The Office of the Provost is committed to continuing the work of the Gender Equity Task Force  http://www.utexas.edu/provost/research/F…). As new data become available, we will post individual reports that will become part of the comprehensive Institutional Gender Equity Report Card.

This post describes faculty headcount changes from 2007 (the data reported in the 2008 Gender Equity Task Force Report) to September 2009.  The 2009 numbers are based on tenure and tenure-track faculty counts as of the 12^th class day, September 11^th, 2009.  The numbers may vary after fall appointments are finalized later in the semester.

The data show a 4% change in the percentages of male and female faculty with the percent female increasing by 2% and the percent male decreasing by 2%. Only long-term trends will be meaningful.

AUSTIN, Texas — Dr. Sharon Horner, professor of nursing at The University of Texas at Austin, has been elected a 2009 Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, an organization that promotes health policy and practice.

The academy is composed of about 1,500 nursing leaders in education, management, practice and research. Fellows are chosen annually to recognize their efforts in advancing the profession of nursing. New fellows will be inducted at the academy’s meeting Nov. 5-7 in Atlanta.

Horner specializes in asthma management education programs for children and parents in rural areas. Through $3.4 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, she has developed and tested unique asthma management interventions specific to the needs of rural and minority populations.

Study results showed that school-age children participating in the asthma health education programs improved significantly in their asthma self-management and skill at using an inhaler. They had 50 percent fewer hospitalizations.

Horner’s interventions have had positive impact for her participants and the ready-to-use materials have been widely disseminated to parents, school volunteers and school nurses. Her publications discussing the methodological innovations in her projects have strengthened the capabilities of other researchers to respond to the needs of special populations.

“For more than a decade, Dr. Horner has been a national leader in the development and testing of interventions to improve the health of children and adolescents,” said Dr. Alexa Stuifbergen, interim dean of nursing. “Until her research program, very few (less than 50) Mexican Americans had been included in research related to asthma self-management - despite the fact that this is the fastest growing minority group in the United States and will be the majority population in Texas by 2020.”

The School of Nursing now has 15 fellows in the academy, six of whom are emeritus faculty members.

For more information, contact: Nancy Neff, Office of Public Affairs, 512 471 6504.

Elizabeth Danze is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate programs. In addition to design studio, she teaches visual communications and materials and detailing, integrating practice and theory across disciplines by examining the convergence of sociology and psychology with the tangibles of space, construction, material, and details. She graduated with a Master of Architecture degree from Yale University and has taught in the Yale School of Architecture Summer Foundation Program for many years.

Previously a designer for Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects in New Haven, Elizabeth Danze is a principal with Danze Blood Architects, a firm whose projects are of a variety of scales, and was named Associate Architect for the UT Campus Master Plan. Twin Valley House, which won a 2005 AIA Small Projects Practitioners Award, has been the subject of lectures to both architectural and psychology/social work audiences. A study in perception, privacy, and publicity, the house successfully manifests her research in the psychological merged with her interest in materials and detailing.

Danze has edited several national publications and written on affordable housing and design, issues of gender in architecture, as well as work in the emerging interdisciplinary research into the role of architectural design and psychology. Professor Danze was co-editor with Kevin Alter of Center #9, Regarding the Proper, and her work in Architecture and Feminism (as editor) and Psychoanalysis and Architecture (as both editor and author) has extended the influence of architectural thought and practice across wide ranging disciplines. She has been invited to serve as the only architect advisor to a new initiative being launched by the American Psychoanalytic Association as a member of its Committee on Psychoanalysis and the Academy. Additionally, Danze is a Fellow and Instructor of the Austin Center for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.

She has presented numerous papers and articles on architecture and psychology, affordable housing design, and architects’ contribution to the community. Most recently, she served as panelist at the Annual Conference of the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society. She presented her work at the Architecture and Psychoanalysis Symposium sponsored by the Dallas Architectural Forum, the Dallas Foundation for Psychoanalysis, and the Society for Psychoanalytic Social Work at the Rachofsky House in Dallas. Danze presented “Psychoanalysis as a Vehicle for Understanding Architecture” at the ACSA Central Regional Conference and “Psychoanalytic Transference and the Student Teacher Relationship” at the 21^st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student.

