Through her generosity and expertise, Research Professor Maureen Groër (MSN ’80) is helping accelerate laboratory research in the College of Nursing.
Groër, now 80, has devoted over 40 years of her nursing career to biobehavioral research, investigating the links between biology and behavior.
The new College of Nursing Building includes the Groër Family VolBiome Lab, a 1,200-square-foot state-of-the-art facility named in honor of Groër’s $250,000 gift, which created the Dr. Maureen Groër Nursing Research Endowment. Annual earnings from the endowment will support lab research projects by funding equipment purchases, publication expenses, professional development opportunities, consultants’ fees, and data collection and analysis.
Groër will conduct her own research in the lab and mentor junior faculty studying the connection between what happens in the gut and what happens in the brain.
“The gut is like a grand master of many other systems of the body,” Groër said.
From Polio Survivor to Research Professor
Groër decided she wanted to be a nurse after surviving polio as a child.
During her hospitalization and rehabilitation, she was cared for by a small army of nurses. The experience sparked her desire to care for the sick.
After becoming a nurse, Groër earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Newton College of the Sacred Heart in Boston, a master’s degree in biology from Boston University, a doctorate in human physiology and biophysics from the University of Illinois Medical Center, and a Master of Science in Nursing from UT.
From 1977 to 1992, Groër served on the college’s faculty as an associate professor, professor, and director of the doctoral program.
After a five-year stint at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Institute of Health Professions in Boston, Groër returned to UT from 1997 to 2006. She was associate dean for research and evaluation, conducting research and mentoring colleagues in the small Kenneth Walker Biological Laboratory.
In 2006 Groër UT left for the University of South Florida, and the College of Nursing’s biological research “took a hiatus,” in the words of Associate Dean of Research Tami Wyatt.
In 2022, after retiring from USF, Groër moved back to Knoxville to be closer to her grown sons and grandchildren. Though in her late 70s, she wasn’t ready to hang up her lab coat. She returned to the college as a research professor to continue her own research, present guest lectures, and mentor junior faculty.
Groër’s return has helped reinvigorate the college’s biological nursing research. And now, Wyatt said, “It’s definitely part of our research model.”
Groër said the name VolBiome was coined by the research team.
“We always try to have nifty names for grants and projects,” she said. One researcher suggested that the lab’s name should have Vol in it; Groër said they should add Biome since that’s the focus of their research.
By emphasizing the biological angle, the VolBiome Lab expands the college’s research, which has traditionally been more focused on behavioral and social sciences.
Eye to the Future
In the Groër Family VolBiome Lab, nursing faculty will study issues at the intersection of biology and behavior, such as the links between stress and immunity, the health impacts of childhood trauma, the long-term effects of low-birthweight babies spending long stretches in the neonatal intensive care unit, and neonatal abstinence syndrome, a condition that occurs in newborns when they are exposed to certain drugs such as opioids before birth.
Groër herself is analyzing 740 samples of blood and cells collected from pregnant Hispanic women. The data will help her study the metabolism of expectant mothers to look for early pregnancy clues that can predict dangerous labor outcomes like pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes.
“We explore relationships in new ways using very sophisticated artificial intelligence computer-assisted approaches,” she said.
Groër is mentoring several junior faculty engaged in biological research in the VolBiome.
She is working alongside Assistant Professor Ji Youn Yoo and Research Assistant Professor Anjuit Sarkar on the TennWell Project, funded through the UT System’s Grand Challenge Grants Program. The project’s goal is to understand how social determinants of health and physiological factors such as the gut microbiome affect academic performance and overall well-being in adolescents.
Both Yoo, of South Korea, and Sarkar, of India, completed postdoctoral study with Groër at USF and followed her to UT.
“Yoo is a nurse with strong microbiology training and is interested in early-life stress and stressful occupations and the microbiome,” Groër said. “Sarkar has a PhD in genetics, and he does bioinformatics analysis for the team.”
Two other junior faculty members working with Groër in the lab are Assistant Professor Katherine “Katie” Morgan, who is studying microbiome and metabolome in neurodegenerative diseases, and Assistant Professor Jennifer Miller, who is focusing on neonatal abstinence syndrome.
As the college begins a new chapter in the scope of its research, Groër’s name on the lab is a footnote to her role in making that happen.
“The fact that the College of Nursing has a sophisticated lab like that makes us premier,” she said.
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CONTACT:
Kara Clark Cardwell ([email protected], 865-974-9498)