Emory Magazine Summer 2019 by Emory University

FIVE YEARS AGO, THIS EMORY NURSE STOOD UP TO EBOLA. NOW SHE TEACHES OTHERS HOW TO GIVE INFECTIOUS DISEASE A PROPER DRESSING DOWN.

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Emory Magazine VOL. 94 NO. 3

CONTENTS

Life Saving Lessons Five years after Emory treated the first Ebola patients in the US, the experience our experts gained continues to serve patients around the world. By Mary Loftus

14 26

Life After DUC Emory’s new, super-modern Student Center offers inviting gathering spaces, a range of useful resources, and— of course—really good food. By Kimber Williams

Better Together The Early Emory center pairs typical children with those on the autism spectrum so they can learn from each other. By Gary Goettling

CONTENTS

EMORY EVERYWHERE ALUMNI NEWS

2019 EMORY MEDALISTS

ALUMNI PROFILE

44 48

Editor Paige Parvin 96G

SUSAN CAHOON 68C

Executive Director, Communications Karon Schindler

EMORY WEDDINGS CODA

Vice President, Enterprise Communications Doug Busk

WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

Associate Vice President, Creative Services Dave Holston

POINTS OF INTEREST

Director, Creative Services Peta Westmaas

4 COMMENCEMENT 2019 6

EMORY IMPACT REPORT

Design Mike Nelson, Times 3 Elizabeth Hautau Karp

8 FROM THE PRESIDENT CONVERSATIONS WITH PRESIDENT CLAIRE E. STERK 10 RESEARCH TINY TOOLS MAKE BIG NEWS 11 STUDENTS CLASS OF 2023

MORE ONLINE AT EMORY.EDU/MAGAZINE

EXPANDED FEATURE EBOLA AFTER FIVE YEARS

DOOLEY NOTED

NEW CARLOS COLLECTION

Check out the expanded version of our cover story, including videos, related stories, and more.

VIDEO TINY TOOLS

See how little stone flakes revolutionized evolution.

SPECIAL FEATURE COMMENCEMENT

Find complete coverage of the big event on our website. 2

EMORY MAGAZINE

Assistant Vice President, Earned and Social Media Susan Chana

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Contributors Pam Auchmutey Carol Clark Elizabeth Durel Gary Goettling Mary Loftus Kimber Williams Copy Editor Jane Howell Photography Kay Hinton Jack Kearse Stephen Nowland Ann Watson Production Manager Stuart Turner Senior Vice President, Communications and Public Affairs David Sandor University President Claire E. Sterk

EMORY MAGAZINE (ISSN 00136727) is published quarterly by Emory’s Division of Communications and Public Affairs. Periodical postage paid at 3900 Crown Rd. SE, Atlanta, Georgia, 30304; and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Advancement and Alumni Engagement Office of Data Management, 1762 Clifton Road, Suite 1400, Atlanta, Georgia 30322. Emory Magazine is distributed free to alumni and friends of the university. Address changes may be emailed to eurec@emory. edu or sent to the Advancement and Alumni Engagement Office of Data Management, 1762 Clifton Road, Suite 1400, Atlanta, Georgia 30322. If you are an individual with a disability and wish to acquire this publication in an alternative format, please contact Paige Parvin (address above). No. 19-EU-EMAG-0046 ©2019, a publication of the Division of Communications and Public Affairs. The comments and opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of Emory University or the staff of Emory Magazine.

ON THE COVER PHOTO OF JILL MORGAN BY JACK KEARSE, EMORY PHOTO VIDEO

PH O T O G R A PH Y K AY H I N TO N

LET TERS

I want to tell you how thrilled my mother, Jean Stillwell Reed 44Ox, was with the article in the recent edition of Emory Magazine about her experiences as a code breaker during World War II. The article by Al Pearson was amazing, and the details solicited and presented through his interviews with my mother revealed even more than I had known about her experience. An exceptionally intriguing article, and many of the friends I shared it with have raved about how interesting and well done it was. The online version, which I shared with my son, a graphic artist and artistic director for a magazine company, was, as he enthusiastically agreed, extremely impressive in the way it was presented as well. Kudos to all involved in both print and online articles! Cathy Reed Nelson 72C Conyers, Georgia I have a story or two of living in a small trailer on the campus of Emory University, while my father was using the GI bill to be a student at Emory University. I always heard that the trailer we lived in was surplus from WWII. Imagine my delight when I saw, in a brief paragraph of Emory history, a reference to “Mudville, temporary housing using surplus Army trailers for vets coming to Emory, 1946–1952. Also called Trailer Town.” I actually have many memories of that time. Thank you for your compilation of Emory history you did for Emory Magazine (“Century in the City”) and the little paragraph on Mud City, AKA Trailer

Town. As a footnote, our youngest daughter Elizabeth, went to Emory, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1995 in music and dance. Now the only thing left to say is, “Hi, Ho, Silver. Away!” Glen McCune 95P South Bend, Indiana I wrote to you about the winter 2019 story about the Phi Gamma Hall at Oxford, suggesting that it might have gotten its name from my college fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, which was at Emory for a few years. I’ve just recalled that Phi Gamma Delta was not founded until 1848; Phi Gamma Literary Society was founded in 1837. Maybe my fraternity got its name from the one at Oxford! Both groups used a white star as an icon for their organizations. Alan Hull 69C Conyers, Georgia CORRECTION In our previous issue, we spotlighted Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow for Nursing Kylie Smith (“Historic Perspective”) and the book Nursing History for Contemporary Role Development. The series of essays by nursing historians was actually coedited by Sandra Lewenson, Annemarie McAllister, and Smith, rather than Smith alone. Her new book, Talking Therapy: Knowledge and Practice in American Psychiatric Nursing, is slated to be published by Rutgers University Press later this year.

Has something in Emory Magazine raised your consciousness—or your hackles? Write to the editors at Emory Magazine, 1762 Clifton Road, Suite 1000, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, or via email at paige. parvin@emory.edu. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity. The views expressed by the writers do not reflect the views of the editors or the administration of Emory University.

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EMORY MAGAZINE

P OI N T S O F I N T E R E S T 1 WORDS OF WISDOM

“Education—the life of the mind—is fundamental to human rights. It’s the key to equality, to fighting poverty, to creating health and well being for all,” President Claire E. Sterk told Emory’s 2019 graduates.

2 GOLDEN HEARTS

Corpus Cordis Aureum, or the Golden Corps of the Heart, are Emory alumni who graduated fifty years ago or more; each year they process at Commencement wearing special golden robes. 3 LIFE CHANGING

Emory Scholar Dania Quezada 19C spoke to her fellow graduates as the 2019 Emory College Class Orator, focusing on the power of the Emory community that welcomed and supported her as an undocumented student— and changed her life.

4 SHOWING THE WAY

In recognition of decades of work with graduate and undergraduate students as well as faculty colleagues, Professor Deborah Lipstadt was selected as the 2019 recipient of the George P. Cuttino Award for Excellence in Mentoring. 5 TIME TO REFLECT

Themes of service, lifelong learning, and the transformative power of education were woven throughout the May 13 ceremony, as 4,835 graduates assembled on the Emory Quadrangle for the conferral of degrees from nine schools. 6 A STEP AHEAD

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PH O T O G R A PH Y K AY H I N TO N

“The challenges that life has put in your path, those are not stumbling blocks— those are stepping stones that will take you into a future that neither you nor I can imagine,” said former US Ambassador Andrew Young, a civil rights icon, humanitarian, and global diplomat.

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P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

COMMENCEMENT

20 19

On a near-perfect May morning, Emory celebrated close to five thousand graduates with all appropriate pomp, circumstance, and bagpipes. If you missed the big event, you can follow the link below for special extended coverage. FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF EMORY’S 2019 COMMENCEMENT, VISIT EMORY.EDU/MAGAZINE S U M M E R 2 019

EMORY MAGAZINE

P OI N T S O F I N T E R E S T

Beyond the Numbers FROM ECONOMICS TO EMPLOYMENT, EMORY’S LATEST IMPACT REPORT ADDS UP

“C

OMMUNICATING EMORY’S IMPACT in the

aggressive plan to become a zero-waste campus and a ride-sharing program context of a single year is challenging. As a that vastly reduces its carbon footprint. leading research university, we never stand Across metro Atlanta, Emory’s still. Last year’s achievements, and those before expanding network of hospitals, clinics, them, continue to advance and improve our and health care practitioners welcomes shared communities.” all who need care. The collective —EMORY PRESIDENT CLAIRE E. STERK influence and contributions of Emory faculty, staff, students, and alumni are considerable, thanks to those who serve From students who spend a year Since 1915, when Emory was granted on local nonprofit boards or philanthropic and civic organizations. working among local refugee populaits charter, the university has been Collaborations with Atlanta-based tions, to millions of dollars’ worth of connected with its hometown. That institutions such as the Centers for indigent health care throughout metro connection has been strengthened Atlanta, to service-learning programs with annexation into the city of Atlanta, Disease Control and Prevention, Task that send students across the globe, as well as Emory’s status as the second- Force for Global Health, The Carter Center, and CARE produce boundaryEmory’s 2019 Impact Report reveals largest employer and an economic defying work that serves humanity and that the university is enmeshed in its engine for the region. strives to improve conditions—locally surrounding community and the world Through a stated commitment to as a whole. sustainability, Emory has developed an and in countries around the world. 6

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President Sterk Elected to AAS Emory President

Claire E. Sterk has

been elected to the

American Academy

of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most

prestigious honor-

ary societies and a

leading center for independent policy research.

