The Connell School of Nursing has long been defined by its mission: training nurse leaders to care for the whole person. But despite its rising profile as a research institution, Connell has yet to identify (or brand) the strengths of its faculty in different areas of inquiry. That is why Professor Christopher Lee spent most of his first year as CSON’s associate dean for research doing just that. And after interviewing faculty about their research interests and goals, looking back at 15 years of faculty publications, and scrutinizing sources of external funding, Lee determined that the Connell School researchers distinguish themselves in three key areas: health equity for women and children, person- and family-oriented aging, and safety and quality of care.

Lee calls these categories “Pillars of Innovation.” The nomenclature, he says, allows the Connell School to better brand itself while identifying more opportunities for faculty collaborations, recruiting graduate students, and securing grants.

A cardiovascular nurse scientist, Lee began analyzing and categorizing faculty research at Connell soon after arriving at the school in January 2018. “It was an important exercise, both to familiarize myself with faculty, and to determine the cross-currents between all of their work,” he said. He had helped conduct similar faculty overviews at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his Ph.D., and at the Oregon Health & Science University, where he worked for seven years, most recently as the Carol A. Lindeman Distinguished Professor, before moving to Boston College.

In 2017–18, CSON faculty received $1.1 million in external-sponsored research funding—more than in the previous two academic years combined, Lee said. The support came from the federal government, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and elsewhere. Projects ranged from Supporting Family Caregivers in Transition, led by Associate Professor Ellen Mahoney, to Associate Professor Jane Flanagan’s Post-Acute Outcomes in Nursing Home Residents with Dementia, to Associate Professor Holly Fontenot’s Using Mobile Application Strategies to Increase HPV Vaccination Rates Among Young Men who have Sex with Men.

To find the common thread among them, Lee examined the keywords most commonly used in project abstracts and in the past 15 years of publications and grant applications. Based on these and what he learned during one-on-one interviews with colleagues, Lee determined that all research-oriented faculty members fit naturally within one of the three categories, or pillars.

Twelve faculty, for instance, fall within the Health Equity for Women and Children category—a group that includes Associate Professor Joyce Edmonds, who studies cesarean delivery rates; Assistant Professor Nadia N. Abuelezam, who applies mathematical models to understand the impacts of HIV treatment and prevention strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa; and Susan Kelly-Weeder, who researches the co-occurrence of high-risk eating and drinking behaviors, Lee noted.

The Person- and Family-Oriented Aging pillar includes 11 faculty—from Lee, who takes a data-driven, “biobehavioral profiling” approach to heart disease, to palliative care nurse scientist and Associate Professor Susan DeSanto-Madeya.

The Safety and Quality of Care pillar comprises nine faculty, from Associate Professor Judith Shindul-Rothschild, a psychiatric nurse clinical specialist, to Professor Ann Wolbert Burgess, a pioneer in assessing victims of abuse and trauma.

While other schools often organize their faculty researchers based on the diseases and disorders they study (e.g., respiratory or sexually transmitted diseases), illness “is not what binds us,” says Lee. “Our bigger mission is improving quality of care, health equity, and treatment of aging, across contexts.”

And while Lee admits that “almost every faculty member could fit easily into more than one of these categories,” he said he organized each “pillar,” or sub-group, to create forums of faculty who share themes in their primary research. Each group, says Lee, plans to meet regularly to “think more strategically about what do we, as a group, want to accomplish in the next few years?

“The categories are extremely helpful,” Lee adds, “because they can help us recruit faculty with common interests, and even doctoral students. Also, while researchers traditionally have perpetually applied for grants to support their own work, having united fronts makes us eligible for funding as a group of scientists—from Institutional Research Training Grants, to Exploratory Centers, to Centers of Excellence, to Cooperative Agreements.

“Researchers naturally zero in on their own work to get research done,” he adds, “but it can be insular and isolating. Taking the time to see where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts can help faculty have a greater collective influence.”

FACULTY FOCI

Christopher Lee’s year-long investigation found that faculty at the Connell School fall into three primary categories of research. They are comprised of: