Archive for April, 2011
Semana de la Raza activities begins May 2 for Cinco de Mayo
April 30th, 2011
“Semana de la Raza: Uniting all the Americas” kicks off a week full of Cinco de Mayo activities on Monday, May 2, at California State University, Fresno featuring cultural events and performances.
Semana de la Raza is a weeklong cultural and educational program in observance of the Mexican holiday, Cinco de Mayo which commemorates the Mexican defeat of the French in 1862 Historians have cited the event as a factor in the North defeating the South in the U.S. Civil War.
All Semana events are free and open to the public.
At noon Monday, there will be an art display and traditional Aztec and Native American dances will be performed in the Free Speech Area in celebration of “Indigenous Day.”
On Tuesday, May 3, Fresno State’s Teatro TORTILLA presents a small performance of “College Me” at noon in The Pit on the lower level of the University Student Union. From 4-7 p.m. panelists will discuss societal issues affecting both men and women, particularly from the immigrant population.
During Multi-Cultural on Wednesday, May 4, student clubs will display clothes and provide food from different backgrounds at a multicultural fair celebrating the many cultures around the world. It will be at noon in The Pit.
For the official Cinco de Mayo observance on Thursday, May 5, Mariachi Santa Cruz will perform at noon in the Free Speech Area.
The CineCulture series concludes the weeklong observance on Immigration Day, Friday, May 6, with a showing at 5:30 p.m. of the documentary, “An Unfinished Dream,” in the Leon S. and Pete P. Peters Educational Center located in the Student Recreation Center. After the screening, film maker Margarita Reyes leads a discussion about the film and immigration.
Tags: Cinco De, Cinco De Mayo, De Mayo, Mayo
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Health improvement outreach: Phone coaching tried for rural diabetes patients
April 29th, 2011
Would it improve the health of diabetes patients in rural areas if student pharmacists telephoned them weekly and used motivational interviewing techniques in their conversations? And what kind of impact would the telephone calls have on the students? Those are questions faculty in the WSU College of Pharmacy and WSU Extension are trying to answer. Ten pharmacy students voluntarily trained to be telephone coaches and then each called four to five patients a week for eight consecutive weeks. The students just completed the telephoning phase of the project. All calls were recorded and, in addition, students completed a three-page checklist after every call. They identified the various topics of conversation, such as whether they helped the patient plan for coping with a difficult situation or setting and achieving a goal.
The students were trained, through the use of motivational interviewing and telephone coaching, to coach patients in goal setting to modify their lifestyles to better manage their diabetes.
It is too early to determine if there are positive results for our patients, but we can say that, anecdotally, the coaches and some patients are providing very positive feedback, said Linda Garrelts MacLean, an associate dean in the College of Pharmacy and one of two principal investigators on the project. For example, one week a patient reported she had made an appointment to see her doctor, which is a positive step, and the doctor found her blood sugar was down. When the student coach asked the patient what influenced her behavior, she replied she knew the coach would be calling to talk with her and so she got on her bicycle and rode it. The patient thanked the coach for checking on her. Another patient who was resistant in the beginning to any form of exercise except water aerobics reported she was starting to feel better because of improved nutrition and she had enough energy to consider adding walking once a week to her exercise routine. Cost effective strategies are desperately needed to improve self management of diabetes, MacLean said. This could reduce costly and painful diabetic complications in rural areas where the rates of diabetes are unusually high, she said. In addition to studying the information gathered during the telephoning phase, the faculty will give the patients a post-calling questionnaire to assess their perception of their ability to take care of their diabetes, how they plan to handle any depression, if they can practice good eating, if they are willing to seek out a health care provider when they have questions, and many other aspects. The researchers also will look at the patients blood sugar levels, blood pressure and weight before and after the coaching sessions. Shirley M. Broughton, a faculty member at the WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center, is the other co-principal investigator on the project.