She has twice received the University of Texas School of Architecture Award for Studio Teaching, was recently honored with the University of Texas Dads’ Association Centennial Teaching Award, and is a co-recipient of a University Academic Innovation Award.

Date: November 3

Professor Receives Grant to Develop More Rapid Technology for Screening Blood Samples

AUSTIN, Texas — Dr. Jennifer Brodbelt, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a $734,068 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a new method for rapidly screening blood samples for biomarkers.

Biomarkers are small molecules that indicate the presence of a particular physiological condition, typically a disease. The new method, if successful, could prove useful not just for identifying markers of specific diseases such as cancer or heart disease, but for discovering broader metabolic patterns correlated with conditions such as aging or obesity.

“There are technologies right now that are very effective at separating and analyzing the different compounds in a blood sample, but they tend to be relatively slow,” says Brodbelt, the principal investigator of the grant. “It makes it very hard to do analyses of lots of samples. What we’re developing is a chip-based method, where entire classes of compounds are captured on the chips and then all the compounds are released and analyzed by mass spectrometry in just a few seconds.”

Although the technology, if successful, should be useful in searching for biomarkers in all sorts of conditions, Brodbelt and her collaborators from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Drs. Lynn and Frank Guziec, are focusing on patterns that correlate with aging.

“We’re trying to develop maps that can correlate the progression of aging with metabolites that might be circulating in your blood,” says Brodbelt. “These could be small molecules that increase in quantity as you age, or actually change in composition as one ages.”

The new method, says Brodbelt, involves three basic stages.

The first stage is the coating of different regions of a mesh chip with a variety of “capture agents,” which chemically bind to specific compounds in a blood sample. A burst from an ultraviolet light then severs the chemical bonds between the chip and the captured substances. Then an electrospray, which is similar to a solvent aerosol spray, shoots through the mesh chip and transfers the different compounds into the mass spectrometer for analysis.

By analyzing the mass spectrometric data, says Brodbelt, scientists should be able to measure the presence and quantity of different compounds, and to do so on a scale, and with a speed, that wasn’t possible before.

“The payoff could be big,” she says. “It’s a different strategy than what might be pursued by molecular biologists or biochemists. They’ll often focus on studying one or two proteins at a time, and develop a really deep understanding of those proteins. We’re looking for the more generalized profile, and we may notice some patterns that weren’t apparent to them.

“There are so many other areas where you’d want to do profiling. It might involve looking for pesticides as part of an environmental study, or doing protein-related work or drug profiling work. If this approach is successful, I imagine other groups will try to develop these chips as well.”

Brodbelt’s grant, which is being funded as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) government stimulus package, is a “Challenge Grant,” meant to encourage high-risk, high-reward research projects that may produce results quickly.

This is the second NIH grant in two years that Brodbelt and the Guziecs have received. In 2008, the collaborating groups received a four-year, $1,113,615 grant to evaluate an innovative technique that could assess the anti-cancer activity of new compounds.

President William Powers and Provost Steven Leslie have established an advisory group of faculty, alumni and community members to further the goals and recommendations made in the 2008 Gender Equity Report. The Gender Council will gather twice a year to discuss and consult on gender at UT. Vice Provost and Charles and Sarah Seay Regents’ Professor Judith Langlois has been asked to serve as chair of the council.

Members

Linda Addison, Partner-in-Charge, Fullbright and Jaworski L.L.P.

