Professor Elected to American Law Institute

Professor Aditya Bamzai of the School of Law has become a member of the American Law Institute, the institute announced recently.

Thirty-two members of the UVA Law faculty are affiliated with the institute, which produces scholarly work meant to update or otherwise improve the law. The organization includes judges, lawyers and law professors from the U.S. and around the world who are “selected on the basis of professional achievement and demonstrated interest in improving the law,” according to the institute’s website.

Bamzai, who joined the UVA Law faculty in 2016, teaches and writes about administrative law, civil procedure, computer crime and conflicts of law. He is affiliated with the school’s Center for Criminal Justice, LawTech Center and National Security Law Center, and its programs in Constitutional Law and Legal History and Public Policy and Regulation.

Members were selected from confidential nominations submitted by American Law Institute members.

Dove To Be Awarded Poetry Foundation Prize for Lifetime Achievement

Rita Dove, the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing and a UVA faculty member for more than 30 years, has been honored by the Poetry Foundation with a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement.

Usually the Poetry Foundation only gives one of these awards annually, with a prize of $100,000, making it one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets and one of the nation’s largest literary prizes. In a special action this year, the foundation, which announced the awards Sept. 8, will celebrate 11 poets – described as “living legends” – next month in Chicago in honor of its 110th anniversary.

Dove, who teaches in the Creative Writing Program of the English Department, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987 and came to UVA in 1989. She served as the nation’s U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995. One of the University’s most renowned faculty members, she has garnered numerous awards – for instance, she is the only poet to receive both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts.

The New York Times named her most recent books of poems, “Playlist for the Apocalypse,” a “Top Book of 2021.” Along with 12 books of poetry, she has also published fiction, a play and anthologies, plus performed in musical collaborations.

UVA Health Earns Three National Quality Awards for Heart Care

UVA Health’s Heart and Vascular Center has earned three national awards for providing high-quality care for heart failure patients based on the American Heart Association’s evidence-based standards.

UVA Health received the Gold Plus Level Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure with Target: Heart Failure and Target: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Rolls award for its care of patients with heart failure.

The care team at the Heart and Vascular Center features cardiologists, heart surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, therapists, exercise physiologists, pharmacists and dietitians.

“This wonderful team works incredibly hard each day to provide excellent care for patients with heart failure from across Virginia, and I am pleased to see their commitment and diligence honored by the American Heart Association,” said Wendy Horton, UVA Medical Center’s chief executive officer. 

UVA Health Receives National Awards for Support of LGBTQ+ Patients, Team Members

Three UVA Health hospitals have earned the LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leader award from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation for their equitable treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer patients, visitors and team members.

UVA Medical Center, UVA Prince William Medical Center and UVA Haymarket Medical Center have received a score of 100 – the best possible rating – in the foundation’s 2022 Healthcare Equality Index.

“At UVA Health, our goal is to be a welcoming place for all Virginians to receive high-quality, compassionate care,” said Dr. K. Craig Kent, CEO of UVA Health and UVA’s executive vice president for health affairs. “Providing care for our diverse communities also includes a commitment to creating and inclusive workplace where all our team members feel supported to provide great care.”

The Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights organization for the LGBTQ+ community, rates hospitals on how well their policies and practices support inclusion of LGBTQ+ patients, visitors and employees.

“These honors from the Humans Right Campaign Foundation mark the positive strides UVA Health has made to make our health system a more inclusive place both to provide and receive care,” said Dr. Tracy M. Downs, UVA Health’s chief diversity and community engagement officer. “We will work to build on these accomplishments and learn what else we need to put in place to ensure all members of the UVA Health community feel supported and welcome.”

Early Career Nursing Scholar Selected for National Institute

Lee Ann Johnson, an assistant professor of nursing, is one of 50 promising early career scholars selected to participate in the National Institutes of Health’s and National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities’ annual flagship Health Disparities Research Institute, which took place in August.

As part of the institute, Johnson and her peers took part in lectures on conducting research with minority health and in health disparities, joined in small group discussions, did mock grant reviews, and attended seminars.

Driven by the deaths of her close family members from lung cancer, Johnson – a nurse scientist and Fulbright Scholar alumna – studies palliative and end-of-life care outcomes in patients with advanced lung cancer, one-third of whom report high levels of stigma associated with their disease, a factor that impacts their care and likelihood of seeking the relief of palliative and end-of-life care.

Nicoletti Wins Award for Article

Law professor Cynthia Nicoletti, a legal historian, won a literary prize for an essay focusing how seized land was returned after the Civil War. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Law professor Cynthia Nicoletti, a legal historian, won the George and Ann Richards Prize for the best article published in The Journal of the Civil War Era in 2021, the journal announced in July. Her essay, “William Henry Trescot: Pardon Broker,” appeared in the December issue.

The article details the efforts of Trescot, “executive agent” for South Carolina, to secure pardons in order to facilitate the restoration of land the federal government had seized from Low Country planters during the American Civil War.

Nicoletti has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the William Nelson Cromwell Prize for the best dissertation in legal history, awarded by the American Society for Legal History in 2011. Her book, “Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis,” won the 2018 Cromwell Book Prize. In 2020, she won the Supreme Court Historical Society’s Hughes-Gossett Award for Best Journal Article for “Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and the Permanency of the Union,” published in the Journal of Supreme Court History.

Baucom, Turkheimer Inducted Into Academy

Executive Vice President and Provost Ian Baucom and Eric Turkheimer, Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of Psychology, recently were officially inducted into the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good, the Academy recognizes distinguished honorees from increasingly diverse fields within the arts, democracy, education, global affairs and science. Including Baucom and Turkheimer, the University now has 40 active members in the academy. Other recent inductees include UVA President Jim Ryan, who was elected in 2019; and School of Law Dean Risa Goluboff and the late history professor emeritus Joseph C. Miller, who were elected in 2018.