Alden R. Kent, PA-C/LCSW arrived at JMU this fall with 28 years of experience as a Physician Assistant and 16 years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. My PA education at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia and my Social Work education in Concord, New Hampshire through the University of Connecticut lead me to spend the majority of my working life in Maine. His experiences include working in family medicine, emergency medicine, surgery, and addiction medicine. Mr. Kent’s clinical social work degree has enabled him to offer counseling through mental health agencies as well as through private practice.

“What is unique about my career path in my opinion is the combination of medicine with clinical social work. It has led me to get to know patients/clients in an intimate manner that only comes through both medical work and counseling. I feel better equipped to deal with the whole person and truly start to see him/her through a biopsychosocial eye. Therefore I am able to offer treatment and prevention strategies that are complimentary to the person in a more thorough manner.”

Mr. Kent’s decision to move to Virginia to take a job with JMU in the Physician Assistant program stems from his undergraduate schooling at Randolph-Macon College where he developed a fondness for Virginia in addition to discovering a family connection to the Old Dominion State. Now that he is here, Mr. Kent finds the JMU family (faculty, staff, and students) even been more enjoyable than he imagined when he first came here for an interview. “This is an extremely comfortable environment in which to work. I am truly excited to bring my clinical experiences to JMU and translate them into part of the educational and clinical experiences for our PA students.”

Dr. Cynthia Cadieux joined the JMU Health Sciences faculty in August 2004 and teaches in the Dietetics program. As a 1988 alumnus of JMU, returning as an Assistant Professor has been an experiences as things have changed over the past 16 years. Dr. Cadieux and her husband live in the Great Bridge/Hickory area of Chesapeake, Virginia and are rearing three boys, Zachary who is 9, Benjamin who is 12, and Matthew who is 15 and a golden retriever. While she commutes on the weekends to be home with her family, Dr. Cadieux, who was married at the Muhlenburg Lutheran Church on East Market Street thinks of Harrisonburg as her home away from home.

Before returning to JMU, most of her professional career in nutrition and in the Burn/Trauma Unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and also became the Clinical Nutrition Manager there. As clinical nutrition manager she was responsible for clinical nutrition services for all patients and for the patient foodservice. This was a demanding and rewarding job. After spending 10 years teaching in the dietetic program at Tidewater Community College part-time, the call of academia drew her to attended Old Dominion University where she earned a PhD in 2002 in Urban Services/Urban Education with a concentration in higher education administration.

Cadieux is active in her profession and serves on local, state, and national boards. She holds a career studies certificates in Gerontology and Character Education. When she’s not exciting JMU students about nutrition, Cadieux co-authors a column titled Teaching Innovations for The Educator’s Resource, the newsletter for the Nutrition Educators of Health Professionals dietetics practice group of The American Dietetic Association. Her research interests include how to develop a sense of community in the classroom, online and face-to-face, human behavior as related to health and wellness, and most recently nutrition and Autism Spectrum Disorders. She has presented various projects over the years nationally and internationally, most recently in Toronto, Montreal, and Valencia, Spain. We welcome her back to JMU and look forward to many happy and productive years with Dr. Cadieux as a member of the JMU community.

Dr. Kristi Lewis joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences in August 2004. She teaches Epidemiology, Environmental Health and Foundations of Health Sciences.

Dr. Lewis grew up in Prince George County, Virginia and graduated from Prince George High School. She attended Virginia Commonwealth University on a full academic scholarship and completed a B.S. in Biology in 1996. In 1998, she completed her Master of Public Health degree from the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University. After completing her master degree, she pursued a doctorate in Research and Evaluation at Virginia Commonwealth University, which she completed in May 2004.

Dr. Lewis came to James Madison University with seven years of public health experience. Experiences included working as an Epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health in the Crater Health District where she investigated disease outbreaks, assisted with bioterrorism planning and conducted surveillance. In this position, she also collaborated with local hospital personnel, environmental health specialists and public health nurses to ensure proper infection control measures were being implemented to protect the general public.

