Faculty News

2014 Honors Core Course Grant Competition

The Honors Program invites proposals for new or revised interdisciplinary courses for the Honors Core.  Honors Core courses serve as an introduction to a community of scholars for first and second year honors students. They are interdisciplinary in nature, meaning they combine different perspectives and diverse problem-solving expertise to study important and challenging themes and issues. The Honors Core epitomizes Honors education with smaller class sizes, active learning, and increased academic rigor. Teaching a Core course is fun and challenging!

Proposals are due February 24, 2014. For more information, please see http://honors.uconn.edu/core-competition

Honors Engineer alum becomes expat technology leader

By Cheryl Cranick, Honors Program

Ventimiglias
The Ventimiglias during their expat experience in India. (Back: Laura ’94, Benjamin, Phil ’92; front: Aidan and Abigail)

Phil Ventimiglia ’92 (ENGR-Honors) has been at the forefront of technology innovation for nearly two decades, working for industry giants such as Lockheed Sanders, IBM, Dell, and currently NCR Corporation. “I have spent my entire career developing new technologies and products. It is who I am. It is like breathing,” said Ventimiglia. But his career really began much earlier; at his family home in fact, when his engineer father introduced him to “the dawn of the personal computer,” he said. First tinkering with equipment that his father brought home, Phil eventually enrolled at UConn, bringing with him not just his first Commodore 64 but also his budding fascination for technology. Continue reading

Recent Graduate to Present Senior Design Project to NASA Engineers

A close-up of the robotic arm.

A close-up of the robotic arm developed by Brian Coleman ’13 (ENG) and two other students as their senior design project. (Cathleen Torrisi/UConn Photo)

By Cathleen Torrisi

New UConn graduate Brian Coleman ’13 (ENG) recently completed a major accomplishment. And not just by graduating as an Honors Scholar with a strong GPA in the demanding biomedical engineering program. His senior design project – a robotic arm – so impressed director of undergraduate biomedical engineering Donald Peterson that he is arranging for Coleman to present it to a team of NASA engineers at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston. Continue reading

A UConn Medical Student First

Shawnet Jones is excited to learn she will stay at the UConn Health Center for her residency.
Match Day, March 15: Shawnet Jones (right) learns she’s staying at the UConn Health Center for a family medicine residency. (Janine Gelineau/UConn Health Center Photo)

By Chris DeFrancesco

Commencement 2013 marks a milestone for UConn’s John and Valerie Rowe Health Professions Scholars Program for undergraduates.

Monday, Shawnet Jones becomes the first Rowe scholar to graduate from the UConn School of Medicine.

Jones was part of the first class of Rowe Scholars, which helped enable her to attend UConn’s Combined Program in Medicine, starting in 2005 as an undergraduate. She credits the Rowe scholarship and the UConn Health Center’s Health Career Opportunities Programs (HCOP) as being vital to her growth as a student-turned-physician. Continue reading

2013 Distinguished Alumni Award: Chad A. Landmon

Chad Landmon is Co-Chair of Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider LLP’s Intellectual Property Practice and Chair of the FDA Practice Group. He is recognized as a leading advocate for pharmaceutical companies before FDA and premier patent litigator and counselor on issues involving the development and marketing of generic drugs and human tissue. He has a rare knowledge of intricate FDA processes and litigating complex patent cases involving drug products throughout the country. Continue reading

2013 Distinguished Alumni Award: Anthony E. Chiodo

Dr. Anthony “Tony” Chiodo is currently a professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers. There, he directs the multidisciplinary Spine Program for the management of patients with conditions and pain of the spine. He is also medical director and co-principal investigator of the Spinal Cord Injury Model System at the University of Michigan, one of fourteen such centers funded by the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. He directs and started the Adult Spasticity Clinic and was a founder of the Adult Assisted Ventilation Clinic. His current research interests include pain after spinal cord injury, sleep disordered breathing after spinal cord injury, and interventional management of painful spine conditions. Continue reading

2012-13 Faculty Member of the Year Award: Patricia J. Neafsey

Professor Neafsey emigrated from Granby, Quebec before high school. She considered a major in computer science at Cornell, but decided computers needed to be more “usable” for her poor punch card typing skills. She joined the honors program in nutrition at Cornell and received her B.S. and M.S. in nutritional biochemistry. Following research stints at Penn and Yale, she obtained a teaching position at Albertus Magnus College and provided nutrition counseling services at two primary care practices in New Haven. Her interest in drug-nutrient interactions led her to pursue a Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology at UConn followed by post-doctoral work at Tufts University. She was at Tufts when the UConn School of Nursing contacted her to help them develop a graduate pharmacotherapy course and an undergraduate curriculum that integrates pathophysiology, pharmacology, and nutrition over a series of courses. After one semester of teaching UConn nursing students, she was hooked! Continue reading

2012-13 Faculty Member of the Year Award: Rebecca Flanagan

Rebecca Flanagan is a lifelong Husky, but her path back to UConn took her across the country. She graduated from UConn as an Honors Scholar, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1999, with a B.A. in English and political science. After a year spent working as a reading tutor, a waitress, and a barista, she returned to UConn to pursue an M.A. in elementary education. Continue reading

Pre-med Student Exploring Range of Opportunities at UConn

Shervin Etemad
Pre-med student Shervin Etemad ’14 (CLAS) was inspired by UConn’s Leadership Legacy Experience. (Max Sinton ’15 (CANR)/UConn Photo)

By Lauren Lalancette

Shervin Etemad ’14 (CLAS) entered UConn with a declared major and has never wavered – but as graduation approaches, he’s becoming increasingly open-minded about his career path.

A molecular and cell biology major from the beginning, Etemad wasn’t among the one-third of freshmen who enter UConn without having chosen a major. A Trumbull native, he graduated in the top 4 percent of his high school class, and accepted UConn’s Academic Excellence merit scholarship along with an invitation to join the Honors Program. Continue reading

Real World Preparation Characterizes Student Nurse’s Education

Profile photo of Mallory Perry, 2014 school of nursing student.
Mallory Perry ’14 (NUR) is interested in pediatric intensive care. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

By Lauren Lalancette

A number of Division III schools vied for Middletown’s Mercy High School athlete of the year to enroll, but Mallory Perry ’14 (NUR) chose UConn because her future career was her top priority.

“It was all about the academics when I chose UConn,” Perry says. “There were so many different schools I could’ve gone to, but I knew I wouldn’t get into the WNBA.” Continue reading