Nancy Brazzil, Deputy to the President, UT Austin

Norma Cantu, Professor, School of Law and Education; Interim Chair, Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Mechele Dickerson, Professor and Associate Dean, School of Law

Martin Dies, Attorney, Dies & Hile, LLP

Janet Dukerich, Professor and Senior Associate Dean, McCombs School of Business

Greg Fenves, Dean, Cockrell School of Engineering

Thomas Gilligan, Dean, McCombs School of Business

Terri Givens, Associate Professor, Department of Government

Sue Heinzelman, Associate Professor, Department of English; Director, Center for Gender and Women’s Studies

Martha Hilley, Professor, School of Music

Manuel Justiz, Dean, College of Education

Judith Langlois, Professor, Department of Psychology; Vice Provost

Daniela Martinez, Undergraduate, Advertising

Matt McGlone, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies

Linda Millstone, Associate Vice President for Institutional Equity and Workforce Diversity

J. Strother Moore, Professor, Department of Computer Sciences; Co-chair, Gender Equity Task Force

Sharon Mosher, Dean, Jackson School of Geosciences

Chandra Muller, Professor, Department of Sociology

Patricia Ohlendorf, Vice President for Legal Affairs

Alba Ortiz, Professor, Department of Special Education; Director, Office of Bilingual Education

Shelley Payne, Professor, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology

Chris Plonsky, Women’s Athletic Director, Intercollegiate Athletics

Elmira Popova, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Esther Raizen, Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts

Lauren Ratliff, Student, Department of Government; President, Senate of College Councils

Victoria Rodriguez, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies

Sherri Sanders, Deputy to the Vice President, Division of Diversity and Community Engagement

Martha E. Smiley, Attorney, Winstead Attorneys; former member of the UT System Board of Regents

Carol Thompson, President, The Thompson Group

Bev Vandegrift, President, Grindstone Group

Barbara White, Dean, School of Social Work

Robert Wilson, Associate Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs

In discussing salaries and equity with the deans, the Provost’s Office asked all deans to rationalize the merit raise process and use best practices. We suggested six simple practices:

1. An unbiased faculty committee, with detailed and recent knowledge of faculty accomplishments, should thoroughly review each faculty member.

2. The review should cover more than one year and take into account the whole history and total contributions of each faculty member. We suggest a 3-5 year window, depending on the specific unit.

3. The merit review committee should begin its work early. There is no reason to wait until raise recommendations are due.

4. Individual units should decide on the criteria for raises and the weights of contributions. The criteria and weights, however, should be made known to all faculty. There should be transparency in the process.

6. Units should describe in writing their merit raise process. The dean should review and approve the process. Deans should not approve any review system that does not achieve transformational priorities and institutional/college best interests.

Are there other best practices we should follow? Let us know.

Date: October 26

Pharmacy Researcher Receives $841,000 Challenge Grant from National Institutes of Health for Neuroendocrine Study

AUSTIN, Texas — Dr. Andrea Gore, professor of pharmacy at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a two-year, $841,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the transgenerational effects of environmental contaminants on neurological and reproductive development.

The research may help in developing public policy and prevention and wellness intervention programs.

Using rat models, Gore’s research focuses on how the brain controls reproduction and the links between the environment and reproductive development in males and females. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she has become well known for research in reproductive neuroendocrinology, especially work on reproductive aging and the long-term and multigenerational effects of prenatal exposure to a class of environmental contaminants known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

According to Gore, environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals exposure early in life can reprogram how genes and proteins are expressed in the developing organism, and result in permanent dysfunctions in reproductive development, impaired fertility and hormonally related diseases like obesity and cardiovascular and thyroid disorders.

“Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals during critical life stages of development can result in profound neurological and reproductive deficits,” said Gore, professor of pharmacology and toxicology in the College of Pharmacy.

“Developing organisms, particularly fetuses and infants, are especially vulnerable to endocrine disruption.”

The new study, “Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects of PCBs on Neuroendocrine Systems,” seeks to understand the mechanisms by which fetal exposures to PCBs cause permanent imprinting changes on gene expression in the brain’s hypothalamus region to cause adult dysfunction.

“We also want to find out how these effects are transmitted to subsequent generations,” Gore said.

Comparisons will be made among generations of rats to determine the manifestation of transgenerational epigenetic effects and to ascertain the mechanism for transmission.