Sterk is among more than

two hundred newly elected members recognized for

achievements in academia, the arts, business, government, and public affairs.

A pioneering public health

scholar, Sterk is the 20th pres-

ident of Emory and the Charles Howard Candler Professor

of Public Health. For the past

PHOTOGRAPHY EMORY PHOTO/VIDEO

two decades she has been a

Through Volunteer Emory and other programs, more than 80 percent of Emory undergraduates participate in community service during their academic experience—from planting trees to feeding the homeless to building houses with Habitat for Humanity. “At the heart of Emory’s impact is a distinct purpose: to think beyond oneself,” says Sterk. “This purpose— this sense of responsibility—is present among students, faculty, and alumni across generations. Whether you work here, teach here, learn, or connect here, Emory is a community of impact, where the greater good is balanced with individual interest.”

FIND THE COMPLETE IMPACT REPORT AT EMORY.EDU/MAGAZINE

social scientist and leader at

Emory, serving as provost and

executive vice president for ac-

ademic affairs before becoming president in 2016.

Sterk has been recognized

for research that has deep-

ened understanding of social and health disparities, addic-

tion, and infectious diseases,

specifically HIV/AIDS. She also has championed community engagement and the importance of mentoring and em-

powering women leaders. Her

academic publications include

three books and more than 125 peer-reviewed articles.

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EMORY MAGAZINE

P OI N T S O F I N T E R E S T > >

CES For decades, you have been in-

and that’s going to affect the life of

taught them about principles. You

American college graduates are

teracting with our students. You have have helped them figure out how to

look at the world. Is there something from your perspective that you feel

dealing with other people.

undergraduate student, what would

JC There are going to be some

JC Well, I’m an engineer and my

during the current graduating

Emory doesn’t teach [either] . . . but

And, we had the Great Depression . . . as well. I grew up through both

of those major challenges. I think, in this generation, there’s going

to be a very serious problem with

global warming and climate change,

[presidential hopefuls] who came

changing world?

when I was a senior in high school.

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secrets?

going to need to be more flexible in

you want to study?

classes. World War II came along

CES Have you shared any of your

JC Oh, yeah, I’m quite free with

CES If you were coming in as an

seminal changes taking place

be another thing for me to adopt.

everyone on earth. The current-day

they need to prepare for? Especially

since we seem to be living in a rapidly

books, so I guess literature might

life has been in agriculture, and

my life has been shaped by poli-

tics. I think I would consider law.

My mother was a registered nurse

and The Carter Center has a major role to play in international health

care. So, maybe preventive health

care or medicine. And I’ve made my

living for the last forty years writing

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my secrets. And . . . I advised all

to see me, “Go ahead and run.” It’s a wonderful experience to run for

president of the United States. I visited all fifty states and I got to know a lot about the American people

. . . and the world in general that I

wouldn’t have known otherwise. We couldn’t have been nearly as suc-

cessful as The Carter Center and as a part of Emory University had I not been blessed with the experience

of having been president and able

to apply some of what we learned to help other people around the world.

SEE THE FULL CONVERSATION AND MORE AT EMORY.EDU/MAGAZINE

P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N

A new series, CONVERSATIONS WITH CLAIRE, pairs President Claire E. Sterk with significant figures to offer insights on topics of the day. Here’s a bit of her recent conversation with President Jimmy Carter, recently tenured University Distinguished Professor.

SHORT LIST

Poetry’s Dark Demands Emory’s Jericho Brown speaks in his own voice He has earned critical acclaim and

challenge myself, too. I created

poetry, but Jericho Brown is still

wanting to subvert forms and make

a Guggenheim Fellowship for his

learning from Emory College undergraduates in his writing seminars. Brown was thinking of those

students when he realized he

needed to challenge some of the

existing rules of poetry as he started exploring in his own work the

contradictory myths of our nation and the vulnerable black and gay bodies within it.

The result was Brown invent-

ing a new poetry form he calls the duplex. The new structure melds

the formality of a sonnet, the inline

rhyme and repetition of the ghazal,

work for myself because of them, new ones.”

The first “duplex” poem in the

volume hints at the harrowing im-

ages and vivid observations Brown

masterfully captures in deceptively simple and short rhymes.

“A poem is a gesture toward

home / It makes dark demands I make my own,” he writes.

Brown yielded to those de-

mands last year, finishing his book

while also wrapping up his first year as director of Emory’s ground-

breaking Creative Writing Program. According to the New York

and duality of the American blues,

Times Review of Books: “Even as

line. It’s also the title of five poems

of affairs, Brown brings a sense of

all in nine to eleven syllables per

in The Tradition, his third collection, published this spring.

“My students try the things

I say they can’t get away with,”

Brown says. “That inspires me to

he reckons seriously with our state semantic play to blackness, bouncing between different connotations of words to create a racial doublespeak.” —April Hunt

HISTORIC $180 MILLION GRANT The Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance network (CHAMPS), a global health network headquartered in the Emory Global Health Institute, has been awarded the university’s largest-ever single grant. Launched in 2015, CHAMPS collects and analyzes data to help identify the causes of child mortality in the places where it’s highest. This latest $180 million supplement brings the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s total investment in CHAMPS to $271 million and demonstrates its position as a critical tool for preventing child mortality around the world. SUCH SWEET SORROW A recent study published in the journal JAMA Network Open has linked sugary beverages—including fruit juices—to an increased risk of early death. Basically, sugar is sugar regardless of the source. “Sugary beverages, whether soft drinks or fruit juices, should be limited,” Jean A. Welsh, coauthor of the study and an assistant professor in Emory’s Department of Pediatrics, told CNN.

P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

CREATING NEW FORMS Jericho Brown challenges the traditional rules of poetry to invent new modes of expression.

NSF FELLOWSHIPS The National Science Foundation recently awarded coveted Graduate Research Fellowships to six Emory alumni. They include Katya Bobrek 19C (above, right), Caroline Holmes 17C, Will Milligan 15Ox 18C, P. Michael Newberry 08Ox 10C, Clara Perez 14Ox 17C (above, left); and Daniel Salgueiro 18C, chemistry. S U M M E R 2 019

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P OI N T S O F I N T E R E S T > > RESE ARC H

EARLY DISPOSABLES

Justin Pargeter studies how small stone flakes became a game-changer in the process of human evolution.

the archeological record at sites on every continent, going back to some of

the earliest known stone tool assemblages. These small flakes, Pargeter says, were like the disposable razor

Tiny Tools

blades or paperclips of today—perva-

sive, easy to make, and easily replaced. Pargeter makes tools himself to

THE STRANGE URGE TO MAKE THINGS SMALLER HAS PAID OFF FOR HUMANS IN A BIG WAY

better understand how our ancestors

learned these skills, and how they may have used the tools.

A native of South Africa, Pargeter

codirects field work in that country

nthropologists have long made

the case that tool-making is one

of the key behaviors that separat-

ed our human ancestors from other pri-

mates. A new paper, however, argues that it was not tool-making that set hominins

apart—it was the miniaturization of tools. Just as tiny transistors transformed

electronics a few decades ago—and sci-

entists are now challenged to make them even smaller—our Stone Age ancestors felt the urge to make tiny tools.

“It’s a need that we’ve been perenni-

ally faced with and driven by,” says Justin Pargeter (above), an anthropologist at Emory and lead author of the paper.

“Miniaturization is the thing that we do.” 10

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The journal Evolutionary Anthropology

published the paper—the first extensive overview of prehistoric tool miniaturiza-

tion. It proposes that miniaturization is a

central tendency in hominin technologies going back at least 2.6 million years.

“When other apes used stone tools,

they chose to go big and stayed in the forests where they evolved,” says co-

along its rugged and remote Indian Ocean coastline and nearby inland

mountains. He is also a postdoctoral

fellow in Emory’s Center for Mind, Brain and Culture and the Department of

Anthropology’s Paleolithic Technology Laboratory, where he collaborates on

experimental archeology projects with the lab’s director, Dietrich Stout.

Pargeter’s work on tiny tools adds

author John Shea, professor of anthropol-

another facet to the lab’s investigation

chose to go small, went everywhere, and

what may have led to the compulsion

ogy at Stony Brook University. “Hominins

transformed otherwise hostile habitats to suit our changing needs.”

