VCU College of Health Professions

Thank you to our newest students for joining us for CHP New Student Day today! 💛

We’re delighted to welcome you to the CHiPper community and can’t wait to see all that you accomplish. We’re proud to be part of your journey and look forward to supporting you every step of the way!

A sweet start to the new semester! 🍨

Join us for our Welcome Back Ice Cream Event! CHP students, staff and faculty are invited to enjoy WestRay’s Finest ice cream truck and celebrate the start of a new semester together.

🗓 August 25 | ⏰ 2–4 p.m.
📍 The Compass, outside the Larrick Building

Come grab a scoop!

For VCU nurse anesthesia students in Southwest Virginia, the operating room has always been close to reality. Now, it’s even closer.

This spring, the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon dedicated its new Regional Simulation Lab, the culmination of nearly two years of planning and fundraising to create the region’s most advanced clinical training environment.

The state-of-the-art facility was made possible by investments from state legislators, regional partners, nonprofits and private donors committed to strengthening Southwest Virginia’s health care workforce, in a campaign led by SVHEC Executive Director David Matlock.

Full story: https://buff.ly/yV2SUks

From concept to classroom: Just months after launching Virginia's first Cardiovascular Perfusion program, VCU's inaugural class is already moving from textbooks to operating rooms. 🫀

After welcoming its first 10 students in January, the cohort is now advancing through complex simulation training and preparing for clinical rotations beginning this fall.

Read more: https://buff.ly/Wxi8jxz

ICYMI: Carolyn Hawley, Ph.D., director of the Virginia Partnership for Gaming and Health, is featured in VCU's Uncommon Heroes series. Learn how she has helped build one of the nation’s first comprehensive systems for treatment, recovery and prevention of gambling addiction.

Full story: https://buff.ly/cOqtbpr.

By connecting with peers from across the country, Leigh Finnegan-Hosey, an instructor in VCU Patient Counseling and a staff chaplain for VCU Health, helped situate VCU within a broader professional community that is exploring how creative practices can support healing, resilience and ethical care.

Read more: https://buff.ly/N0jsOcC

A few pies, lots of laughs and support for our students! 🥧

Radiation Sciences students put their professors to the test at Pie Your Professor, raising funds for student attendance at the Virginia Society of Radiologic Technologists conference this April. Faculty members were good sports, and students made every splat count to help provide this valuable professional development opportunity.

You can still support our students through this link: https://bit.ly/4wVRxRi

While veterans and their dependents gather each week to learn the craft of writing and share deeply personal experiences through the Mighty Pen Project, a second group is doing its own studying to understand how the unique academic program can inform a new type of therapeutic activity.

In the latest phase of a VCU grant, graduate students in the Department of Rehabilitation Counseling, part of the VCU College of Health Professions, are analyzing the conversations and interactions held as part of the Mighty Pen Project, founded by Richmond author David L. Robbins to help these individuals use written storytelling to work through sometimes painful legacies of military life. Through “Life Between the Lines: A Writing Workshop for the Family Members of Veterans and Active Military Personnel,” the students are working to deconstruct the program and determine how to scale the approach beyond its current classroom walls.

Read more: https://news.vcu.edu/article/researchers-study-how-to-build-on-a-powerful-writing-workshop-for-veterans-and-military-spouses

As Alzheimer's cases climb nationwide, VCU Convergence is uniting researchers, clinicians and community partners around a challenge no single discipline can solve alone.

In a new Q&A, Faika Zanjani, Ph.D., professor of gerontology, associate dean for research in the VCU College of Health Professions and neurodegeneration theme lead for VCU Convergence, explains why VCU is built to lead this work.

“The cell-to-community approaches already happening here at VCU give us confidence and optimism that the next breakthrough is developing right here in Richmond,” Zanjani said.

Read the full Q&A: https://buff.ly/NepmDR3

Why VCU Convergence is built to take on neurodegeneration: Q&A with Faika Zanjani Nearly seven million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, a number projected to nearly double by 2050. At Virginia Commonwealth University, researchers are adamant that the path forward is led through collaboration. As part of VCU Convergence, an interdisciplinary team of neurodegenerati...