the society is the first and most prestigious academic pediatric organization in North America. New members will be recognized April 29 at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2023 meeting.

According to the announcement, “American Pediatric Society members are recognized child health leaders of extraordinary achievement who work together to shape the future of academic pediatrics. New members are nominated by current members through a process that recognizes individuals who have distinguished themselves as child health leaders, teachers, scholars, policymakers and/or clinicians.”

A board-certified pediatrician, international board-certified lactation consultant and professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Kellams has practiced general pediatrics since 1995 and joined the faculty at UVA in 2006.

She served as the medical director of the newborn service at UVA from 2006 to 2018. In 2011, she helped found the UVA Breastfeeding Medicine Program, which she still directs. In 2019, Kellams became vice chair of clinical affairs in the Department of Pediatrics.

Kellams teaches a course at UVA Medical School called “The Healer’s Art,” which she helped create as a medical-school student, about finding meaning and humanism in medicine. It is now being taught at approximately half of the medical schools in the U.S.