The paper explores how stone flakes

less than an inch in length—used for

piercing, cutting, and scraping—pop up in

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of human evolution. “He’s exploring

to produce these tiny instrument—essentially the relationship between the tools and the human body, brain, and

the probable uses of the tools,” Stout says.—Carol Clark

SHORT LIST

Welcome, Class of 2023 Emory’s draw for top students continues to grow Emory University received 30,017 applications to be part of the Class of 2023, a 9 percent increase from the previous year. Along with the growth in application numbers, admission officers saw an increase in the number of students with high academic achievements and who embody Emory’s values of innovation and leadership both inside the classroom and in their communities. “I could not be more pleased that Emory University’s thriving academic community will be joined by this brilliant, engaged, and diverse Class of 2023,” says Dwight A. McBride, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “This class sought out Emory for our strengths as a premier university at which each undergraduate student has opportunities to study and conduct research with eminent scholars. Emory’s distinguished faculty are leaders in their research fields as

well as award-winning teachers and mentors; our students benefit immensely from these combined areas of excellence.” This year Emory College offered admission to 4,512 students, a 15 percent admission rate. Oxford College admitted 3,432 students, a 19 percent admission rate. Approximately 17,500 students applied to both the Emory and Oxford campuses. Admitted students have typically chosen a challenging pathway through their high schools. They are often involved in one or more activities that bring meaning to their lives and to the lives of those around them. These are students who are smart and engaged, and they are “intently at work preparing to contribute in some way to their world,” says John Latting, associate vice provost for enrollment and dean of admission.

JONES WINS NAACP AWARD Tayari Jones, a professor of English and creative writing at Emory, has been honored with an NAACP Image Award for her novel An American Marriage. A New York Times bestseller and 2018 pick for Oprah’s Book Club, An American Marriage tells the story of newlyweds whose pursuit of the American dream is violently interrupted. NEW LAW SCHOOL DEAN Emory has named Mary Anne Bobinski dean of Emory University School of Law. She will assume the post in August 2019, becoming the first woman to serve in the role since the school’s founding in 1916. Bobinski is currently a professor at the Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada, where she also served as dean from 2003–2015.

ANTISEMITISM EXPOSED Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and core faculty member at the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, recently published Antisemitism: Here and Now to critical acclaim. Lipstadt has been interviewed widely about current antisemitism on both national and international news outlets such as CNN, the New Yorker, PBS, and the Times of Israel. S U M M E R 2 019

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P OI N T S O F I N T E R E S T

Dog Day Afternoons EMORY’S THERAPY DOGS GIVE STUDENTS A WELCOME DIVERSION . . . AND A LITTLE BIT OF HOME

pets past, and those yearned for after graduation. The moment is an instant bridge for Colleen Duffy, a CAPS counselor and Finn’s handler. “Oh, do you have a dog? What’s their name?” she asks. “Finn is one of our therapy dogs at CAPS. My name is Colleen. I’m a psychologist who works with him.” After an endless stream of hugs, selfies, and a group photo, they’re off to Emory’s Centro Latinx, where the scene unfolds all over again— for Finn, another day at the office. But don’t be fooled. Beneath the warm fuzziness, there’s a lot going on here. For instance, you might not realize that Finn is visually impaired, a disability that can actually offer a bond for those struggling with their own challenges, or appreciate the long hours of training required for these casual interactions. You might miss the way Finn forges quick connection, dissolving walls and building trust. Gradually, talking about emotions and stress and self-care becomes a little less intimidating, a little more natural, a little more, well, healthy. Behold, the irrepressible power of a dog.—Kimber Williams

P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N

t’s the day before finals, and Emory’s Media, Literature and Arts Outreach residential house on Eagle Row is buzzing with high-voltage anticipation about the week to come. A jumbled landscape of Krispy Kreme boxes, cookies, and fresh fruit blankets a communal snack table, where undergraduates linger to discuss this looming test, that essay. And it’s here, amid the spirited end-of-term clamor, that a dozen students have gathered for some stress relief. Crowding onto sofas, they listen as Elizabeth Neri 09MPH, a licensed clinical social worker at Emory’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) discusses insomnia, the effects of caffeine, breathing

exercises, and meditation. Heads nod along; some take notes. Within minutes, the modest gathering seemingly triples—maybe quadruple— as students swarm from rooms, hallways, and fraternities and sororities from across the street. Enter Finn, a brawny four-footed ambassador with tall, attentive ears, a thick coat, and perpetually affable grin. The Emory photo ID on his vest identifies him as a CAPS therapy dog—one of two certified therapy dogs employed as contract staff at Emory’s CAPS. His serene older sibling, Beowulf, works primarily with one-on-one counseling; never-met-astranger Finn offers a public face to the program as a “canine outreach specialist.” Most here already know Finn or follow him on social media, recognizable from his frequent campus appearances—study breaks, orientations, athletic events, and “Fun Finn Fridays,” casual gatherings that invite students to stop, talk, and commune with a canine. Today, he is a joyful distraction. Hands eagerly reach out, plunging into dense coat, stroking soft ears. And just as impulsively, stories spill forth—talk of dogs back home,

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SHORT LIST

MORE BEAUTIFUL WITH AGE Soon the Emory community and the public will have access to more

than 1,500 ancient objects.

NEW DEAN OF CAMPUS LIFE Emory has named Enku Gelaye as vice president and dean of Campus Life. In this role, Gelaye will be responsible for delivering Campus Life’s services and support for more than 15,000 students in areas such as undergraduate residential life, health and wellness, athletics, and civic engagement. Gelaye previously served as vice chancellor of student affairs and campus life at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Ancient Art Finds a New Home Senusret Collection arrives at the Carlos Museum Named after a workmen’s village Hetep-

Georges Ricard in the 1970s and

laborers on the pyramid of pharaoh

of Egypt and the Ancient World in

Senusret in Fayum, Egypt—home to

Senusret II—the Senusret Collection

includes coffins with mummies, gilded funerary masks, finely crafted bronze statuettes of deities, exquisite New

Kingdom relief stele, Attic Greek pottery, ancient gold jewelry, and a collection of glassware from the same period. With

more than 1,500 objects, the collection offers a near-unparalleled window onto

Monaco. Within a few years, however,

the museum closed due to conservation concerns, and the Ricard family brought the collection with them when they moved to California in the 1980s.

Georges Ricard and his son Yann have shared it online since 1997 as the Virtual Egyptian Museum.

“We never intended or imagined

the ancient world.

the Senusret Collection would leave

Georges Ricard Foundation, the Senusret

Museum staff, the unthinkable turned

Thanks to a centennial gift from the

Collection, one of the most extensive P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

opened to great fanfare as the Museum

collections of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern objects ever donated to a US

museum has found a home at Emory’s

Michael C. Carlos Museum, where it will serve as a resource not only for university faculty and students but also for

schoolchildren in the Atlanta community. The Senusret Collection was

assembled by French industrialist

California, but once we met the Carlos into the compelling,” Yann Ricard says. “Nowhere else could we find such a

cohesive, dedicated, and creative team of consummate professionals on a

mission not only to preserve our world’s cultural heritage, but also to use col-

ROLLINS GIFT The O. Wayne Rollins Foundation has pledged $65 million to Emory toward construction of a third Rollins School of Public Health building on the Emory campus. To be named the R. Randall Rollins Building, the new facility will be adjacent to the existing School of Public Health facilities. ZERO LANDFILL PROGRESS A year after its launch, Emory’s 2018 Waste Management Policy has led to a measurable increase in the amount of campus waste that is diverted from area landfills. Emory seeks to divert 95 percent of campus waste from municipal landfills by 2025.

lections to ignite imaginations, convey meaning, elicit emotion, and inspire reflection.” —Allison Hutton

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FIVE YEARS AFTER EBOLA

WHAT IF TAKING OFF YOUR GLOVES WERE THE MOST DANGEROUS PART OF YOUR DAY?

