Hall of Fame, 2018
Lynn Stedman Adams
Lynn Stedman Adams, PhD, is an alumna of the Purdue Interdepartmental Nutrition Program with a concentration in Human Nutrition. She received her PhD in 2002, after which she went to UCLA as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Human Nutrition at the David Geffen School of Medicine, where she designed and implemented research investigating the chemo-preventive activities of natural products. Her BS was from the University of New Hampshire with a concentration in Animal Science. She is a senior Health Scientist Administrator with the National Institutes of Health, (Scientific Program Officer and Health Policy Analyst) with more than 20 years of experience directing the development and implementation of research initiatives, program policy, effective guidance, and health science. She is an expert in performing scientific and administrative reviews of proposals from a programmatic viewpoint.
Following her post-doc from 2006 to 2011, Lynn was a Research Fellow at the City of Hope National Cancer Center, where she led preclinical research studies on treatments for breast and prostate cancers. In 2011, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow placed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her role at this agency was to work at the intersection of science and federal policy in the National Center for Environmental Assessment. During her Fellowship, Lynn co-founded and served on the Executive Editorial Board of the science policy blog, “Sci on the Fly.”
Throughout her career, Lynn has provided oversight, coordination and direction for the on-going systematic evaluation of research and scientific issues involving biomedical research and sciences, biology, oncology, women’s health, and research protocols for federal agencies (i.e., Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Health), universities (i.e., UCLA and Purdue), and medical centers (i.e., City of Hope National Medical Center and Beckman Research Institute). She has a proven ability to define scientific and research policy and organizational strategy requirements and communicate complex science/policy concepts to a wide array of audiences. She is known for her visionary leadership in strategic program development activities and funding opportunities.
Since 2014, Lynn has served as a Program Director at the National Institute for Nursing Research (NINR), in the Office of End-of-Life and Palliative Care Research/NINR Centers Program where she oversees the Palliative Care Portfolio and the NINR Centers Program. In this capacity, she provides scientific oversight for funded research projects, project management, strategic planning, and the development of policies and procedures. She collaborates with a multidisciplinary team of health care experts and assists with creation and maintenance of research portfolios for basic, clinical, translational, and scientific research projects.
Outside of her job at NIH, she is interested in nutrition and environmental science policy. She was honored as a Diamond of the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University in 2016.
Lynn is married and has an 8-year old daughter. She is a championship rider and shows dressage horses in her spare time.
Carol J. Boushey
Carol J. Boushey, PhD, MPH, RDN, earned her B.Sc. from University of Washington, Seattle and MPH from University of Hawaii. Her PhD was in Nutritional Sciences with a specialization in Nutritional Epidemiology (University of Washington).
As a Registered Dietitian/nutritionist, Carol worked for the Washington State Health Department; the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center; and the School of Public Health, University of Hawaii as the Field Training Coordinator for the dietetic training program. These diverse experiences, reinforced and confirmed her long-time goal to achieve a doctorate degree and pursue nutrition research addressing health disparities and methods to better communicate and disseminate nutritional discoveries to at risk populations.
Her first academic position was at Southern Illinois University where she also served as Program Director for the Dietetic Internship. In 1999, Carol moved to the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University. She became an associate professor in 2005 and a full professor in 2011. S served as the Director of the Coordinated Program in Dietetics from 1999 to 2009. While at Purdue she created major opportunities for undergraduate study abroad, developing affiliations with Dublin Institute of Technology/Trinity College, Ireland; and Curtin University in Perth, Australia. These affiliations still continue. In 2011, Carol took a position as an Associate Research Professor in the Epidemiology Program at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center where she directs the Nutrition Support Shared Resource. She also holds an adjunct professor position in the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University.
Her doctoral work on folic acid fortification contributed to mandatory folic acid fortification; subsequently reducing the prevalence of neural tube defects in the US. She has continued to do research along the translational continuum addressing dietary exposures and their influence on health promotion and disease prevention among diverse population groups. She conceived the Technology Assisted Dietary Assessment (TADA) system and continues to collaborate with Engineering Professors at Purdue. The TADA system uses mobile phones to capture images of eating occasions which are sent to a cloud-based server for image analysis to identify foods and beverages. For this work, she and her colleagues hold two patents.
Carol is active in professional organizations, including AND, ASN and the National Nutrient Databank Conference. She received the Elaine Monsen Award from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation. Carol serves on the Board of Editors of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and Nutrition Today and is a co-editor for the fourth edition of the Elsevier publication, Nutrition in the Treatment and Prevention of Disease, released in 2017.
Carol is married to Jim Donahue. Like Carol, he is a Boiler fan as demonstrated this past December 2017 when the Purdue Women's basketball team landed at Honolulu airport for a basketball tournament. He welcomed each player with a traditional Hawaiian floral lei and a “Go Boilers” cheer. They have one daughter, Erin Donahue (West Lafayette High School graduate), who lives in the Seattle area with her husband, Andrew Parsons (an Aussie), and their 2 dogs.
