Nikki Hill, associate professor in the Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing and associate director of education for the Tressa Nese and Helen Diskevich Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence at Penn State, was recently selected for the newly established Carol A. Nese Early Career Professorship.

The Carol A. Nese Early Career Professorship offers recognition and support for an outstanding early career faculty member who is engaged in the translation of nursing science to improve the care of older adults. Hill has been a pivotal member in the area of gerontological research and hopes to elevate her work with older adults through the critical support provided by the professorship.

Hill's research focuses on the cognitive decline risk in older adults, reducing dementia-related stigma, and tailoring interventions to meet individual goals. Her contributions to nursing science have advanced understanding of dementia’s earliest symptoms as well as provided targets for person-centered interventions to maximize cognitive and functional outcomes.

She is a recently inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and holds awards as a distinguished gerontological, nurse educator, the Janet A. Williamson Excellence in Teaching Award, and many others.

The professorship is designed to rotate every three years and offers the dean of the college the opportunity to recruit and retain rising academic stars.

“I am so pleased to appoint Nikki to this role. As the inaugural faculty member in this professorship, I know she will serve us well and set the bar high for future candidates. I believe she matches both preferences, as the award is for those in assistant professor positions or newly tenured associate professors, and her research on aging, cognition, and Alzheimer’s disease is outstanding,” said Dean Laurie Badzek.

The faculty endowment is a direct subset of the recent renaming and gift pledge made by Ross and Carol Nese and ensures that the University can compete for the scientists, scholars and educators with the greatest potential to contribute to the institution, its students, and the world. Specifically, the gift will impact scholarships, state-of-the-art infrastructure and technology, innovation funds, and the professorship endowment, all in support of providing our communities with nurses of the highest quality – which becomes increasingly more important as the global community combats the pandemic and nursing shortages.