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1. GRASP THE OUTSIDE OF ONE GLOVE AT THE WRIST. // 2. DO NOT TOUCH YOUR BARE SKIN. // 3. PEEL THE GLOVE AWAY FROM YOUR BODY PULLING IT INSIDE OUT. // 4. HOLD THE GLOVE YOU JUST REMOVED IN YOUR GLOVED HAND. // 5. PEEL OFF THE SECOND GLOVE BY PUTTING YOUR FINGERS INSIDE THE GLOVE AT THE TOP OF YOUR WRIST. // 6. TURN THE SECOND GLOVE INSIDE OUT WHILE PULLING IT AWAY FROM YOUR BODY, LEAVING THE FIRST GLOVE INSIDE THE SECOND. // 7. DISPOSE OF THE GLOVES SAFELY. // 8. CLEAN YOUR HANDS IMMEDIATELY AFTER REMOVING GLOVES. WHEN EMORY TREATED THE FIRST EBOLA PATIENTS IN THE US, NURSE JILL MORGAN PERFECTED THE PROTOCOL. THAT WAS LESSON ONE. STORY BY MARY LOFTUS PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACK KEARSE

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ILL MORGAN, THE CRITICAL CARE NURSE WHO ADMITTED THE FIRST PATIENT WITH EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE TO EMORY, HAS BECOME, IN HER WORDS, “A WARRIOR FOR PERSONAL PROTECTION THAT WORKS FOR BEDSIDE NURSES.” That’s the challenge: How to take what happened inside Emory’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit (SCDU) five years ago—with a small, highly trained, and motivated staff caring for the first patients in the US with Ebola virus disease—and apply it to everyday patient care. “When we knew there was no cure, no treatment, how did we behave in patient rooms? How cognizant were we of infectious materials? How

good were we at hand hygiene? How precisely did we remove our protective clothing?” asks nurse Sharon Vanairsdale, program director for the Serious Communicable Diseases Program. “If we could do that every day, in every patient care interaction, what could that do to our hospital infection rate?” The vision is to take these highreliability principles and turn them into health care innovation—not just

in one room, but in every room. “For example, all health care workers should know how to properly take off gloves,” says infectious disease physician and medical microbiologist Colleen Kraft. “We want to train them to understand their environment, figure out their behaviors in that environment, and take steps to protect themselves and their patients against any sort of hazard or pathogen.” A decade from now, Kraft says, she’d like to look back and say that taking care of Emory’s four patients with Ebola virus disease “was just the beginning of a health care revolution.” HEADS UP

Many of these advances came from paying close attention. Emory’s infectious disease experts became the first to care for and study patients with Ebola virus disease daily

THE HOME TEAM The health care professionals who volunteered to care for Emory’s patients with Ebola virus disease in 2014 included School of Nursing

alumni (from left) Crystal Johnson 00N, Laura Mitchell-Spurlock 95Ox 97N, and Jason Slabach 13N. They received the Emory Medal, the university’s highest alumni honor, for their lifesaving work.

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ELEVEN THINGS WE LEARNED FROM TREATING EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

The Serious Communicable Diseases Unit (SCDU) was located in the back of the hospital, with easy entrance and egress. And setting up a dedicated clinical laboratory next to the isolation unit was invaluable. It allowed the clinical analysis of blood and other bodily fluids, all by just taking the samples down the hall. “We could also reassure medical technologists in the main hospital laboratory that they wouldn’t be having any patient samples that had Ebola virus,” Kraft says. “And we could mitigate risks to the laboratorians doing the work in our lab by knowing exactly who handled the specimens, monitoring their temperature, etc.” The strategy, says pathologist Charles Hill, in an article for Lab Medicine journal, was to establish a self-contained, point-of-care laboratory that could support all requisite testing within the quarantine facility itself with a team of volunteer clinical pathologists and laboratory technical staff. The laboratory continues to be used for patients under investigation for high-risk pathogens.

USE ALL MEANS NECESSARY

Perhaps the case the team learned the most from was the patient who was in the worst shape. “Ian [Crozier’s] viral load was potentially ten thousand times higher than our other patients,” Kraft says. SCDU clinicians realized the high viral load was driving the most serious phase of the disease, sepsis syndrome, which led to severe diarrhea, hepatitis, and multisystem organ failure. Crozier was kept alive by all means necessary while his body fought the virus. “If you go back to medical articles and textbooks prior to 2014, the authors were unanimous: Don’t bother to insert a breathing tube, don’t bother to do dialysis, don’t bother to do platelet transfusions, because no patient with Ebola virus disease is ever going to survive if they have that degree of illness,” Ribner (right) says. “But this is a level of care that, frankly, we deliver every day in intensive care units.” A model now exists for providing dialysis to Ebola patients. The Emory team shared this protocol at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology and published it in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

and directly in a resource-rich setting. With that opportunity came responsibility. Research was conducted. Therapies tried. Protocols perfected. “Team Ebola” members, as those who worked in the unit were collectively known, became leaders in training and advising other health care institutions. Some of the most important game-changing observations and advances are shared here. All stem from the fact that Emory was ready and willing to safely accept and care for four patients with a contagious, highly lethal disease. “Emory University and Emory Healthcare were extremely supportive of our activities,” says Bruce Ribner, founder and medical director of the SCDU. “The chief executive officer and chief nursing officer of the hospital were down in our unit almost every day. Invariably they would say, what can we do to help you out?” From the beginning, Ribner says, his team was certain it could deliver excellent patient care in a way that was safe for health care workers and the surrounding community. “If we hadn’t felt that way, we probably wouldn’t have accepted the patients in the first place,” he says. “But our general feeling was one of confidence and optimism. We’d been practicing this for a long time, we could do it.” “Of course,” he adds, “Much of what we knew about Ebola proved to be wrong.” Very early, in the midst of still caring for its own patients, Emory Healthcare launched an external website outlining every protocol used by the team to serve as a resource for other health care organizations regarding best practices for screening, diagnosis, and treatment for Ebola virus disease. “We tried to share information as immediately as possible, S U M M E R 2 019

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EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Ophthalmologists from the Emory Eye Center have made multiple discoveries about survivors of Ebola virus disease and vision problems—among a host of other post-Ebola symptoms discovered by treating Emory’s patients. They became involved with Ebola when treating survivor and physician Ian Crozier for severe, sight-threatening uveitis, an inflammatory disease of the eye. Steven Yeh discovered live Ebola virus in Crozier’s ocular fluid, and he and Jessica Shantha worked with physicians from the SCDU to successfully treat Crozier. Since that time, Yeh, Shantha, Crozier, and other colleagues have traveled to Africa numerous times to investigate these problems and to care for survivors, including flying to the Democratic Republic of Congo to examine survivors of the current outbreak.

GO PRO

Transporting patients with a lethal infectious disease isn’t just a matter of finding an ambulance and turning on the siren. The ambulance must be made into a mini-biocontainment unit, the route carefully mapped out, the attendants and drivers specially trained. Alexander Isakov, emergency medicine and EMS physician and executive director of the Emory Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, was in charge of the transport of the patients with Ebola virus disease. Using that experience, Isakov leads the NIEHS-funded Emory Ebola Biosafety and Infectious Disease Response Program, which provides education and training for workers who face risk of occupational exposure.

CROSS-COUNTRY

Emory received a $24 million federal grant, along with the University of Nebraska Medical Center and NYC Health and Hospitals, Bellevue, to establish the National Ebola Training and Education Center (www.netec.org). The team is partnering with the US Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for preparedness and response and the CDC to provide training, educational resources, and consultations for forty-eight US medical centers that have been designated Ebola treatment centers. Emory has hosted Ebola preparedness training conferences, and experts have been going on site visits to hospitals and health care systems. “It is our mission to pass on what we have learned to other health care providers and hospital staff, so they can ready themselves to care for patients diagnosed with Ebola,” says Ribner.

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04 OFF AND ON

Every day, sometimes multiple times, nurses and doctors who entered the isolation unit had to don their personal protective equipment (PPE). From the top, the suit includes a powered air-purifying respirator, double gloves secured with tape, a body suit made of ultra-strong, waterproof synthetic material, an apron, and disposable shoe covers. While Ebola is a fluid-spread virus, the team decided to be as cautious as possible. Also, the gear was found to be more comfortable than a mask and hood due to the circulating air. The CDC now recommends this higher level of precaution when caring for patients with Ebola virus disease. “You have to be very detail-oriented in a unit like this,” says Vanairsdale. “There were about twenty steps you had to follow just to take everything off. And we always used a safety buddy, to make sure no steps were skipped.” The team is now helping test reusable respirators, and examining which steps of PPE donning and doffing are most dangerous to health care workers.

06 VIRTUAL REALITY

The PPE required to treat a highly infectious disease is restrictive for caregivers. Team Ebola partnered with the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship and Emory Library and Information Technology Services to produce a series of 360degree virtual reality (VR) training videos. “The VR simulation does a good job of portraying your limited view and dexterity,” says infectious disease physician Aneesh Mehta, who wore PPE while caring for Emory’s patients with Ebola virus.

