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Johnson

 COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Dr. Pamela Johnson Rowsey, professor and department chair at The University of North Carolina Greensboro, will speak at Mississippi University for Women’s August graduation ceremony Friday, Aug. 10 at 2 p.m. in Rent Auditorium, Whitfield Hall.

 Approximately 400 candidates have applied for August graduation.

Dr. Rowsey is responsible for mentoring faculty, assigning workload and managing the budget for 30 faculty in the Adult Health Nursing Department at The University of North Carolina Greensboro.

A native of Picayune, Mississippi, she is recognized for her commitment and passion for working with historically underrepresented ethnic populations. She grew up in a segregated school system until the 10th grade. Her last two years of high school were spent at Picayune Memorial High School where she graduated with honors at the age of 16. Her lifetime dream was to become a scientist and that quest began as a young 16-year-old when she entered Pearl River Community College.

Her career as a basic scientist provided her with opportunities to learn different aspects of the scientific process which reinforced her desire to use her knowledge and skills to translate her research into clinical practice and to the understanding of factors that might contribute to Black Americans being diagnosed with chronic illnesses more often and disproportionately dying of the diseases when compared to White Americans. Because of her scholarly productivity, Dr. Rowsey was the first African-American to be promoted and receive tenure at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Nursing.

As a nurse, Dr. Rowsey has worked in a number of clinical settings, including pediatric and psychiatric nursing and neurobehavior/spinal cord injury. Her research background involves substantial experience conducting physiological research using chronic exercise in a rat animal model to examine the beneficial effects of exercise when animals are exposed to bacterial infections and organophosphate pesticides. She also works with inflammatory cytokines in this model of exercise-induced core temperature and their links to fever and the capacity of exercise to induce an inflammatory response. Her longstanding work with biomarkers of stress, inflammatory cytokines and their effects on disease, illness and injury has led to translation of her work to more clinically-based research that has contributed or that has the potential to contribute to the elimination of health disparities.

She received a federal training grant to increase the level of racial diversity among students in The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing programs. Her commitment to cultural/racial diversity was recognized by her appointment to the Provost’s committee for Inclusive Excellence and Diversity. Building on these achievements, Dr. Rowsey has used her position as one of the few African-American nurse leaders to focus on preparing minority nurse faculty and students as the next generation of nurse scholars.

Dr. Rowsey earned a doctorate from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and master of science from The University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Rowsey completed post-doctoral research fellowships in physiology and neurobehavioral science at The University of Michigan and in chronic illness at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She holds a bachelor of science in nursing from The W and an associate of science degree in nursing from Pearl River Community College.

She and her husband, Kevin, of 28 years, have two children, K. Joshua Rowsey, II, 26, and Jessica Noel Rowsey, 23.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug. 1, 2018
Contact: Anika Mitchell Perkins
(662) 329-7124
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