“We are talking about very low levels of exposure to pesticides that can occur in a mother’s routine day-to-day activities,” said Gore. “How does this exposure affect future generations?

It’s bad enough to think that these exposures are impairing us, but the long-term consequences on children, grandchildren, and beyond, can be devastating.”

Endocrine disruption studies are highly relevant to humans, Gore said.

“PCBs are a persistent and continuing problem,” she said, “as virtually all living humans have a detectable body burden of PCBs.”

Gore received the funding under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Her grant was part of a new initiative called the NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research, which focuses on specific knowledge gaps and requires a more strenuous application process.

AUSTIN, Texas — Dr. Sharon Brown, associate dean for research and professor of nursing at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a four-year, $1.3 million National Institutes of Health grant to identify ways to achieve better glycemic control in persons with type 2 diabetes.

Brown is trying to find out why so few people with diabetes achieve glycemic control. To achieve it, individuals must change their dietary habits, increase their physical activity, adhere to prescribed medications and self-monitor glucose levels several times a day. Glycemic control refers to the typical levels of blood sugar (glucose) in a person with diabetes.

“Glycemic control improves health outcomes in persons with type 2 diabetes, but fewer than 30 percent of these individuals achieve glycemic goals,” said Brown, adding that tight glucose control reduces diabetes complications by 50 to 75 percent. Only 10 percent achieve the three major health goals of controlling glycemia, blood pressure and lipids, primarily cholesterol.

“What we don’t know is how to motivate individuals to make these critical behavioral changes,” Brown said.

Past research has explored many intervening variables that may affect behavior change and health outcomes, but the studies have not been systematically reviewed nor synthesized. Brown’s new research will analyze all the research that has been done in the past, examining possible mechanisms whereby behavioral change can be fostered, then test a series of predictive models using meta-analysis research methods.

“It is imperative to synthesize these studies to inform clinical guidelines so that health care providers can effectively address the growing global diabetes epidemic,” said Brown, a specialist in health promotion and disease prevention in Mexican Americans with type 2 diabetes. Her diabetes research grants since 1992 now total more than $7 million. This new research employs meta-analytic methods to test a model explaining health outcomes in type 2 diabetes, an approach never before used in diabetes research.

Brown discusses her diabetes research at various speaking engagements, including a recent talk at the Joslin Diabetes Center, which is affiliated with Harvard University Medical School. She was invited there to consult with physicians, nurses, dietians and staff involved in the Latin Diabetes Initiative.

Type 2 diabetes affects more than 23.6 million Americans or 8 percent of the U.S. population. As a growing global epidemic, diabetes may be the No. 1 health problem of this generation, Brown said.

“Plausible explanations for low rates of glycemic control are depression, side effects of diabetes treatments, including medications, and the complexities of self-management—all of which may negatively impact one’s quality of life,” she said. “With the need to control health care costs associated with the rapidly growing worldwide diabetes epidemic, efficient approaches must be identified or the majority of persons with diabetes will remain in poor glycemic control.”

For more information, contact: Nancy Neff, Office of Public Affairs, 512-471-6504; Sharon Brown, School of Nursing, 512-232-4710.

From UT Research Alert:

RESEARCHER: Cynthia Buckley principal Investigator Timothy Heleniak
(University of Maryland), Beth Mitchneck (University of Arizona) and
Blair Ruble (Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International
Center Scholars
AGENCY: National Science Foundation
AMOUNT: $960,345

The project will assess how international migration affects human
security and patterns of international influence with focus on
analysis of migration within Eurasia, where documentation is often
inadequate. As a result, migration in the region is rarely included
in debates over migration theory despite its large population and
significance for U.S. foreign policy.

Focusing on the Russian Federation, the investigators explore how
migration generates conflict and alters national power. Russia’s
emergence as the core destination country within the Eurasian
migration system, coupled with its increasing tendency towards
authoritarian rule, challenges assumptions concerning the importance
of liberal political orientations in destination states, and may pose
a strategic challenge to U.S. interests within the region.