LET’S TRY THIS

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Emory a grant for up to $10.8 million over three years to determine if the blood of Ebola survivors contains antibodies and immune cells that could help doctors fight Ebola infections in others. Researchers began by gathering plasma from the four patients with Ebola virus disease who were treated at Emory. The ten-institution national team is led by Rafi Ahmed, director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and infectious disease physician Aneesh Mehta, and includes laboratories around the country.

especially to places where outbreaks were happening,” says Kraft, associate medical director of the SCDU. ‘WE’RE GLAD YOU’RE HERE’

On August 2, 2014, the world watched as the first of four patients with Ebola virus disease arrived at Emory. A deadly Ebola outbreak was spreading through West Africa. Nearly a thousand had died, with more cases reported daily. Missionary Kent Brantly, who had been working at a hospital in Liberia, was among them. After testing positive for Ebola virus disease, Brantly was evacuated on a private jet and was on his way by ambulance to the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit at Emory University Hospital. “The drive from Dobbins [Air Reserve Base] to Emory was about thirty minutes. I had no idea that news helicopters were overhead and our motorcade was being televised live all across the nation,” Brantly says. “Many people have told me they remember where they were when they watched the first patient with Ebola touch American soil, wondering what would happen next.” Brantly and his attendant—both clad in astronaut-like protective suits— walked slowly and steadily toward the unit. Inside, a highly trained team of doctors and nurses, who had been preparing for this moment for years, were eagerly waiting. Nurse Jill Morgan had written, “Welcome home! We’re glad you’re here” on a white board inside Brantly’s room. The unit had been developed twelve years earlier in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to care for patients with lethal, contagious diseases. The result was a fully equipped, negative pressure isolation unit, able

to deal with biosafety level-4 pathogens and ready to be activated and staffed at a moment’s notice. This was fortunate, since the State Department had informed Ribner just a few days before that two patients with Ebola virus were being medically evacuated from Liberia to Emory for care.

ON A MISSION Infectious disease expert Colleen Kraft

hopes to apply the lessons Emory learned to all hospital rooms and clinics here and abroad.

A RALLYING CRY

When Brantly and his family decided to go to Liberia in October 2013 on a two-year assignment with the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse, Ebola was “not on our radar.” But he would soon find himself in the midst of the largest, longest, and most deadly Ebola outbreak in history. The West Africa Ebola outbreak, which was to last from 2014 to 2016, affected largely three countries: Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. In all, there were twenty-eight thousand cases of Ebola and eleven thousand deaths. The hospital where Brantly worked, just outside of Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia, received its first patient with Ebola virus disease in June. “In the first month and a half, we had one survivor out of forty-five,” Brantly says. Dressed head to toe in

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sweltering protective gear, he provided medical care, held his patients’ hands, and sang to them as they lay dying. Brantly awoke one day in late July feeling ill, and later tested positive for Ebola. He tried hard to believe it was not a death sentence, but had seen the disease take its course in his own patients. Then another missionary he worked with, Nancy Writebol, also tested positive. Within days, they would be in isolation rooms across from each other in Emory’s SCDU. With the arrival of its first Ebola patients, Emory became the focus of intense media scrutiny, with an encampment of reporters and satellite trucks lining the Clifton corridor. Questions were raised about the safety of bringing Ebola patients to the US. “We can fear, or we can care,” Susan Grant, then chief nurse executive of Emory Healthcare, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. That became a rallying cry for the university community over the next few months.

09 GROUP BONDING

Team Ebola functioned as one unit, says Kraft. “I credit our success at least partially to that flat hierarchy embodied in the unit. Everybody was free to speak about their concerns. That allowed us to trust each other so implicitly we could then take care of the patients without a lot of stress.” Every morning at 7:15, the team had their “family huddle”— staff nurses, physicians, lab personnel, environmental services. “The focus is always to take good care of patients,” says Kraft, but “we decided that taking care of ourselves and each other was primary. Protecting ourselves and our peers allowed us to be free to deliver excellent care.”

HUGS AND HIGH FIVES

Writebol, the first to recover, chose to be quietly discharged from the hospital on August 19. Brantly was found well enough to leave two days later and chose to hold a press conference, which received international attention. “Today is a miraculous day,” he began. “I am thrilled to be alive, to be well, and to be reunited with my family.” He thanked the doctors and nurses who had cared for him and gave them hugs and high fives. The next patient to arrive, on September 9, was Ian Crozier, the sickest of Emory’s patients with Ebola virus disease. Crozier, who contracted Ebola while caring for patients in 20

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LEADING BY EXAMPLE

When Emory’s SCDU is not occupied by a patient, select visitors are invited to come through to learn more about the unit and its operations. More than sixty groups have visited in the past few years, including ministers of health, students, public health experts, scientists, and military and government officials. A lot of what was learned, says Ribner, has already been applied to the care of patients in the current outbreak. “We learned more about how Ebola virus makes people sick,” he says. “We learned just how ill patients with Ebola virus disease could become and still functionally recover. We learned which vaccines are and are not likely to work. We contributed to the World Health Organization rewriting a lot of its protocols on how to care for patients with these types of serious communicable diseases.”

11 WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

The SCDU’s original plans had not factored the amount of waste that the team found was coming out of the patient rooms. “Within the first two days, having two patients here, we rapidly started to run out of capability with the autoclave we had in our unit,” says Ribner. He and Emory Healthcare’s chief operating officer got a bigger one. All dangerous waste from the isolation rooms was decontaminated and then burned, not sent through the pipes and drains into Atlanta’s sewage system. Decontamination of the unit itself also proved challenging, since the constant washing and rewashing with harsh solutions ate away at floor tile and other surfaces. Ribner has replaced as much as possible in the unit with stainless steel and other highly durable materials.

Sierra Leone during the outbreak, was in the unit for forty days and experienced organ failure and intensive life support measures including intubation and dialysis. In mid-October, two nurses were infected in Texas while caring for a Liberian man who had been visiting family when he got sick and later died from Ebola in the hospital. One

of the nurses, Amber Vinson, came to Emory for care on October 15 and was discharged on October 28. Four days later, Crozier was well enough to be discharged. President Barack Obama met with and thanked Emory’s “Team Ebola” during a visit to the CDC. “The world is looking to us and it’s a responsibility we embrace,” Obama said.

BECAUSE THEY GOT BETTER

‘MIRACULOUS DAY’ The first patient with Ebola virus disease to be treated in the US, Kent Brantly,

high-fives his care team after his discharge from Emory University Hospital on August 21, 2014.

EMBRACING RESPONSIBILITY

Kent Brantly was the medical director at the only Ebola treatment unit in southern Liberia when he was diagnosed with Ebola virus disease. “Amber and I went to Liberia as anonymous, quiet missionaries wanting to live meaningful lives,” he says. No longer anonymous, Brantly was part of a group of Ebola fighters that was named “Person of the Year 2014” by Time magazine, along with Emory’s Bruce Ribner.

Since, Brantly has been featured in a Samaritan’s Purse documentary, and has written the book Called for Life: How Loving Our Neighbor Led Us into the Heart of the Ebola Epidemic. “After my discharge from Emory, that spotlight allowed me to serve as an advocate for the people of West Africa, who were still suffering so terribly from Ebola.” He worked as a medical missions advisor for Samaritan’s Purse, where “I tried to share a message of choosing compassion over fear.” At the end of 2015, he returned to the practice of

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medicine, while continuing to travel and speak. Brantly says he has made a full recovery from Ebola virus disease, although he suffered from fatigue and anxiety for months after leaving Emory. He, like several other survivors, participated in a three-year research protocol through Emory. Brantly, his wife, Amber, and their children live in Fort Worth, Texas, but plan to move back to Africa later this year. “This time to Zambia, to return to the type of work we set out to do six years ago, serving in a hospital where there is a great need for more doctors,” he says.

OUR GENERAL FEELING WAS ONE OF CONFIDENCE AND OPTIMISM. WE’D BEEN PRACTICING THIS FOR A LONG TIME. WE KNEW WE COULD DO IT. OF COURSE, MUCH OF WHAT WE KNEW ABOUT EBOLA PROVED TO BE WRONG.” —BRUCE RIBNER

THE FACE OF COMPASSION

Nancy Writebol has been back in Liberia since 2015, continuing her work with Serving in Mission (SIM), an international Christian organization. She lives with her husband, David, in the home they shared before her evacuation to Emory. “Upon returning, I met with Ebola survivors and invited them to become part of healing groups to process the trauma they experienced,” she says. Writebol helped lead trauma-healing training workshops for leaders of churches, NGOs, and other organizations. “It’s been an interesting journey as we dealt with those affected not only by Ebola, but also by the atrocities of fourteen years of civil war,” says Writebol, now the global trauma healing coordinator for SIM. Other than a bit of joint pain in her knees, she says she has fully recovered. “In serving survivors in Liberia, we are reminded of the compassion and kindness shown to us at Emory,” she told a group of student nurses during a visit to the university. “You’re the face of compassion to your patients. See them as a person, not a disease. Advocate for them. Do not be afraid.” 22

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GUARDIAN OF THE ILL

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak still rages, survivors of Ebola virus disease are doing an astounding thing. Now thought to be immune, they are returning to Ebola care centers and clinics to tend to the sick. A term for these survivor caretakers has emerged: garde-malade, guardians of the ill. Ian Crozier is a garde-malade. Five years after his own arduous recovery from Ebola at Emory, he was back in Africa caring for patients of the curent outbreak. Efforts to quell the spread of the virus and tend to the sick have been hampered by violent attacks on health care workers. Undeterred, Crozier was in the DRC

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for ten weeks this spring, working for the NIH. In March, he flew to Beni to join Emory ophthalmologists Steven Yeh and Jessica Shantha as they evaluated 250 survivors for eye disease—one of several post-Ebola symptoms that Crozier has also experienced. A native of Zimbabwe raised in the US, he was volunteering with WHO when he became infected in Sierra Leone. “I’d never seen a virus so aggressive,” he says. “We were essentially wearing spacesuits at patients’ bedsides and still it was not enough. I would have been dead in a week if I hadn’t been brought to Emory.” Crozier was discharged in October, but suffered from aftereffects including fatigue, joint and back pain, headaches, hearing loss, and eye inflammation, which led him to the

SECOND CHANCES The sickest of Emory’s four patients with Ebola virus disease, Ian Crozier (opposite page) says he has “dual citizenship as both Ebola

caregiver and care receiver. What took place inside those four walls changed the nature of Ebola care. I was not destined to survive, and yet I did.” Kent Brantly (above, right) was overjoyed to be able to hug his wife, Amber, on the day he was released from Emory University Hospital. Nancy Writebol and her husband, David, (above, top left), returned to Liberia, where she works with Ebola survivors as trauma victims. Amber Vinson (above, lower left) continues her work as a nurse and, with husband Derrick Markray, is parenting a “bright and busy” three-year-old boy.

