WesternU has received the deed for 150 acres of land in Lebanon, Oregon, marking a major milestone in the University’s plans to expand its Oregon campus and establish a graduate program in behavioral health in the future. The land transfer is the cornerstone of a historic philanthropic gift supporting WesternU’s long-term vision for advancing health care education across the Pacific Northwest. 

Read the full story: WesternU receives 150-acre land gift to expand health care education in Oregon | WesternU News

College of Graduate Nursing Associate Dean and Professor Dr. Rodney Hicks and colleagues Dr. Judy Berg and Dr. Mary Ellen Roberts served as Guest Editors for the Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioner (September 2025) issue. This was JAANP's 8th special edition.

Hicks, R. W., Roberts, M. E., & Berg, J. A. (2025).  Guest Editorial. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 37(9), 477-478. DOI# 10.1097/JXX.0000000000001184

Berg, J. A., Hicks, R. W. Roberts, M. E. (2025).  Strategies used by seasoned nurse practitioners or identified by artificial intelligence to encourage nurse practitioners in practice to publish. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners,37(9), 479-482. DOI# 10.1097/JXX.0000000000001182 

Hicks, R. W., Roberts, M. E., Berg, J. A. & Chan, G. K. (2025). The importance of knowing what your credentials mean. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 37(9), 485-490.  DOI# 10.1097/JXX.0000000000001183

Costner-Lark, A., Allen, K., Gordon, J., Dresser, S. & Hicks, R. W. (2025).  The lifecycle of a grant.  From application to impact. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners,37(9),  517-526.  DOI# 10.1097/JXX.0000000000001186

Dr. Hicks joined his colleagues from the University of Central Florida on this important public health update:

Blackwell, C. W., Castillo, H. L., Armstrong, F., Guido-Sanz, F., & Hicks, R. W. (2025). Mpox: A reemerging public health emergency. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 21, 105491. https://doi.org.10.1016/j.nurpra.2025.105491

Dr. Michelle Steinauer and her co-authors have a paper featured in the Editor’s Highlights webpage in Nature Communications.  This is a webpage of recent research called “Microbiology and infectious diseases” and Madlen Luckner chose to feature their article, titled “Genes linked to schistosome resistance identified in a genome-wide association study of African snail vectors” https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61760-8.

The Editors’ Highlights pages aim to showcase the 50 best papers recently published in an area, and they routinely replace papers as more great research is published at Nature Communications.

The webpage is linked prominently on the journal homepage (https://www.nature.com/ncomms/) and a dedicated Editors’ Highlights page (https://www.nature.com/ncomms/editorshighlights ).

Read more about this paper: WesternU COMP-Northwest faculty publishes research on genes linked to schistosome resistance | WesternU News

College of Dental Medicine Professor Dr. Q. Quinn Li and his collaborators recently published a Nature Communications (impact factor 14.7) paper revealing a new way that cells fine-tune gene activity by controlling how pre-mRNA molecules are processed. This discovery shows that natural antisense RNAs or long non-coding RNA can redirect pre-mRNA processing under stress, revealing a fundamental strategy that cells use to adapt to their environment.



The title of the paper is A cis-natural antisense RNA regulates alternative polyadenylation of SlSPX5 under Pi starvation in tomato. (This is the second Nature Communications paper published by Dr. Li in recent months).