NEWS
School of Nursing Anticipates Fully In-Person Learning in Fall The University of Rochester School of Nursing is making plans to return to fully in-person classroom learning beginning with the fall 2021 semester. The school has remained in operation since the COVID-19 outbreak hit New York, but it closed Helen Wood Hall classrooms and shifted to remote didactic instruction mid-semester in March of 2020. Labs and clinical experiences for students continued to be held in person. All School of Nursing undergraduate and graduate students who plan to enroll for the 2021-22 academic year will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The University of Rochester has determined that vaccination is the most effective approach to limiting or eliminating the spread of COVID-19, and the safest and most manageable way to increase in-person operations, instruction, and activities on campus. “While none of us can be certain what the future might bring, we’re excited to welcome our faculty, staff, and students back into
the building on a full-time basis. These halls have been too quiet for too long,” said Kathy Rideout, EdD, PPCNP-BC, FNAP, dean of the UR School of Nursing. “I am extremely proud of the work our faculty and academic leadership team has done to transition to remote learning and develop new and innovative ways to deliver content, and I am just as amazed at the resilience and adaptability of our students, who have carried on with their learning among extraordinary conditions.” Helen Wood Hall, which operated at 25 percent capacity for most of the 2020-21 year, is undergoing a facelift with the vertical expansion above the Loretta C. Ford Education Wing underway. The project began in the fall of 2020, and the beginning phases required closing off large classrooms in the education wing, further limiting the amount of available space within the building. The education wing is back open, and other frequent student gathering places, such as the atrium, student lounge, and Evarts Lounge, are expected to re-open for fall.
UR Nursing in the News What’s new in the School of Nursing? Here are some recent media reports involving UR Nursing faculty, staff, and alumni. Associate Dean Renu Singh, MS, CEO of the UR Medicine Employee Wellness Program, gave a TV interview to 13WHAM ABC in Rochester about wellness programming on Christmas morning. Singh was co-author of an op-ed in a recent issue of JAMA Internal Medicine disputing claims that employee wellness programs were ineffective at improving workers’ health. Feng (Vankee) Lin, PhD, RN, the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Nursing, was mentioned in an article in The New Yorker. The article, “Is It Really Too Late to Learn New Skills?” examines our ability to master new skills as we age and cites a 2017 paper co-authored by Lin that proposes six factors needed to sustain cognitive development as people age.
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Loretta Ford, EdD, RN, PNP, NP-C, CRNP, FAAN, FAANP, founding dean of the UR School of Nursing, was featured in Becker’s Hospital Review and Scrubs Magazine in January for being recognized with the Surgeon General's Medallion. The award, announced the day before Ford’s 100th birthday, is the highest honor civilians can receive for their service to public health (see story, page 22). A March CBS This Morning story marking the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic featured alumna Kimberly Ellis ’93N. Ellis had been among the nurses shown in early 2020 when health care workers struggled to find sufficient PPE while working at the epicenter of the virus in New York City. Reporter David Begnaud returned to New York City to interview the same nurses and health care workers—including Ellis, a nurse at the Brooklyn Hospital Center—and look back on progress made in the past 12 months.
Professor of Clinical Nursing Mary Tantillo, PhD, PMHCNS-BC, FAED, CGP, made multiple local media appearances over the past several months. She appeared on WXXI’s Connections radio show, alongside parent peer mentor Michelle Morales, to discuss eating disorder recovery. She also did several interviews with Rochester media outlets to discuss plans to open a new residential eating disorders treatment facility in Pittsford. Tantillo was also quoted in a WXXI radio story on how the COVID-19 pandemic creates a “perfect storm” for eating disorders. Dean Kathy Rideout, EdD, PPCNP-BC, FNAP and Paige Steiner, a student in the Accelerated Bachelor’s Program for Non-Nurses were interviewed for a story in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. The story documented how the pandemic has sparked increased interest in nursing and has helped drive enrollment to nursing schools.