Emory Eye Center. Yeh discovered that the inside of Crozier’s eye, whose iris had inexplicably turned from blue to green, was still teeming with Ebola virus—new knowledge for infectious disease experts. “I want to make sure that what was learned at my bedside, and at the bedside of the other survivors at Emory, is translated and applied to an African setting,” Crozier says. DOING HER PART

One of the first two health care workers to acquire Ebola in the US, Amber Vinson still works as a nurse, although

she is now in the clinical education department of a Texas hospital. “Through my time spent recovering, I learned a great deal about the patient experience,” says Vinson. “Being isolated [in the unit] made me appreciate being able to go outside to feel the sun, fresh air, and the sounds of birds chirping. It definitely impacted how I provide patient care.” Suffering from a virus whose mere name can cause panic taught Vinson valuable lessons, as well. “I learned the importance of providing clear, simple information about diseases, transmission, and treatment to the public,” she says. “The lack of public

knowledge was a challenge. Fear made some encounters difficult.” Like Brantly, Vinson held a press conference at Emory before leaving. “While this is a day of celebration and gratitude for me, I ask that we not lose focus on the thousands of families who continue to labor under the burden of this disease in West Africa.” Since fully recovering, she has participated in a research study at Emory and donated blood to a biotech firm for vaccine development. “Maybe something wonderful can come out of it,” she says, “so I want to do my part to help.”

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12 Y E A R S OF I N T ENSE PR EPA R AT ION

4 V ERY SIC K PAT I EN T S

6 H IGH LY T R A I N ED PH Y SIC I A NS

35 SK IL L ED, DEDIC AT ED N U R SES

COU N T L E S S

OTHER

STAFF AND TEAM MEMBER S

â&#x20AC;¦ON E R E VOLU T ION I N I N F EC T IOUS DISE A SE C A R E 24

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F I V E Y E A R S AG O, T H E US A DM I T T ED I T S F I R S T PAT I EN T S W I T H EBOL A V IRUS DISEASE TO EMORY’S SER IOUS COMMUNIC ABLE DI S E A S E S U N I T. T H E Y W E R E M E T BY A T E A M OF H E A LT H C A R E PROFESSIONA LS W HO CHOSE C A R E OV ER FE A R . Anne Adams Latifat Adebayo Toni Ash Marie Ayers Christopher Barnes Arnold Barros Emily Beck Sonia Bell Katherine Bowker Nicole Brammer Stephen Brandt Debra Brewer Jeff Broughton Robin Brown-Haithco Justin Browning Connie Bryant Juli Buchanan Eileen Burd James Cain Jason Calhoun Rasheeda Carkhum Renee Donahue Carlson Lauren Chapman Barry Clark Emily Davis Roderick Davis Tracey Daye Paula Desroches Haley Durr Brenda Eaves Amir Emamifar Crystal Evans Shunasee Evans Nancye Feistritzer Brian Frisle

Miranda Lynn Gartin Bryce Gartland Janice Gentry Erica Geralds-Washington Jan Ginnane Stacey Goebel George Golston Paula Gomes Elizabeth Green James Greene Betsy Hackman David Hatcher Chris Haynes Carolyn Hill Charles Hill Dustin Hillis Nadine Hines Krista Hostetler Regina Howard Alex Isakov Robert Jackson Rhonda James-Jones Karen Jenkins Crystal Johnson Tyrone Johnson Marolyn Jones Porcia Jones Sean Kaufman Arezou Khosroshahi Allison Klajbor Matt Klopman Courtney Kovanis Colleen Kraft Art Krasilovsky Tish Kuban

Lucy Kugbila Monica Lalor Sandra Leonard Jerry Lewis Maureen Lindsey Jessica Loomis George Lyon, George Jordan Magee Catherine Maloney Josia Mamora Lindsay Martin Gentrice McGee Aneesh Mehta Donald Miller Laura Mitchell Patricia Morfaw Jill Morgan Sandy Ockers Pat Olinger Sean Olinger Nancy Osakwe Jacqueline Owen Clyde Partin Chris Pasciullo Purnima Patel Sarah Piazza Tyrone Pickett Randall Powers Kalpana Rengarajan Bruce Ribner James Ritchie Chad Ritenour Emily Ryan Troy Sanders Linda Scott-Harris

Marybeth Sexton Sam Shartar Anthony Shaw Kristina Shirley Jodi Siddens Carrie Silas Jason Slabach Tina Spears Dan Stark David Stephens Katherine Syfert Vick Thomas Scott Thomaston Elaina Tirador Donnette Todd Tenina Truesdale Sharon Vanairsdale Jay Varkey Jane Vitali Seth Walker Susan Wall Victoria Walsh Gregory Webb Jill Wells Annie Winkler Francis Wolf Henry Wu Jianguo Xu Anna Yaffee Steven Yeh Thomas Ziegler Joel Zivot

For your unwavering dedication to the successful recovery of our patients, and your continued leadership in advancing the knowledge, science, and clinical care of patients with infectious diseases,

WE THANK YOU Claire E. Sterk, University President Jonathan S. Lewin, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs and CEO, Emory Healthcare S U M M E R 2 019

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THE NEW STUDENT CENTER PROMISES TO BECOME THE HEARTBEAT OF THE ATLANTA CAMPUS

A F T E R BY KIMBER WILLIAMS PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAY HINTON

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fter watching the

Emory Student Center take shape for nearly two years, the community can finally step inside and experience the expansive new facility. The center opened its doors in May, providing a firsthand glimpse into the new structure, which houses an array of student-centered features— including a high-tech gaming and recreation lounge, a spacious new food center, a convenience store, and innovative spaces for studying, collaboration, and student engagement. In addition to providing a central location for student-centered services, the new building offers a large multipurpose space that can morph from a series of six meeting rooms into a sweeping ballroom that holds up to 1,400 guests, with overflow space for another two hundred. With clean, modern lines, the three-story facility stands tall on the campus landscape, featuring north and south pavilions connected by an internal third-floor skywalk. If it feels especially roomy inside, that’s because it is—about 117,000 square feet, as opposed to the seventy thousand square feet of its predecessor, the Dobbs University Center (DUC). The interior is open, airy, and light. And nearly everything was influenced by student input, from the furniture and flooring to the overall color scheme and patterns of the textured upholstery, says Ben Perlman, director of student center operations in the Division of Campus Life. “In terms of creating a new place for community building, programs and events, it’s going to be incredibly impactful, with a lot more inviting, flexible spaces for students to gather and collaborate,” he says. “But it’s also a space for everyone.”

Considered one of the most energy-efficient buildings on campus, the Student Center employs fourhundred-foot-deep geothermal wells dug into nearby McDonough Field to help heat and cool the facility, and several of the exterior glass walls boast solar-tracking shades to block the heat of the day. Look upward to study a constellation of LED lighting—some conventional, some architectural and artistic. Glance outside for sweeping views of campus, with perspectives you may have missed, including the original front facade of the Alumni Memorial University Center (AMUC), once again exposed to the light of the day. Outside, roses are already blooming in the open-air plaza—it’s actually a green roof—that stretches between the new student center and the AMUC. Soon, outdoor furniture will join the mix. Although the grand opening isn’t until this fall, campus employees are already moving into new office spaces as the building prepares to host an array of summer meetings and conferences, says Perlman. Public seating now offers inviting nooks for studying and socializing, as the new facility begins to awaken for business.

THE COMMONS The Commons is considered by some to be the public-facing “living room” of the center. Visitors entering the second-floor space will find a formal welcome desk, along with an array of small tables and cozy seating for meeting, studying, and gathering. Furnishings are cast in subtle shades of blue and gold and light natural wood—a palette chosen by Emory students. Outdoor seating is available on the Commons Terrace.