Other public health experiences include serving nearly four years as an Education Coordinator for the Virginia Institute for Developmental Disabilities, serving as an Epidemiology Specialist with the Virginia Vaccine for Children Programs in the Division of Immunization at the Virginia Department of Health, and working as a Clinical Research Associate at the Massey Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Dr. Lewis just received a summer research grant from the College of Integrated Sciences and Technology where she will study the folic acid intake among college students. Other areas of research interest include infection control in hospital and long-term care settings and women’s health.

When not working, Dr. Lewis enjoys working out at the gym, watching movies and reading.

Dr. David Cockley has been a professor at JMU since January of 1996. Since that time he has been the primary instructor for the Values in Health Care course (introductions to health ethics and health law), Health Policy & Politics, the Career Seminar in Health Services Administration, and Long-Term Care Administration.

Prior to his appointment at JMU, David was the Executive Director of Pendleton Community Care, a rural community-based primary care center in West Virginia, which collected multiple awards for its community-based approach to care and its balance of clinical services and community-oriented health care initiatives. He has built on this practice base to orient his teaching, scholarship and service work at JMU to the real-world practice community.

Dr. Cockley has been particularly focused on interdisciplinary program offerings including several cross-disciplinary task forces and courses with other health and human services majors. Regular offerings include an annual field course in Rural Health Care: an Interdisciplinary Approach, an annual HHS Poverty Simulation, and an annual Multicultural Sensitivity workshop, again for HHS students.
Beyond JMU, Dr. Cockley teaches regularly at Alderson-Broaddus College (West Virginia) where he provides an annual course for Masters’ degree Physician Assistant students in Office & Personnel Management, and Eastern Mennonite University, where he teaches a Health Systems and Organization course for nurses in the Adult Degree Completion Program. David is also a regular presenter to the Blue Ridge Area Health Education Center’s Health Interpreter program that trains community personnel in the Valley to act as health translators for patients with limited English skills.

His scholarly pursuits include research and study of Rural Health Access problems including recent work with Dr. Stephen Wright (ISAT/Geography) on the distribution of dental providers in Virginia and an on-going study of Quality Measures in multi-level long-term care facilities.

David serves on multiple campus and community boards to bring community and service components to the classroom. He presently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Northwestern Virginia Health Services Agency (monitoring Certificate of Public Need applications), the Virginia Rural Health Association, the Virginia Rural Health Resource Center, and the Blue Ridge Area Health Education Center. On-campus, he serves on the JMU Institutional Review Board, which monitors faculty and student research on human subjects, and the JMU Honor Council.

While Dr. Jeanne Wenos' home department at JMU is Health Sciences (H.S.) she teaches a variety of courses in both the H.S. and Kinesiology departments. The common link across departments is her expertise in disability/diversity and movement, including learning and controlling motor skills from both a sports and different-abilities perspective (Kinesiology) and from a functional perspective (Health Sciences- Occupational Therapy). In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Dr. Wenos supervises students in the Physical and Health Education program (PHE), a 5-year program culminating in an M.A.T. degree; a joint effort between the Kinesiology and Health Sciences departments. Her responsibilities also include teaching Health 100 Personal Wellness which she particularly enjoys team-teaching a class with her husband, David, who also teaches in the Health Sciences department. Aside from teaching, Dr. Wenos is the new coordinator for students at JMU who plan to attend dental school.

Jeanne is a graduate of Wheaton College, Wheaton Illinois (B.S.) and Indiana University (M.S. and P.E.D.). She and David have three children, Taylor (16), Parker (13) and Haley (12) who attend the Harrisonburg City Schools. Prior to teaching at JMU, Jeanne worked to develop the Adapted Physical Education program in the Harrisonburg City Schools and taught on an adjunct basis at both EMU and JMU. Before that, the Wenos family moved to Harrisonburg from the state of Washington where she was on faculty and taught in the undergraduate and graduate programs at Western Washington University (4 years) and at Southern Illinois University (1 year).