Endowed Chairs at the College of Nursing
Transforming health systems and communities through expertise, research, and mentorship
At the University of Utah College of Nursing (CON), endowed chairs are advancing nursing science while shaping the future of care across disciplines, health systems, and communities. These faculty leaders bring extensive expertise to health challenges, including aging, cancer prevention and treatment, caregiving across the lifespan, end-of-life decision-making, trauma recovery, and the ongoing pursuit of educational excellence.
Through sustained federal funding, prominent national leadership roles, and meaningful interdisciplinary collaborations, endowed chairs generate new knowledge, create innovative models of care, and influence practice and policy at the local, national, and international levels. Their work has led to the development of technology-enabled systems for monitoring cancer symptoms at home, strengthened advocacy for family caregivers in Utah and across the nation, advanced the delivery of palliative care in rural communities, and supported trauma-informed responses to sexual violence. They have contributed to legislative priorities in Utah and Washington, DC, elevated standards in long-term care, and built global partnerships that extend the reach and influence of nursing worldwide.
Equally important, endowed chairs are committed educators who mentor the next generation of nurse scientists, clinicians, and leaders. They guide undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty, expanding opportunities for discovery and professional growth. Together, their collective work spans clinical, academic, and community settings, transforming not only how care is delivered but also who receives it, how outcomes are measured, and what’s possible for the future of nursing.
Louis H. Peery Presidential Endowed Chair in Nursing
Over the past five years, Marla De Jong, PhD, has led the CON as Dean and the Louis H. Peery Presidential Endowed Chair. She has driven growth, championed innovation, and elevated the CON’s impact across education, research, and practice. Under her leadership, the CON launched a new curriculum aligned with national guidelines, increased enrollment in undergraduate and
doctoral programs, and grew its faculty and staff. External research and scholarly funding reached record levels, with a focus on translating discoveries into practice. The CON appointed four endowed chairs and established a fifth, strengthened academic-practice partnerships with health systems, received initial accreditation for its Master of Science in Gerontology program, and expanded clinical practices across the Salt Lake Valley and rural Utah.
Through strong relationship-building, De Jong secured philanthropic support for scholarships, faculty and staff development, research, postdoctoral fellowships, family-centered care, and global learning. She enhanced the nursing college’s visibility by widely promoting professional awards, grants, initiatives, and achievements. Beyond the CON, De Jong chairs the university’s Center on Aging board, is on the editorial board for Military Medicine, and serves on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Government Affairs Committee. She helped the university earn an Age-Friendly designation and serves in the Academic Senate, while her active involvement in university and professional events promotes collaboration, recruitment, and strategic engagement.
Robert S. and Beth M. Carter Endowed Chair
Lee Ellington serves as the Robert S. and Beth M. Carter Endowed Chair. In this role, she leads the Family Caregiving Collaborative (FCC), working with university, community, and national partners to advance support for caregivers. As the FCC’s founding director, Ellington has helped grow the program into a nationally recognized leader in health profession education, research, clinical practice, and community engagement dedicated to improving the lives of family caregivers of all ages and backgrounds.
The work of Ellington and the FCC team helped Utah be one of 10 states invited by the National Alliance for Caregiving to their 2023 and 2024 Caregiver Nation Summits in Washington, D.C. At last year’s summit, the FCC sponsored five Utah advocates who met with legislators to promote caregiver policies. Looking ahead, the FCC is taking the lead in hosting the 4th Biennial Conference on Caregiving Research in Salt Lake City in September 2026, drawing researchers, practitioners, caregivers, and policy leaders from across the nation to advance caregiver health and well-being.
Louis S. Peery, M.D. and Janet B. Peery Presidential Endowed Chair
Kathi Mooney holds the Louis S. Peery, M.D. and Janet B. Peery Presidential Endowed Chair. She’s a distinguished professor and research staff investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI), where she co-led Cancer Control and Population Sciences for 12 years. An international leader in cancer patient reported outcomes, technology-enabled remote symptom monitoring, and home-based models of care, her research focuses on cancer care delivery, digital health applications, and value-based care models that use both clinical trials and community-based approaches.
Mooney developed Symptom Care at Home, a telehealth platform that remotely monitors and manages patient-reported cancer symptoms and has received continuous funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for over two decades. In 2018, she launched Huntsman at Home, the first oncology hospital-at-home program for acute and subacute cancer care. In 2021, she expanded the program to three rural and frontier communities in southeastern Utah, reducing access barriers for patients living two to five hours from the university. In fall 2024, she received an $11.9 million Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health grant to expand and evaluate advanced technology-enabled cancer services delivered throughout these communities in innovative mobile vehicles.
The Claire Dumke Ryberg, R.N. Presidential Endowed Chair in End-of Life/Palliative Care
Lynn Reinke holds The Claire Dumke Ryberg, R.N., Presidential Endowed Chair in End-of-Life/Palliative Care. As a clinical professor and nationally recognized leader in advancing the science of palliative and end-of-life care for individuals with serious illness and their families, she develops and tests innovative nurse-led interventions. She also serves on national and international committees aimed at improving care quality and provider communication skills.