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STUDENT INVOLVEMENT LOUNGE Beyond providing a spot for hanging out or catching the latest news on big screen TVs, this area is designed to invite engagement. Situated on the north side of the facility overlooking first-year residence halls, the lounge also encompasses corridors located on the second and third floors complete with desks, tables, casual seating, and lockers. A large utility table and nearby washing station can accommodate sprawling craft projects. Meeting rooms may be reserved for collaboration. Student services departments are all located on the third floor in both the north and south pavilions, including offices dedicated to Civic and Community Engagement; 28

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Student Involvement, Leadership, and Transitions; and Belonging and Community Justice, which encompasses Racial and Cultural Engagement; LGBT Life; Social Justice Education; and the Center for Women. Offices for Student Center Operations and Events are here, too, along with a series of conference rooms.

DOBBS COMMON TABLE Located on the first floor, Emory’s newest dining center offers a spacious, open concept that features ten restaurant-style food stations, including vegan/vegetarian, gluten-free, kosher and halal options. Individual food stations feature state-of-the-art amenities, including both a pizza oven and tandoori oven,

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a rotisserie and carving station, and flat Mongolian-style grill. To the right of the entrance, a casual gathering space dubbed “Crossroads” provides a variety of soft, informal seating with easy access to coffee, pastries, and a soft-serve ice cream station. Also available: Two private dining rooms, which may be reserved for special gatherings. The biggest change? Probably the sheer abundance of space—with seating for about 760 guests, Dobbs Common Table is twice the size of its predecessor—and an expanded, more versatile menu, says Chad Sunstein, director of campus dining. A majority of food preparation will take place directly at food stations,

instead of requiring preparation in a remote kitchen. “Our food has always been fresh,” he says. “Now the community can see that in action.” The space will feature original artwork, including some furnishings, commissioned by Atlanta-area artisans. To be installed later this summer: A colorful ceiling mural above the Crossroads corner created by local muralist Christina Kwan, who’s noted for her abstract floral designs. Enter the second story from the outdoor plaza, and you’ll find the new student recreation lounge—a handy corner with lots of casual seating. But the showstopper may be the state-ofthe-art gaming center, with generous counter and booth seating and two

75-inch wall-mounted monitors. A pool table and foosball table arrive soon. Overhead, a massive ceiling fan—imagine a large plane propeller— helps circulate air, lending a modern industrial ambience. “We believe the overall design here reflects the future for universities,” Sunstein says. “Our inspiration came not only from other higher education institutions, but the corporate world— the kind of potential future environments our students will be looking at after graduation.” “Seeing this fully realized has already exceeded our expectations,” Sunstein adds. “We’re really excited to see how community members react to it.”

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the perfect match C H I L D R E N D E V E L O P I N G T Y P I C A L LY A N D T H O S E O N T H E A U T I S M S P E C T R U M

L E A R N A N D G R O W T O G E T H E R AT E A R LY E M O R Y STORY BY GARY GOETTLING P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y K AY H I N T O N

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As a new pre-k student at the Early Emory Center for Child Development and Enrichment, Elise Sabetai was quiet and shy. Her classmate Amiel Wallenstein was outgoing and personable, and eager to make friends. T H E Y W E R E T H E P E R F E C T M AT C H .

Early Emory is the university’s year-round pre-school education program for children ages one to five. To the casual observer it looks like any other preschool, but there’s an important difference: Two-thirds of its students are developing typically like Elise, while one-third has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, including Amiel. “For typical children, Early Emory is an enriched early childhood center where children receive quality early educational support,” says Michael Morrier, executive director, program director for Emory Autism Center’s Screening and Assessment

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Not Too Cool for School Michael Morrier is executive director and program director for the Emory Autism Center’s Screening and Assessment Clinic and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science.

“Decades of research show that kids who are in inclusive Clinic, and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry programs end up being more empathetic and accepting and Behavioral Science. “For the children with autism it’s an toward differences than kids who are not in those situations,” intensive social communication treatment program using says Morrier. “They also are more helping applied behavior analysis embedded within regular, and advanced—academically, socially, and ongoing preschool activities.” For nearly thirty language-wise—because they are getting a lot of years, Early Emory Attentive to each child opportunities to practice those skills.” has served as a The two-to-one mix is maintained as typically deEarly Emory was founded in 1991 by Gail model for other veloping children and those on the autism specMcGee, professor emeritus of psychiatry, as the “immersion” trum are combined and assigned by age to one of Walden Early Childhood Center. A pioneer in preschools around four classes: toddler, early pre-school, pre-school the incidental teaching method, she had been the country. and pre-kindergarten. A high teacher-student recruited to the Emory faculty in the wake of ratio ensures close adult guidance and attention to the verbal her success starting a similar program at the University of and social-skill development plan drawn up for each child. Massachusetts, Amherst six years earlier. The school day runs weekdays from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 For nearly thirty years, Early Emory has served as a model p.m., with a daycare component that ends at 6 p.m. Early for other “immersion” preschools around the country. Its Emory is fully accredited, and its pre-k is approved for guiding philosophy is that children learn best when they’re Georgia’s pre-k program. learning from each other and having fun. The friendships that arise among Early Emory students Given the pervasive—and wrong—autism stereotype, one offer life-changing social-skill learning opportunities for both might assume that typically developing children would most students on the spectrum and their non-autistic classmates. likely take the lead in initiating new friendships.

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Becoming fast friends Not so, as in Elise and Amiel’s case. Elise was four years old when she entered Early Emory. It was a bit overwhelming in the beginning —she’d been in a small, six-child daycare setting since she was six months old, but now found herself in much larger, unfamiliar surroundings among people she didn’t know. Amiel, a year older and a three-year Early Emory veteran, struck up a conversation with her within the first couple days of school. They became fast friends and were often inseparable, partnering in class activities and during play time. “The Early Emory What was so experience was nothing nice about Amiel, short of phenomenal says Elise’s mom, from start to finish for Amanda Sabetai, him and our family.” is that “he was —Rachel Wallenstein really welcoming and inviting to her as a new student in the class. He was more talkative than Elise, and reaching out to her made her feel more comfortable when she started. “We have people in our family with special needs and learning disabilities,” she adds. “That’s partly why it was really important to my husband and me that she have this kind of interaction beginning at a young age with people who are not just like her.”

Support after the diagnosis Parents of a student with autism receive encouragement and support even before their child starts school at Early Emory. “You could’ve knocked me over with a feather,” recalls Rachel Wallenstein, Amiel’s mom, upon receiving her son’s autism spectrum diagnosis at the Emory Autism Center. “We knew absolutely nothing going in. That was the first experience my husband and I had learning about autism.” In the four months between Amiel’s diagnosis in April 2013, when he was twenty months old, and his enrollment in August, Early Emory staff provided the Wallensteins parenting advice and help with getting him ready for school. The support continued throughout his time at Early Emory.

Understanding Autism Research leads to improved intervention The Early Emory language and social-skill development model, where kids with and without autism learn together in a shared environment, capitalizes on the basic fact that human brain development is socially driven. “Our brains are prewired to attend to and learn from other people,” says Catherine Rice, director of the Emory Autism Center. “Most people come into the world ready to receive this important input. As our brain matures, there is an initial proliferation of neurons that gets trimmed back and more efficient pathways form in determining how parts of the brain communicate with each other. This is part of a mutually reinforcing feedback loop between the child’s neuro-maturation and their experience in the world.” A diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is based on observable behaviors suggesting that a particular individual is not attending to and learning from the social world as expected for their age and stage of development. Early signs of autism in toddlers, for example, include not responding to their name, not making eye contact and not pointing to show or share things with others. “These are all clues to the state of the brain as a social learner,” Rice says.

The younger the child, the more likely it is that intervention will yield a positive outcome. In a groundbreaking 2017 study, Emory researchers discovered that developmental deviations in social communication can be seen in children only two months old—well before the 12-18 months age threshold of the usual autism diagnoses. The findings were drawn from a research program involving investigators from the Marcus Autism Center, Emory’s School of Medicine, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and other collaborators across the US. The study also found a genetic component to development deviations, opening a new pathway for further research. Two years ago, the interdisciplinary work was extended by an $11 million, five-year grant by the National Institutes of Health and will examine many areas related to autism treatments and prevention. Understanding the genetic side of autism research is the mission of SPARK (Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge), a research initiative led by the Emory Autism Center and twenty other institutions.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.SPARKFORAUTISM.ORG/EMORY

GPB TV Series Explores

‘YOUR FANTASTIC MIND’ In their pre-k classroom, best friends Elise, four, and Amiel, five, are seated next to each other at a table, intently drawing pictures.

learn and grow together to their mutual enrichment.