Leslie A. Lytle
Dr. Leslie A. Lytle received a B.S. in Medical Dietetics from Pennsylvania State University and her Master’s in Education (with a minor in Nutrition and Medical Sociology) from Purdue University, during which she was a teaching assistant for our Coordinated Program in Dietetics. She completed a PhD degree in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan in 1988 and she did postdoctoral training in Cardiovascular Health Behavior at the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests have been child and adolescent health; childhood obesity prevention; eating behavior change; ecological and psychosocial approaches to health promotion and disease prevention; designing and evaluating health behavior change programs; diet assessment; and health behavior change theories.
Leslie is a professor in two departments of the Gillings School of Global Public Health, Health Behavior and Nutrition, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). She was Chair of the Department of Health Behavior at UNC from 2012-2017. Prior to joining UNC, Leslie was on the faculty of the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health in the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health for more than 20 years.
Dr. Lytle’s research focuses on the health promotion of youth and young adults, particularly preventing obesity and promoting healthful diet and physical activity through school, family, and environmental approaches. She has been the principal investigator on several large National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies, including CATCH (NHLBI), TEENS (NCI), TAAG (NHLBI), IDEA (NCI), ECHO (NHLBI), and CHOICES (NHLBI). Her trials have provided much of the foundation for public health recommendations by the Institute of Medicine for schools, communities, and researchers. She chaired the Steering Committee for the EARLY trials (NHLBI) and has served on many expert panels for the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She recently completed work with NIH on the Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) project that uses an interdisciplinary framework to identify data collection tools for obesity researchers spanning biological, psychosocial, behavioral and environmental domains. She currently works with the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity (NCCOR) sponsored by NIH, CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and USDA to promote the use of common measures and methods across childhood obesity prevention and research initiatives.
Leslie is on the board of directors for the Danone Institute in North America and also serves on the Danone Institute International Board. She has published over 240 articles in the peer-reviewed literature and has taught courses in theories of health behavior change, community nutrition interventions, and behavioral and social aspects of health. She has been a prolific graduate mentor and in significant demand as an invited speaker for symposia, nationally and internationally.
Leslie has two children and four grandchildren and enjoys spending time with her family and friends, especially out of doors.
Barbara Mayfield
Barbara (Black) Mayfield graduated from the department in 1979 with majors in Dietetics and Foods and Nutrition in Business. Although no minor existed, she took extra coursework in Communications, which has continued to be her focus along with nutrition. During undergrad, Barb was active in the school, serving on the student council and as president of the Purdue Student Home Economics Association and the Indiana Student Home Economics Association. She was awarded the Stokely Van Camp Silver Trivet Award, the department’s highest student award, her senior year. For the past four decades, Barb has stayed connected with the department.
After obtaining an M.S. in Human Nutrition with a minor in Communication from Cornell University, Barb and her husband Joe, returned to the area, raising their three children in Delphi. For the first part of her career, Barb worked in private practice, consulted in long-term care, was an early intervention specialist, served the White/Carroll County WIC program, and was president of Noteworthy Creations, Inc., a company she founded to provide training and create nutrition education resources. During this time Barb served on the Alumni Board of the College of Consumer and Family Sciences, was a frequent guest speaker for classes, and presented an annual video conference along with Olivia Wood and Donna Vandergraff, to review the annual meeting of the American Dietetic Association, now the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She was awarded the Young Professional Award by the college in 1993.
From 2000-2016 Barb returned to the department to teach. Courses she taught included Essentials of Nutrition, Public Health Nutrition, Diet Selection and Planning, Life Cycle Nutrition, and the course which had been her favorite as a student, Nutrition Communication. Barb received the department’s teaching award three times. She was awarded the Outstanding Dietetics Educator award from the Indiana Academy and from the Nutrition and Dietetic Educators and Preceptors of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in 2016.
While at Purdue, Barb was able to work on a number of special projects. She received a faculty fellowship from the Center for Families in 2005, allowing her to establish the Promoting Family Meals Project. She completed two USDA TEAM Nutrition grants, one creating a teen health curriculum for the Maryland Department of Education and the second creating the RECIPE program with Cooperative Extension and the Indiana State Department of Education. Barb coordinated the development of the award-winning online version of NUTR 303 along with three other faculty members. In 2015 she wrote Nutrition for Everyone, an electronic textbook for consumer level nutrition courses.
Since retiring from Purdue in 2016, Barb founded Nutrition Communicator, LLC, to continue helping current and future nutrition professionals become proficient communicators. She is serving as author-editor on a nutrition communication textbook for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, coordinating the work of more than 45 authors. The book will be published in 2019. She is excited that the legacy of NUTR 424 will impact generations of RDNs through this book.
