School Notes: School of Nursing
November/December 2022

Professor to serve as interim dean

After Dean Ann Kurth ’90MSN steps aside from the YSN deanship on December 31 to head the New York Academy of Medicine as the first nurse leader in its 175-year history, Holly Powell Kennedy will serve as interim dean, starting January 1, 2023. As the Helen Varney Burst Professor of Midwifery, Kennedy is an internationally renowned midwifery investigator and educator and first joined the YSN faculty in 2009. She will work closely with Executive Deputy Dean Carmen Portillo, who will head the transition team. Portillo will also serve on the search advisory committee, which includes YSN faculty Joan Kearney, M. Tish Knobf ’82MSN, Soohyun Nam, Angela Richard-Eaglin, and Lois Sadler ’79MSN.

Nurse-midwife named associate dean

Erin Morelli ’02MSN was recently announced as the associate dean of student life, after having served in the interim role. Her previous involvement at the school includes serving as the director of the Midwifery Faculty Practice and the founder of the Academic Success Team, working with students to help address the social determinants of learning. In addition to working in the Yale Midwifery Faculty Practice at Yale New Haven, she is the cochair of the Student and New Midwives Committee for the American College of Nurse-Midwives, and she also founded the Vidone Volunteer Doula Program at Yale New Haven Hospital. 

Nursing faculty ascend to national leadership roles

Multiple YSN faculty have recently been named to leadership positions. These include Shelli Feder ’10MSN, ’17PhD, nominated to the editorial board of the journal BMC Palliative Care. Sascha James-Conterelli was selected as the only midwife to serve on the national steering committee for the Obstetrics & Gynecology special issue on Racism and Reproductive Health. Dr. Wendy Mackey ’22PhD will start her term as vice president of the Society of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Nurses in January. And Angela Richard-Eaglin was recently invited to join the editorial board of Nursing Economic$, The Journal for Health Care Leaders.