“She likes me,” Amiel states, looking up from his paper. “I think the first time we met we started playing with each other, right?” “Yeah,” Elise replies, still drawing. “I don’t know what day it was,” he continues. “I forgot what day it was. Could’ve been a Monday.” The children’s heart-warming interaction is a scene from one television episode of “Your Fantastic Mind.” It focuses on the effects of the inclusive learning environment at Emory’s pre-school, Early Emory, where typically developing kids such as Elise and children on the autism spectrum, like Amiel,

A collaboration among Emory University, the Emory Autism Center, and Georgia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Southern Company Charitable Foundation, the twelve-episode “Your Fantastic Mind” series reveals the real-life stories of people with brain-related medical issues and how Emory researchers are helping them improve their health through applied innovative, groundbreaking research. Award-winning Atlanta journalist Jaye Watson is executive producer, writer, and host for the series, which was produced for broadcast over GPB’s nine-station television network.

In addition to autism, other topics highlighted in “Your Fantastic Mind” include: • Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis • Alzheimer’s disease

• Post-traumatic stress disorder

• Epilepsy

• Video gaming disorder

• Concussions

• Sleep apnea

• Huntington’s disease

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder • Parkinson’s disease

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“Your Fantastic Mind” may be viewed online at http://news.emory.edu/ features/brain/.

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The school curriculum, which is followed by all of the children, details class activities tied to specific achievement goals. Teachers step in to provide extra help for students on the spectrum when necessary. “Every teacher looks at where the child is as an individual, then determines what’s the next skill they have to learn,” says Morrier. “They keep challenging all of the children, giving them the support they need in order to be successful to keep learning.” The curriculum is implemented through the incidental teaching method, whereby instructors take advantage of a child’s natural interest in a particular activity in the moment to teach material related to that interest, moves children along toward reaching their prescribed skill-acquisition targets.

Creative learning with dinosaurs and snacks These targets include benchmarks for communication, behavior, sociability, daily living skills, and academics, according to Brittni Williams, Early Preschool and Pre-K Program manager. “I also write goals that help push them forward so they have the skills that will prepare them to be in a mainstream kindergarten classroom when they leave our program.” Let’s say a curriculum subject for pre-k is dinosaurs. The classroom environment, designed to facilitate social interaction, is replete with dinosaur-themed posters and charts, bones and fossils, toys, and tools an archeologist might use. The materials engage the students’ curiosity, opening the door for teaching: What is a dinosaur? Where did they live? Where do fossils come from? How are they formed? and so forth. “Over time, the more you expose them to different toys and environments in which they’re naturally interested, you can teach a slew of things,” says Williams. “The children become very knowledgeable, their vocabulary increases, and they develop great social skills by playing and sharing the toys with

each other—all the things we want our kids to pick up on.” Another technique employed at Early Emory, and closely tied to incidental learning, is applied behavior analysis, where positive reinforcement encourages meaningful changes in behavior. For example, at snack time, a child indicates that he or she wants a cracker by looking at it, making a noise or reaching for it. The teacher prompts the child for whatever the requesting goal happens be—it may be that the child has to say “cracker” in response to being asked, “What do you want?” When the child responds correctly, the teacher affirms the behavior—“Oh, great! You said cracker! You may have some cracker.” —and hands over a small piece. The snack had been cut into pieces beforehand so the requesting exercise could be repeated several times until the child learns it. “If you give a child a whole cracker, they don’t have to talk to get more snack,” Morrier observes. “By the time the typically developing children get to be three and four, we start teaching them how to hand out snacks so they have more verbal interactions with the children with autism.” The advantages of typical children as role models, in the context of applied behavior analysis, is another learning technique emphasized at Early Emory to help children on the spectrum develop age-appropriate social and language skills. “We teach the kids to imitate each other,” Morrier explains. “In a toddler class, it may be imitating hand movements during a circle-time song or imitating throwing a ball on the playground.” Older typical children may interact with their classmates on the spectrum through make-believe activities, like acting out a pretend visit to the shoe store or doctor’s office.

Dance steps to success Williams cites the example of a dance party where typical kids are dancing, but their classmates with autism are standing off to the

Besties Amiel and Elise were best friends at the Early Emory center, where typical children and those on the autism spectrum share classrooms. They still get together to play when they can.

side, unsure what to do. “There’s a three-step prompt level we would use to help a child on the spectrum look at their typical peer and then copy that peer’s dance moves. The typical kids aren’t doing anything different, but now the kids on the spectrum, as part of their therapy, are doing the same things their typical peers are doing so that they’re integrated into the activity.” Teachers methodically track in detail each student’s progress as it relates to the goals designated for each activity. Step by step, as the goals build upon each other and become more sophisticated, progress is shared with parents on an ongoing basis. Available outcome data for Early Emory alumni on the spectrum,

though several years old, is impressive nonetheless: Ninety-five percent left the program with functional verbal language skills while ninety-two percent, with various levels of support, were mainstreamed into regular kindergarten. Elise and Amiel graduated from Early Emory in 2017. Amiel is in his second year at the Hess Academy, and Elise attends first grade at a public school in DeKalb County. Both mothers report that they are doing well. Amiel and Elise get together occasionally for play dates whenever their family schedules permit. “Amiel still refers to Elise as his best friend,” says Rachel, with a smile.

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E M ORY E V E RY W H E R E > > CO DA

What Do You Know?

hat are you looking for? When I left home four years ago, I didn’t know what I was going to find in this tree-tucked, big-city university. I knew I would be playing softball, and I knew I wanted to pursue a neuroscience major, but I stumbled upon so much more. Believing that my quest was for knowledge, wisdom, and truth, I thought Emory would help me with this quest. I was partially right, but I was also utterly wrong. I didn’t realize it then, but my underlying quest was really for certainty; yet all I found was an overwhelming abundance of ambiguous answers and perplexing questions. I have thoroughly enjoyed all my classes at Emory. As a neuroscience major and philosophy minor, I am so thankful that I have had the opportunity to take classes covering a range of disciplines. Each perspective is valuable in the way that it enlightens and builds upon another. This is why a liberal arts education is so powerful: It presents a holistic picture of ideas and processes that cannot be revealed through only one field. Although I consumed as much knowledge as I could in each class, questions lurked behind every corner, and I began to wonder if I really knew anything at all. The climax of my questioning began in the fall semester of my 48

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By Jenna Wilson 19C Illustration by Jason Raish

junior year, when I was taking two very thought-provoking classes: modern philosophy, which began in the age of skepticism, and the cognitive science of religion. I began to question what I thought I knew. I went from believing that I knew who I was, to questioning what I believed, and then to doubting the possibility of meaning in life. In just a few months, I had found nihilism. Along with this epistemological battle, I soon became entrenched in a mental one as the doubt dragged me into a dark space. At the same time, a chronic injury emerged as a physical struggle that pushed me farther into the darkness. In just a few months, depression found me. While waiting in this place, wanting someone or something to rescue me, I considered what had gotten me there and what my options were to escape. I realized I had been looking for the wrong thing—I had been looking for certainty because I thought it would be a stable foundation for me to build my ideas, beliefs, and life upon. Instead, I found that certainty is fleeting and thus impossible to attain. Uncertainty is what I most needed to find during my time at Emory. Despite all the research and evidence that claims to know it all, I had to wrestle with and accept that not everything can be figured out. Although terrifying at first, it was this realization that granted me a newfound humility and peace that restored my hope in myself, my life, and my faith. In acknowledging my ignorance and limitations, I am compelled to always search for more answers and greater truth, rather than to feel pressured or expected to have it exactly right. I must be willing to adapt my thoughts and ideas while maintaining the core of who I am. I don’t know where I am headed or what I will find after I leave Emory, but I am excited for whatever my persisting quest brings. In finding uncertainty, I found not only more knowledge, wisdom, and truth, but also perseverance, hope, and strength. Jenna Wilson is from Malvern, Pennsylvania, and served as starting outfielder on the Emory softball team. This essay originally appeared in the Emory Wheel.

READ MORE SENIOR CLASS ESSAYS AT EMORYWHEEL.COM

This is my legacy. “I WANT TO INVEST IN EMORY BECAUSE EMORY INVESTED IN ME— providing me with the greatest gift on earth. My personal and professional advances coincided with the growth of Emory, so I was just really extremely fortunate. I want Emory to continue to enlighten future generations. Someone I’ve never even heard of or met will benefit from my planned gift—and the reason I’m sharing this with you is because I want to inspire others to do the same.”

Rosemary Magee 82PhD Magee has been at Emory for 40 years in a variety of roles including senior associate dean for resources and planning of Emory College of Arts and Sciences; university vice president and secretary; and director of the Rose Library. The estate gift that she and her husband Ron Grapevine have made will provide future students with opportunities to apply knowledge in service of humanity.

Have you planned your legacy? Learn how you can make a difference by including Emory in your estate plan. It is easier than you think. Please call Emory Office of Gift Planning at 404.727.8875. For online resources, go to giftplanning.emory.edu.

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N O T J U S T A N O T H E R P R E T T Y B O W Since caring for the first US patients with Ebola virus disease, Emory Healthcare nurse Jill Morgan has become an expert in training nurses to use protective gear correctly so they minimize their risk of infection.