Dear Friends,
It’s a pleasure to introduce this issue of Inside Sargent. It’s also bittersweet, as this is the last edition I’ll oversee as dean. I’ve decided to retire at the end of the 2022–2023 academic year. It’s been an extraordinary eight years for me at Sargent, thanks to the camaraderie and teamwork of our community of alumni, faculty, staff, and students. I’m proud of our many achievements together, including new endowed professorships and student scholarships as well as the ever-increasing quality of our clinical education and graduate professional programs. And we’re not done yet!
We began the fall semester following an ambitious summer of growth and preparation—including transformational additions to our faculty and long-anticipated building enhancements to best prepare students for careers in healthcare. Most notably, construction began in July on the new Sargent College Center for Clinical Simulation, an innovative lab and learning space that will mirror an acute care hospital setting.
Interprofessional education, practice, and collaboration are at the heart of our work, and in this issue, you’ll read about several examples aiming to improve health outcomes across the lifespan. In particular, the cover story on autism showcases our uniquely specialized, interdisciplinary expertise: neurophysiologists examining the structure of autistic brains; occupational therapists studying the connections among autism, movement, and cognitive development; a speech-language pathologist developing a neurodiversity group supporting autistic women; and others who are devising new ways to build community frameworks for families and BIPOC youth with autism. It was our honor to host renowned autism researcher and advocate Temple Grandin earlier this year to discuss this work and tour Sargent’s autism labs.
Collaborations across the University illustrate the power of data sciences to transform healthcare outcomes, systems, and policy. One innovative project led by speech, language, and hearing sciences (SLHS) PhD candidate Anne Billot and Professor Swathi Kiran, in partnership with colleagues at BU’s Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, uses machine learning to predict how a patient with aphasia will recover—a true game changer in the clinical field. With the increasing availability of large data sets and modeling capability, Sargent researchers can address social determinants of health, mitigating pernicious gaps in resources, research, and treatment. In an ambitious community health initiative, Professor of Health Sciences Hagere Yilma helped to reduce iron-deficiency anemia in rural India.
Fulfilling our promise of clinical impact means translating these discoveries to practice. SLHS Professor Magdalen Balz is doing just that with her Cognitive Wellness Program for formerly unhoused senior citizens. And Physical Therapy Assistant Professor Lou Awad has formed unique partnerships with digital therapeutic company MedRhythms and Universal Music Group, using the power of music to help stroke survivors walk again.
Our extensive alumni network helps expand the reach of this work even further. True to our ambitions, alumni are leveraging skills they developed here at Sargent to improve the lives of so many in their communities. You’ll read in this issue about two alums who started their own clinical practices—psychologist and advocate Gayle Berg and orthopedic surgeon Steven Gorin.
Many of you have written to note the retirements this year of two beloved, longtime Sargent faculty. Honored at a reception this summer, Diane Constantino, a professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, and Julie Starr, a professor of physical therapy, were integral to Sargent’s growth and success, each for more than 30 years. We are incredibly grateful for their innumerable contributions, especially in the area of clinical innovation, and for their work guiding generations of students to care most effectively for their own patients.
We look forward to continuing to build on this work in the year ahead, and I hope to see you at one of our upcoming events.
Warmly,
Christopher A. Moore
Dean and Professor