June 16, 2017 | Nicholas P. Lang, MD, and Helen F. Lang, RN, recently received the College of Nursing Dean’s Award. The award, given annually, is reserved for those who have contributed to the growth and success of the college.
“I’ve been humbled by the generosity and support provided to the College of Nursing by our friends and alumni who help us meet our mission in education, research, practice and service,” said Cowan. “The Langs are tremendous friends of the college and epitomize the type of the involvement we value. We’re delighted to honor them with this award.”
The Langs have long supported the College of Nursing. In 2009, Nicholas Lang honored his wife with a gift to establish the Helen F. Lang, R.N., Scholarship in the UAMS College of Nursing. In 2014, that scholarship reached full endowment.
In 2015, the Langs established the Nicholas P. Lang, M.D., and Helen F. Lang, R.N., Professorship. Claudia Barone, DNP, EdD, a professor in the College of Nursing and nationally known expert in tobacco cessation, was invested in the professorship.
This year, the professorship was elevated to an endowed chair through additional gifts from the Langs and others. An endowed chair is among the highest academic honors a university can bestow on a faculty member and is established with gifts of $1 million. The chair will support Barone’s continued work in tobacco cessation.
“I want more nurses to become like Helen in the way she treated her patients and interacted with physicians and other staff,” said Nicholas Lang. “I want to see more nurses with those characteristics coming out of the College of Nursing and that’s what I am seeing and it’s the reason Helen and I will continue support the College of Nursing at UAMS.”
Nicholas and Helen Lang retired in 2014, but their health care careers crossed four decades before that. They met in 1977 in an operating room at the Veterans Administration hospital in Little Rock. They married two years later.
Nicholas Lang earned his medical degree at UAMS in 1973 and completed his residency at UAMS and the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock. He completed a fellowship at the Laboratory of Immunodiagnosis at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
He joined the UAMS College of Medicine in 1990 as a professor in the departments of Surgery, Radiology, and Physiology and Biophysics. He served as chief of staff at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System from 2001-2007. In 2007, he became chief medical officer for UAMS Medical Center and continued in that position until his retirement.
Helen Lang earned an associate degree in nursing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1975 and worked at various hospitals in the Little Rock area and at a VA hospital in Washington, D.C. In 1980, she returned to the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock and worked as a surgical nurse in general surgery, cardiovascular surgery, surgical endoscopy and urology until her retirement.