Nursing professor headed to Boston

Nursing Professor Ann Burgess, the school's first faculty member to hold an endowed chair, has taught her last class on forensic science as a full professor at Penn. Burgess, largely credited with developing the popularity of forensic science at the University, will now head to Boston College to develop its forensic science program. "It has been very exciting being part of a number one nursing school and I will miss being at Penn on full-time basis," she said. The professor, whose victimology and forensic science classes are lauded by students in all schools, will continue teaching at Penn about once a week on an emeritus basis. Burgess' research specialities include studying violent crimes among youth, the victims of rape and post-traumatic stress among crime victims. And through her unique teaching style, Burgess has helped develop the forensics classes into some of the most popular courses at Penn. "One of the reasons I took the class is because many people I know said that it was a very good class," Wharton junior Jason Makuch said. Burgess, who has been a faculty member at Penn since 1983, already spends roughly half her week in Boston and half her week at Penn. She cited Boston College's close proximity to her Massachusetts home as the main reason for her departure. "Given the fact that I live only 10 minutes away from BC, I decided to accept a position there," Burgess said. Having helped develop the popularity of forensics at Penn, Burgess aims to start a similar forensics cluster at BC, but with a special focus on elderly abuse and Internet crime. "My goal behind teaching is to be able to take the field on forensic nursing and make it knowledgeable to all students because I think that it enriches the academic repertoire," Burgess said. Prior to her arrival at Penn, Burgess was a faculty member at Boston College, where she earned her doctoral degree in nursing. "We will miss Ann very much but know that we will continue to have a good friend at Boston College," Interim Nursing Dean Neville Strumpf said in a statement. Burgess' classes draw hundreds of students from all four undergraduate schools at Penn. "She knows an amazing amount of information on the subject and it has been truly a very good experience being in her class," said Makuch, who is enrolled in Burgess' Victimology class. Burgess credits the popularity of her classes to the skills taught during lecture. "I think that my classes give students a different way of analyzing problems and the cognitive skills learned will help them in whatever field they go into," she said. Burgess tries to make her classes more dynamic by bringing in outside speakers and taking field trips to particularly relevant sites. "I often bring in outside speakers, such as people from the FBI and the police, to supplement class knowledge with real world examples," she noted. And a year ago, Burgess took her Victimology class to interview inmates at a local prison. As the van Ameringen Chair in Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, Burgess has also been a pioneer in researching women's responses to sexual assaults. The impact of her research has reached outside the University. She has been asked to consult for many cases, including the infamous Menendez brothers murder trial. Currently, she is working on a case in Mississippi.