Welcome New Faculty
Get to know the College of Nursing's newest faculty members.
The College of Nursing continues to welcome new faculty this summer through the Faculty 500 initiative at the University of Florida, which aims to enhance teaching and research and to position the university to continue to be one of the very best research universities in the nation. In the spring, the college welcomed four new faculty members. This summer, three new members have already started their faculty appointments with several more anticipated through the summer and fall. In total, the college will hire 13 faculty members who will not only provide the resources to help decrease the nursing shortage and educate future nurses, but they will also help move UF even closer to becoming a Top 5 university by reducing undergraduate class size, which is a metric U.S. News & World Report uses when determining rankings.
Staja "Star" Booker, PhD, RN
Assistant Professor Staja “Star” Booker, PhD, RN, is an early career nurse scientist, with a passion to understand and reduce chronic pain in older adults. Her areas of expertise are aging, pain assessment and management, and health/pain disparities in ethnic/racial minorities. She has made significant contributions in these areas, including developing the first nursing clinical practice recommendations and a model for pain assessment and pain measurement in older African Americans. Booker’s teaching responsibilities will be focused in the BSN program, as well as mentoring undergraduate and graduate nursing and health science students. Booker was recognized as a “Great 100 Nurses of Louisiana” in October 2018, and she was also profiled as a nurse researcher in Louisiana Next Magazine in 2018. She received her BSN from Grambling State University in 2010, MSN from Pennsylvania State University in 2012 and PhD from the University of Iowa in 2017.
Hwayoung Cho, PhD, RN
Assistant Professor Hwayoung Cho, PhD, RN, has expertise in nursing informatics, mobile health, usability, symptom science, innovative research methods and underserved populations. Her research has focused on using technology for underserved populations in order to reduce health disparities, promote health outcomes and improve health-related quality of life. Cho has conducted multilevel usability evaluations using the most appropriate evaluation methods at each stage throughout the development process of the technology, including quantitative as well as qualitative approaches, such as an innovative eye-tracking method, a card sorting technique, a heuristic evaluation, a cognitive walkthrough, think-aloud protocols, focus groups and in-depth interviews. Cho recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in nursing informatics at the Columbia University School of Nursing. She also received her PhD in Nursing from Columbia University in 2017. She received her Master of Science in Nursing from Hanyang University School of Nursing in Seoul, South Korea, in 2012.
Victoria Menzies, PhD, RN, FAAN
Associate Professor Victoria Menzies, PhD, RN, FAAN, has broad clinical training as a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist, and her doctoral training in research methods has provided an ideal foundation for examining the biobehavioral factors in human health and disease. Over the past 14 years, her research program has focused on improved symptom self-management in individuals diagnosed with chronic pain conditions, specifically those with fibromyalgia. Menzies’ previous work in the field has centered on the development and testing of effective nonpharmacologic symptom self-management strategies. Her current program of research includes investigating mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of chronic widespread pain using metabolomic approaches with an aim to determine the clinical and biological risks that contribute to the development and treatment of chronic pain conditions. Menzies’ teaching expertise has included undergraduate and graduate mental health nursing, master’s and doctoral-level nursing theory and RN-BSN online education related to evidence-based practice. Menzies earned a nursing diploma in 1969 before returning for a bachelor’s in English and a master’s in education. She earned a master’s in nursing in 2000 and a PhD in 2004, both from the University of Virginia.
