The McGoogan Health Sciences Library and UNMC Faculty Women’s Club are partnering to present the next installment in the Library Speaker Series. Presenting on September 20 at noon is Sasha K. Shillcutt, MD, MS, FASE. Her presentation will be based on her book, Between Grit and Grace: How to be Feminine and Formidable.  

The UNMC community can register for this virtual event which will be held on Zoom.  

The Faculty Women’s Club will be holding a drawing for copies of the book, providing 11 opportunities to win. 

Dr. Shillcutt is a tenured and endowed professor and the Vice Chair of Strategy in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). She is CEO and founder of Brave Enough, a well-published researcher in both cardiac anesthesiology and gender equity, an author, and an international speaker. Dr. Shillcutt’s greatest passion is empowering and encouraging others to achieve wellbeing in their professional and personal lives. She speaks frequently to executives and leaders on the topics of professional resilience and gender equity. Her TEDx talk titled Resilience: The Art of Failing Forward has been viewed by thousands of people. Her writing has been published in both the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. She leads conferences and retreats for professional women through her organization, Brave Enough. Her first book, Between Grit and Grace: How to be Feminine and Formidable, was released in February 2020. 

Since May 1920, the UNMC Faculty Women’s Club has provided and promoted social connections and leadership opportunities for women throughout our ever-expanding medical campus.  To date, their dedicated members have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for scholarships given to students in all colleges at UNMC. 

The McGoogan Library Speaker Series highlights authors from UNMC and Nebraska Medicine. 

The McGoogan Health Sciences Library is hosting a temporary exhibition of the comics series “C’rona Pandemic Comics.” The panels will line the Wittson Hall fourth-floor corridor leading to the Sorrell Center and Bennett Hall skywalks. The comics featured are:

• “C’rona Comix,” by Bob Hall, Judy Diamond and Liz VanWormer
• “Tribal C’rona Comix,  by Henry Payer, Hall, Judi gaiashkibos and Diamond 
• “C’rona Comix II,” by Hall, Bob Camp, VanWormer and Diamond

“Tribal” features the story of Susan LaFlesche Picotte, MD, who also is featured in an exhibit in the Wigton Heritage Center.

In spring 2020, the comics team received funding from the Rapid Response Research program of the National Science Foundation to develop comics that would help youth understand the COVID-19 pandemic. The project built upon a decade of expertise in creating comics about the biology of viruses.

In collaboration with virologists and artists, three comic stories about COVID-19 were developed during the pandemic and posted online during the last half of 2020. The fictional narratives address fundamental issues in biology, virology and network science in order to help readers understand the complexities of living through a viral pandemic.

The stories focus on three themes: the biology and social context of the COVID-19 virus; the relationship of wild animals, particularly bats, to the pandemic; and the impact of the pandemic on Tribal communities. The stories are posted online and are published by the University of Nebraska Press as the book “C’RONA Pandemic Comics,” which includes essays for youth about the virus and the pandemic.

The exhibition runs through Nov. 30. A panel discussion with the authors will be held on Nov. 3 at noon. This virtual presentation is now open for registration.

On Aug. 4, following continued regional trends in the viral transmission, hospitalization and new CDC recommendations for face masks, UNMC reinstituted a face mask requirement. UNMC faculty, staff, students and visitors are required to properly wear a face mask when indoors on campus.   

Since the mask requirement returned, the McGoogan Health Sciences Library staff have noted that a significant number of students are not wearing masks in the library, especially in the evenings and weekends. Masks are required in the library unless you are in a study room. When eating or drinking, please use a study room where you can remove your mask in a socially distanced manner. Failure to wear a mask will be treated as a violation of the Student Code of Conduct.  

Members of our tightknit UNMC health care community who are unable or unwilling to follow campus guidelines risk losing access to the library. Adhering to campus guidelines will help keep the library open with 24/7 access throughout the academic year and protect our community from the more transmissible delta variant.   

We ask you to redouble your efforts to control COVID-19 on our campus and provide a safe environment in the library through masking.  

H. Dele Davies, MD, MS, MHCM  

Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs  

Dean for Graduate Studies  

The walls are all painted, the boxes are all unpacked, and the Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library and partners located in the library are set to welcome you back to campus!

Stop by the Library and Partners Open House on August 24 or 27, from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., to get an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the services, features, and areas in the library.

Discover new ways to spark your creativity and connect with people who can help you bring your ideas to life. Plus, win prizes if you stop by each partner’s area.

• Academic Success
• Campus Wellness
• Central Scheduling
• DMS Scan Lab
• E-Learning Lab
• EZStudio
• Faculty Affairs  
• Inclusion Corner
• IT Academic Technologies
• Maker Studio
• McGoogan Library
• Special Collections & Archives
• VERT Suite
• Writing Center

NOTE: All attendees will be expected to follow UNMC campus safety guidelines.

UNMC corresponding authors publishing in “Public Library of Science (PLOS) Biology” and “PLOS Medicine” will not incur article processing charges as a result of a new three-year agreement between the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) and PLOS.

BTAA members now are invited to participate in PLOS’ Community Action Publishing program. The agreement ensures time to test and evaluate this new community-based model and allows BTAA researchers to publish in PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine without incurring fees. On the basis of University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s membership in BTAA, faculty at all University of Nebraska campuses will benefit from this agreement.

PLOS’ Community Action Publishing is PLOS’ effort to sustain highly selective journal publishing without article processing charges for authors.

Articles with a corresponding author affiliated with any of the University of Nebraska campuses, or a corresponding author from another PLOS Community Action Program-member institution, are eligible. If the corresponding author is not from the University of Nebraska or another member institution, but some of the coauthors are, the APC will be discounted.

“This agreement is an important step in making open access scholarly publishing accessible to more authors by supporting article processing charges,” said Emily McElroy, dean of the McGoogan Health Sciences Library. “Additionally, it demonstrates another facet to the collaboration between the University of Nebraska libraries through the University of Nebraska Consortium of Libraries.”

Authors must indicate their institutional affiliation when submitting their articles to PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine to ensure that the publisher’s editorial management system identifies them correctly as eligible for the publication charge waiver.

For information about the agreement, and a description of the steps involved for authors, see the Community Action Publishing section of the PLOS website. For more information, contact Heather Brown.