Faculty Member

Department

Research Areas & Interests

Adrian Aron

Physical Therapy

• Cardiovascular and metabolic consequences of obstructive sleep apnea
• Role of exercise in prevention, evaluation and management of obstructive sleep apnea
• Accessibility and efficacy of cardiac rehabilitation programs
• Fitness evaluation and health risk assessment in clinical populations (VO2max, spirometry, heart function, blood glucose and lipid profile)

Vickie Bierman

Nursing

• Health promotion and disease prevention
• Tobacco use
• Mental health issues
• Geropsychiatry

Ellen Birx

Nursing

• Stress management
• Meditation in healthcare
• Team-building
• Caring
• Humanizing healthcare environments

Ginger Burggraf

Nursing

• Health information technology supporting the transitions of care for older adults from hospital to home (using NPs in the home)
• Information technology for caregiver support – creation and evaluation of web based programs as a resource for caregiver stress
• Dedicated education units in long-term care facilities to improve skills of nursing students

Kim Carter

Nursing

• Health behavior
• Health promotion
• Public health
• Rural
• Educational technology

Julia Castleberry

Physical Therapy

• Geriatrics
• Sleep apnea
• Neurologically impaired adults
• Rehabilitation outcomes

Erin Cruise

Nursing

• School health
• School nursing
• Nursing education
• Health literacy
• Childhood obesity
• Disaster preparedness
• Public health
• Health education

Rana Duncan-Daston

Social Work

• Social work ethics and social media
• Dreams, spirituality and intuition
• Family memoirs related to Erik Erikson's psychosocial stages of development
• Pedagogy when teaching populations in poverty pedagogy in psychodynamic
• Psychotherapy

John Emmanuel

Physical Therapy

• Motor control and neurologic rehabilitation
• Functional recovery after stroke and other neurological lesions
• Effects of neurologic lesions on sense of motor effort
• Effects of virtual reality and robotics aided neurologic rehabilitation on functional recovery after stroke and other neurologic lesions
• Education issues, internet technology, and health disparities

Deneen Evans

Social Work

• Disability research specifically areas that impact children and African American communities

Kerry Fay Vandergrift

Social Work

• Social service delivery to English language learners (immigrants) and their families
• English language learners in special education
• Engagement with migrant laborers 
• Immigrants in child welfare 

Elise Fullmer

Social Work

• GLBT issues
• GLBT and aging
• Gerontology
• Mental retardation & Intellectual disabilities
• Caregivers

Sarah Gilbert

Nursing

• Long term care facilities: measuring changes in student’s confidence in performing skills (quant) and students’ perceptions of older adults and LTC as a practice environment

Brent Harper

Physical Therapy

• Spinal manipulation
• Dry needling (Intramuscular manual therapy)
• Concussions (assessment and management)

Corey Herd Cassidy

Communication

Sciences & Disorders

• Early intervention
• Parent training/Childcare provider training
• Collaboration between speech/language intervention & music therapy
• Provision of prevention and awareness programs in the family/early childhood homeless populations

Diane Hodge

Social Work

• Women’s health and mental health
• Social work practice education
• Technology in education
• Social work practice
• Mothers and work
• Feminist practice
• Mental illness

Renee Huth

Physical Therapy

• Healthy aging
• Health surveillance

Kristen Jagger

Physical Therapy

• Foot and lower extremity biomechanics during functional tasks
• Use of foot orthoses in rehabilitation
• Walking biomechanics
• Balance responses to various therapeutic interventions

Katie Katz

Nursing

• Gerontology
• End-of-life
• Medical decision making

Elizabeth Lanter

Communication

Sciences & Disorders

• Autism
• Autism spectrum disorders
• Literacy & early literacy
• Developmental delay
• Childhood disability
• Inclusion
• Language development
• Language impairment

Eunyoung Lee

Nursing

• Transitional care from hospital to home
• Cardiology (Thrombosis risk modification and cardiovascular
• Disease prevention)
• Correlation between Thrombosis disease & early diagnosis of Myocardial Ischemia/ Infarction
• Heart sounds and ventricular dysfunction in Myocardial ischemia
• General medicine (medication safety in older adults or in pain management) 

Raymond Linville

Communication

Sciences & Disorders

and Physical Therapy

• Neuroanatomy & neurophysiology
• Acoustics & biomechanics 
• Laryngeal physiology
• Health systems administration

Diane Millar

Communication

Sciences & Disorders

• Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Nonverbal Communication
• Caregiver Perspectives
• Teaching Peers of Children with Disabilities
• Assistive Technology Training

Lisa Onega

Nursing

• Psychogerontology (depression, dementia, and delirium in older adults)
• Gerontological areas (especially, caregiver strain and theoretical models [Continuity Theory])
• Psychiatric and mental health areas (especially depression and models of care)
• Salutogenic and care delivery models
• Methodological (especially, ethnography & psychometrics)
• Intervention research
• Interdisciplinary research, including fiscal modeling in interdisciplinary research

Gary Pillow

Communication

Sciences & Disorders

• Auditory processing disorder (ADP) & early literacy development
• The relationship between ADP & early chronic otitis media (COM)

Tony Ramsey

Nursing

• Gathering stories of vulnerable populations
• Rural health issues
• Concept/theory development

Patricia Rossi

Communication

Sciences & Disorders

• Meditation
• Self-regulation
• Autism

Rebecca Scheckler

Nursing

• Social effects of digital technologies
• Preparing online students for technology challenges
• Computer supported collaborative work
• Bridging the binary of science and art
• Seniors use of technology

Susan Schoppelrey

Social Work

• Health disparities
• Mental health disparities
• Outcomes of community mental health services for adults
• Organizational climate and culture
• Multilevel modeling
• Advanced statistics of all kinds
• Substance abuse treatment effectiveness
• Substance abuse policy research

Rhonda Seltz

Social Work

• Health and dental care outreach
• Education and advocacy
• Health care policy
• Community organizing
• Grant writing

Alex Siyufy

Physical Therapy

• Spinal manipulation (primarily for low back pain)
• Therapeutic exercise (primarily for the treatment of Musculoskeletal conditions)
• Infection control (surface bacteria levels on rehab equipment such as canes, walkers, etc. and appropriate sanitization protocols)

Sarah Smidl

Occupational Therapy

• Yoga for Autism (children-young adults)
• Development of spirituality in children with disabilities
• Enhancing occupations of individuals with mental illness
• Women in recovery from alcohol addiction: spiritual recovery and rediscovering occupations
• Therapeutic laughter and humor

Lynne Taylor

Social Work

• Ethics applied to technology in the areas of supervision and administration
• The effectiveness of current designations and restrictions for sex offenders
• The effectiveness of strenuous activity on the ability to process grief and other emotional issues

Etty Vandsburger

Social Work

• Aging in place
• Care-givers and self-efficacy

Gini Weisz

Nursing

• Rural access to health care and complementary therapies
• Women's health
• LGBT
• Social justice