Jacelon Appointed Interim Associate Dean in College of Nursing

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Cynthia Jacelon, professor of nursing, has been appointed interim associate dean for academic affairs at the College of Nursing for the 2018-19 academic year. Prior to this appointment, Jacelon directed the college’s Ph.D. program for six years and has been teaching at UMass Amherst since 1994.

Certified in gerontological and rehabilitation nursing, Jacelon is a rehabilitation clinical nurse specialist. She is a fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the Gerontological Society of America.

In addition to more than 35 years of nursing practice with older adults and teaching nursing students, Jacelon’s area of research and expertise is promoting dignity, function, self-management of chronic health problems, and independence in older adults. In her research, she has explored the role of older individuals in affecting the outcomes of their hospitalization, the processes used by community-dwelling elders to manage chronic health problems, the meaning of dignity to elders, and the role of smart environments in promoting elders’ independence.

Jacelon’s work on the concept of dignity is internationally recognized, and her instrument to measure dignity, the Jacelon Attributed Dignity scale (JADS), has been used in several places around the globe including Greece and Iran.

Currently she is working on developing a tablet-computer application to support self-management in older adults. Jacelon is the Principal investigator of the NIH-funded UManage Center for Building the Science of Symptom Self-Management.