It is with great pleasure I announce that Dr. Michael Cary has been named the Elizabeth C. Clipp Term Chair in Nursing and Dr. Devon Noonan has been named the Dorothy L. Powell Term Chair in Nursing, effective July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024.

DUSON’s Term Chair appointments recognize an early career faculty member with exceptional promise in a program of research. Faculty recommendations and evaluation for these awards are made by the school’s Distinguished Professorship Committee and endorsed by the dean. These chairs are awarded based on a program a research that aligns with the school’s strategic plans, demonstrated research excellence, leadership and productivity, and a growing national reputation and presence.

Michael Cary is a health services researcher whose program of research is designed to improve the quality of post-acute care for older adults. Specifically, his work focuses on the prevention of the functional decline and rehospitalization of older adults after post-acute rehabilitation when they return to the community and home. He is also expanding his expertise into measurement of quality-based outcomes — particularly system-level outcomes that include health care systems, informatics and research methodology. His research interests are timely and important given the rapid growth of the country’s older population and are solidly aligned with DUSON’s population health and data science strategic priorities. Dr. Cary has been a PI or Co-I on both intra and extramurally funded grants. Michael received a highly competitive training award from the NIH-funded Duke University Clinical and Translational Science Award as an assistant professor and was the first nurse to be selected to participate in this research development award program. He was also selected by NIH’s Chief Officer of Scientific Workforce Diversity to present his research at the first Future Research Leaders Conference, a distinction held by only 28 others in the country. In addition, Dr. Cary has been an exemplary mentor to African-American students in the ABSN and PhD programs.

Devon Noonan has built a program of research in health promotion and decreasing the risk of chronic diseases in vulnerable populations. The focus of her work spans three primary areas: alternative tobacco product use (ie, waterpipe and smokeless tobacco); tobacco cessation interventions in underserved populations; and understanding multiple health behaviors and intervention approaches – all well aligned with our population health and health innovations strategic priorities. As a PI, she has been successful in obtaining both R15 and R01 grant awards during a time when federal funding is extremely competitive. For the past five years, she has been continually funded by the NIH NCI for her work to develop and test text-based tobacco cessation interventions, and she is also site PI on an NIH NINR R01 that tests a text-based diet intervention for pregnant women. Her early work on water pipe smoking informed the American Lung Association’s policy recommendations to decrease waterpipe smoking, and her paper on biochemical verification of smoking cessation was highlighted on the national Veterans Administration Research Currents website. Dr. Noonan assumes the Program Director role of Duke’s National Clinical Scholar’s Program this summer.

Please join me in congratulating Michael and Devon on this well-deserved honor!!

Marion E. Broome
Dean and Ruby Wilson Professor of Nursing of the School of Nursing
Vice Chancellor for Nursing Affairs, Duke University
Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs for Nursing, Duke University Health System