Faculty members selected for American Academy of Nursing fellowship
Six UIC College of Nursing faculty members will be inducted as fellows of the American Academy of Nursing this year.
Induction into the academy is one of the highest honors in nursing. Fellows are recognized for their substantial contributions to health and health care.
“I cannot emphasize enough at this pivotal time in history the vital importance of recognizing this extraordinary and sizeable group of nurse leaders,” Linda D. Scott, academy president, said in a statement. “With rich and varied backgrounds from practice, policy, research, entrepreneurship and academia, they have been instrumental in using nursing’s holistic approach to improve the health of patients and communities throughout the world.
The 2025 Class of Fellows were selected from a historically high number of applicants. They represent 42 states, the District of Columbia and 12 countries. The inductees will be honored at the Academy’s annual Health Policy Conference, taking place Oct. 16-18 in Washington, DC.
UIC’s inductees are:
Sarah Abboud, an associate professor and associate head of the UIC Department of Human Development Nursing Science. Her research is focused on interventions to improve health outcomes among first- and second-generation Arab immigrants in the U.S., and she’s specifically interested in exploring sexual health at the intersections of immigration, gender, sexual orientation and ethnic identity in this population. She received the Emerging Scholar award from the Office of Equity and Diversity in 2024 and took part in the Public Voices Fellowship, the OpEd Project in 2023-24.
Julie Carbray, a clinical professor of psychiatry and nursing and a nationally recognized clinical expert in the area of children and adolescents with mood disorders. As director of the Pediatric Mood Disorder Clinic at UIC’s Institute for Juvenile Research, she leads the clinical program and multidisciplinary training for the clinic. Carbray teaches course content in psychopharmacology, mood disorders and development and therapeutic interventions with children and adolescents for students across various multidisciplinary programs.
Carolyn Dickens, UIC Nursing’s associate dean for practice and community partnerships. She is a board certified nurse practitioner who specializes in heart failure and cardiovascular disease in the cardiology department at UI Health. Dickens’ most recent grant-funded project seeks to combat incivility and violence in clinical settings with a series of videos that are intended to promote empathy between nurses and patients.
Mary Dawn Koenig, an associate professor and director of the PhD program. A certified nurse-midwife, she researches maternal and child health, specializing in maternal obesity, perinatal nutrition and iron metabolism. Koenig’s research investigates how inflammation, the iron regulatory hormone hepcidin and genetic factors in the placenta determine iron flow in both maternal and fetal systems. Koenig aims to develop innovative, safe and effective therapies to optimize maternal and fetal iron bioavailability.
Mark Lockwood, an associate professor and lead researcher on a National Institutes of Health grant to study the relationship between the gut microbiome and pain and other distressing symptoms experienced by some kidney transplant recipients. The five-year study builds off a pilot study that pointed to an association between changes in the gut microbiome and pain that interferes with a person’s daily activities, a symptom that nearly half of kidney transplant patients experience. Lockwood frequently leads teams of students to offer free kidney disease screenings at public events.
Rebecca Singer, a clinical assistant professor with almost two decades of experience in global health and community partnerships. Since the beginning of the global pandemic in 2020, Singer has co-led UIC’s Outbreak Response Team, which provides testing, vaccination and infection control to residents of the city of Chicago with the Chicago Department of Public Health. Singer was selected for a Fulbright Fellowship for Teaching in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2022. As part of her global health work, she established a Global Health Nursing Certificate Program at the college.
— Deborah Ziff Soriano, College of Nursing