As director of the Family Integrated Healthcare Collaborative, Reinke tests family care models within health care settings. She’s currently leading a project to see if conducting standardized family caregiving needs assessments and support can be included in the routine care provided by the Huntsman at Home oncology program. In June 2025, she presented this work to more than 1,400 attendees at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She was promoted to professor (clinical) in 2025, just three years after joining the CON, reflecting her rapid and meaningful impact. Her national leadership includes serving as Director and President of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association and Foundation in 2024.
Annette Poulson Cumming Presidential Endowed Chair in Women’s and Reproductive Health
Sara Simonsen is a tenured associate professor and holds the Annette Poulson Cumming Presidential Endowed Chair in Women’s and Reproductive Health. A practicing nurse midwife and nationally recognized nurse scientist, she’s a Fellow of the American College of Nurse Midwives. Simonsen is a leader in community-engaged women’s health research, focusing on health promotion and disease prevention.
She is the principal investigator on multiple funded studies, including a $3.7 million National Institutes of Health grant to investigate sleep and cardiometabolic disease risk among Utah women. Other projects aim to raise awareness about health risks and promote healthy lifestyles for women who have pregnancy complications that could lead to chronic disease later in life. She also works with a national team of investigators studying care transitions after pregnancy in patients with gestational diabetes. Simonsen is committed to mentoring the next generation of nurse scientists, working with undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty on a range of women’s health topics. Her mentorship has been recognized with the Office of Undergraduate Research’s Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award.
Helen Lowe Bamberger Colby Presidential Endowed Chair in Nursing
Caroline Stephens serves as the Helen Lowe Bamberger Colby Presidential Endowed Chair in Nursing. A nationally recognized gerontological nurse practitioner and researcher, she’s dedicated to improving care for older adults and their families, particularly those with complex physical and mental health needs. With more than two decades of clinical experience consulting in over 100
nursing homes, Stephens leads innovative efforts to make palliative care for older adults more proactive, accessible, and compassionate.
This fall, she’s piloting post-pandemic refinements to her telehealth program, Improving Palliative Care Access Through Technology (ImPAcTT), in Utah nursing homes. The project includes virtual geriatric palliative care consultations for residents and their families, along with online training and podcast resources to support families and frontline staff. Stephens also directs the Utah Caregiving Population Data Science (Utah C-PopS) initiative, a multidisciplinary collaborative that uses the nation’s only population-based, family-linked dataset to explore how families shape, and are impacted by, end-of-life care. Her Donaghue Foundation funded work with Utah C-PopS is informing rural palliative care initiatives across the state. As an educator, Stephens is advancing the pipeline of future scholars in family caregiving and population science. She helps lead the nation’s first Nursing PhD program founded on problem-based learning and serves as a lead subject matter expert on a $4.5 million national initiative supporting behavioral health in the country’s 15,000 nursing homes.
Ida May “Dotty” Barnes, R.N. and D. Keith Barnes, M.D. Presidential Endowed Chair
Julie Valentine serves as the Ida May “Dotty” Barnes, R.N., and D. Keith Barnes, M.D., Presidential Endowed Chair. She’s a nationally recognized leader in forensic nursing, and one of only ten nurses in the US elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, where she also serves on the Forensic Nursing Consensus Body.
Valentine is an ambassador for the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research and has received multiple honors, including Fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing, the Education Article of the Year Award from the Journal of Forensic Nursing, the 2024 Nurse Researcher Award from the Utah Organization of Nurse Leaders, and the Beacon of Hope Award from the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault. Her research focuses on issues related to sexual and gender-based violence, sexual assault facilitated by dating apps, trauma-informed dental care, and the Start by Believing campaign. She has been awarded a $525,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice and an interdisciplinary grant from the University of Utah. Valentine disseminates her work through multiple publications, national presentations, and service on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee.
The Frederick Q. Lawson Excellence in Teaching Endowed Chair
Rebecca Wilson serves as the Frederick Q. Lawson Excellence in Teaching Endowed Chair, where she advances teaching excellence by bringing new educational insights to faculty and supporting scholarship in teaching and learning. She directs the College of Nursing’s Excellence in Education program, leads the Success Academy to onboard faculty new to academic teaching, and mentors faculty engaged in educational scholarship.
Wilson’s recent milestones include chairing a symposium on the design and evaluation of master’s-level capstone courses at the American Educational Research Association conference in April 2025, with a manuscript in development from this work. She also completed a study on using the Community of Inquiry framework to teach social determinants of health in an online environment, presented at the National League for Nursing Education Summit in September 2024, with a related manuscript currently under review. Looking ahead, Wilson is leading a collaborative effort to describe and strengthen the College of Nursing’s culture of educational scholarship, expanding opportunities for faculty interested in this area.
HELP SHAPE THE FUTURE OF NURSING SCIENCE
Endowed chairs at the University of Utah College of Nursing represent the highest honor of academic and professional distinction. The College is currently seeking visionary leaders for the Janet Q. Lawson endowed Chair in Nursing and the newly established L. S. Skaggs Presidential Endowed Chair in Acute and Critical Care Nursing. Visit the faculty jobs page to learn more.