Through the Ascending Star Fellowship program, the partners with academic units to accelerate scholarship and promote the national reputation of exceptional mid-career researchers. During the year long program, the fellows work with an external mentor and are coached through an ambitious project that moves their scholarship to the next level of development.听听

This year鈥檚 class 鈥� representing four schools 鈥� includes:

• Faisal Aqlan, , whose work focuses on automation, process improvement, engineering education, and sensor-based virtual reality for manufacturing and healthcare applications.听
• Daniel Bennett, whose work focuses on how environmental change influences entrepreneurship and innovation, and the implications for regional and national economic development.
• Melanie Gast, , whose work focuses on race, class, and gender in higher education.
• Omid Ghasemi Fare, J.B. Speed School of Engineering, whose work focuses on geothermal energy, thermo-hydro-mechanical modeling and characterization of soils, unsaturated soil, heat and mass transport in porous media, transportation geotechnics and geotechnical earthquake engineering.听
• Meg Hancock, , whose work focuses on gender and diversity in sport organizations, career development in sport and sport and social change.听
• Elizabeth Munnich, College of Business, whose work focuses on developing and evaluating strategies for improving health and reducing healthcare spending by more efficiently and effectively utilizing healthcare resources.
• Noppadon Sathitsuksanoh, J.B. Speed School of Engineering, whose work focuses on converting carbon feedstocks from plant biomass, waste plastics and carbon dioxide into advanced fuels, biomaterials and battery components.
• Siobhan Smith-Jones, College of Arts and Sciences, whose work focuses on exploring African American women as interpretive communities and, through the fellowship program, on Black horror television.
• Ian Stansel, College of Arts and Sciences, director of UofL鈥檚 Creative Writing Program and fiction/non-fiction writer.听

鈥淚鈥檓 ecstatic to work with this year鈥檚 cohort and help further their already stellar careers and scholarship,鈥� said M. Cynthia Logsdon,听associate vice president for research and innovation, who leads the fellowship program. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e already 鈥榮tars,鈥� of course, but our goal is to help them shine even brighter.鈥�听

To be considered for the program, faculty must be associate professor rank, must be nominated by their unit and must show a 鈥渃onsistent record of scholarship with the passion and desire to achieve greater national recognition.鈥�听

The award honors members of the association who have made strides in scholarly nursing education, contributing to the knowledge base of women鈥檚 or neonatal health.

Logsdon is an international expert in women鈥檚 mental health. She has worked with nurses in the mother-baby unit at听听to improve patient education practices regarding postpartum depression and helped create the knowledge base of the role of nurses in preparing new mothers to recognize symptoms of depression after hospital discharge.

Logsdon鈥檚 research has contributed to understanding and improving health literacy in low income and underserved new mothers.

鈥淎s the use of technology to retrieve health information became prevalent, I collaborated with interdisciplinary and clinical partners to conduct studies on how new mothers prefer to receive health information,鈥� said Logsdon, PhD, WHNP-BC, FAAN.

She led a recent National Institutes of Health-funded study that developed an online intervention that helped persuade an increasing number of teenage mothers across 10 Kentucky counties to seek medical help for depression, highlighting an inexpensive way to increase mental health treatment rates for this vulnerable group.

In addition to her research endeavors, Logsdon has mentored numerous nurses and nursing students at UofL. She is editor of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, serves on the editorial board of Archives of Women鈥檚 Mental Health and is co-chair of the Expert Panel on Maternal and Infant Health of the American Academy of Nursing.

鈥淒r. Logsdon is a dedicated scholar for her scientific work in maternal child health and best practices in teaching mothers and families,鈥� said Marcia J. Hern, EdD, CNS, RN, UofL School of Nursing dean. 鈥淪he is a standout in the innovative use of technology and evidence-based application of health literacy to low income and underserved populations of new mothers.鈥�

The website included videos of adolescent mothers describing their experiences with postpartum depression and treatment, questions and answers, and local and national resources, including referrals for counseling services and suicide and child-abuse prevention hotlines.

Untreated postpartum depression hinders a mother鈥檚 relationship with her child, her functioning at work and school, mothering skills and development. The condition also can harm a baby鈥檚 development and attachment to the mother, said M. Cynthia Logsdon, PhD, WHNP-BC, FAAN, UofL School of Nursing professor and lead researcher of .

Half of the roughly 400,000 adolescents 18 and younger who give birth annually in the United States experience depressive symptoms, but less than 25 percent follow referrals for depression evaluation and treatment, according to the study.

The research, conducted from 2013 to 2016, involved more than 200 teen moms in urban, suburban and rural counties in Kentucky and was funded by a nearly $440,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Study participants on average were 18 years old, primarily African-American, did not have a high school diploma and had given birth in the past year.

For both rural and urban counties, the intervention led to significant changes in attitude, intention to seek depression treatment and actually seeking treatment.