Three Ohio State faculty members will be awarded with honorary doctorate degrees by Denison University for their work in developing COVID-19 protocols, testing operations, research and public education. Credit: Courtesy of Dr. Peter Mohler, Dr. Abigial Norris Turner and Dr. Alison Norris
Three Ohio State faculty members were awarded honorary doctorate degrees by Denison University Saturday at Denison’s 180th commencement ceremony for their work in developing COVID-19 protocols, testing operations, research and public education.
Denison honored sisters Dr. Alison Norris and Abigail Norris Turner plus Peter Mohler after the faculty members worked with the college last fall to open Denison’s campus safely and adopt new COVID-19 regulations. They were also recognized for their work with the state of Ohio and Ohio State.
“In helping society understand and navigate this year of instability and uncertainty, they have embodied the core spirit of higher education and the liberal arts in service of humanity’s most profound challenges, and it’s really our honor to be able to honor them,” Denison University President Adam Weinberg said in an email.
Norris, an associate professor of epidemiology in the College of Medicine and the College of Public Health, said she has studied infectious diseases, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual health for over 20 years. Her work in the pandemic began with combatting restricted reproductive healthcare access, but later turned to COVID-19.
By adapting Columbus Public Health’s COVID-19 protocols for Ohio State, Norris said she helped set up the university’s contact tracing program at the beginning of the fall semester — organizing case investigation and tracing to accommodate surveillance testing thousands of students.
Turner, a professor in the College of Medicine and the College of Public Health, typically works as an infectious disease epidemiologist and conducts research on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in Ohio and internationally. Like Norris, she said since the start of the pandemic, she has worked with Ohio State and the Ohio Department of Health.
In the summer of 2020, Turner led a project with the Ohio Department of Health to understand the prevalence of COVID-19 infections in the state, she said. Turner and her team conducted face-to-face household surveys of 727 adults throughout the state and determined 0.9 percent of the sample were infected during the study, with total COVID-19 cases about 3.5 times higher than known state-documented cases.
Norris and Turner also worked together, giving dozens of community lectures about COVID-19 education and prevention and advising the Bexley School District and Denison University on COVID-19 protocols.
“In applying their extraordinary expertise and agility as epidemiologists to COVID-19, Dr. Norris Turner and Dr. Norris have exemplified research in action and the study of public health as public service,” Weinberg said.
Turner and Norris used their “complementary strengths” to help each other throughout the pandemic, Norris said. Turner said that as sisters, they were able to leverage their long-term trust during their “fierce” and “exhausting” work with COVID-19 for the past year.
When Norris worked overtime to build Ohio State’s contact tracing program in the fall, Turner said she stepped in to help advise her graduate students. When Turner needed help in the summer for her survey with the Department of Health, Norris said she would step up and go wherever Turner needed.
“We can rely on each other to support each other, and that’s not unique. You don’t have to be a sibling with somebody to have that, but the fact that I do have that with my sibling is very fun,” Norris said.
But collaboration extends far beyond the three Ohio State faculty honored by Denison, Norris said. She said success during the pandemic was made possible only by dedicated individuals working together for months — over the weekend and into the night — on complex problems presented by the pandemic.
Weinberg said Denison selected Mohler for his oversight of COVID-19 testing solutions, therapeutic trials, diagnostic platforms and outreach to lower-resourced hospitals and organizations across Ohio, allowing underserved communities access to testing facilities.
Mohler said he focuses on causes of sudden cardiac death in young children and genetic predispositions to fatal cardiac arrhythmias. He also leads research operations to build “research with impact” within the Wexner Medical Center, he said.
“Very early on in the pandemic, if we can remember that far back, they didn’t even have equipment or testing supplies to be able to swab people’s noses,” Mohler said. “For the testing, a lot of that work was done with our team here at Ohio State in partnership with Batelle, as well as the Ohio Department of Health.”
Throughout the pandemic, he said he worked to connect universities like Denison, nursing homes, assisted care facilities and prisons to the Wexner Medical Center’s COVID-19 testing facilities and testing kits created by the College of Engineering and the College of Dentistry.
“While I’m very grateful to win this award, I’m really representing thousands — literally thousands — of researchers, and physicians, and nurses, and frontline staff and administrators, not only here at Ohio State, but around the state and the country that stepped up during this time,” Mohler said.