Tags: Diabetes Patients, Patients
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Photo: Vern Ehlers takes stage at Big House, getting honorary U-M degree
April 28th, 2011
ANN ARBOR — Pop quiz from the Big House: Why was longtime Congressman Vern Ehlers from Grand Rapids sharing a big stage today with film director Spike Lee and Ford Motor Co. chairman Bill Ford Jr.?
They all got honorary degrees at University of Michigan commencement ceremonies.
Also honored: journalist Eugene Robinson and billionaire Miami Dolphins owner (and U-M donor) Stephen Ross.
Ehlers, a physicist and retired congressman, was honored with a “doctor of laws” degree.
In voting to honor Ehlers, University of Michigan trustees cited these accomplishments:
“Ehlers has devoted his life to promoting excellence in science and to the highest ideals of public service. He began his undergraduate studies at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and his doctorate in nuclear physics in 1960. He taught and conducted research at Berkeley, then returned to Calvin College in 1966 as a professor of physics, and served as a volunteer science adviser to then-U.S. Rep. Gerald R. Ford.
“Elected to Congress in 1993, he was a member of the House of Representatives until his retirement in 2011. He insisted on research to help identify the needs of the public and was key to the passage of the America COMPETES Act of 2010, which will apply scientific research toward the creation of an innovation economy. In 2002 the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented Ehlers with the prestigious Philip Hauge Abelson Award for supporting science in Congress.”
Related:
Photo gallery: UM commencement
Gov. Snyder jokes about his University of Michigan roommate’s ‘love of botany’ during commencement speech
Tags: Big House, House, Vern Ehlers
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35th running of Lake Washington Invitational set for Saturday
April 27th, 2011
It’s a busy weekend of track and field, with the post-season meets just around the corner.
If you’re a fan of girls track and field, you should check out the 35th annual Lake Washington Invitational Saturday.
Some of the state’s top performers will be there, and I’m looking forward to covering it.
They don’t send out a press release, like some of the other meets, but there’s a very cool website that includes tons of information, including who’s entered as well as results from the past six years.
Tags: Lake Washington, Lake Washington Invitational, Washington, Washington Invitational
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Teacher Headhunting
April 26th, 2011
(Today is my 3rd of 3 blog posts up at Education Week)
When information flows freely, people make lists. They reorder it. For example, in Massachusetts, when MCAS was first created, the state released school data alphabetically. Newspapers immediately published the data in order of test scores. After years of push by the school superintendents, the state responded in 2009 by releasing MCAS growth scores gains.
This data created some interesting new narratives, like this.
Perhaps in the near future well see the same thing with teachers. Individual teacher data is being published. So next, well see more lists of their names. A first reaction will be, just like with any ratings, will be a mix of attacking the publishers and the top performers, like this:
In the initial weeks after the article came out, Aguilar said he went through hell. Theres a lot of jealousy and hate out there. People said things like, Theres this guy who thinks hes all good just because hes Latino and hes friends with the kids. How do you know hes not cheating?
But evidently things thawed a bit.
Steinbeck (the principal) asked Aguilar if hed be willing to lead a school-wide training session. Aguilar said her request blew my mind. The demonstration to a classroom full of teachers in February was well received. So he went grade by grade giving sample lessons as the teachers looked on. Within six weeks, third-grade proficiency in reading and comprehension rose from 20% to 30%, Steinbeck said.
Id guess many EdWeek readers strongly oppose this sort of publication. Some dont believe the data actually tells us anything of value (i.e., theyd say Aguilar is likely no better or worse than other teachers); others think the data is modestly useful, but imprecise; it should be used somehow but not be made public. Nonetheless, I think this trend is likely to continue, and will result in a couple of developments.
First, teachers like Aguilar will be headhunted. As coaches. As leaders. As simply higher-paid teachers. As teachers who, in lieu of increased compensation, get to call their own shots in terms of whatever they want the most curriculum freedom, assistance with certain tasks, flexible funds for student projects or trips. This will create some upward wage pressure. Thats what happens in other professions. It happens with universities (based on professor prestige).
Second, top teachers will also get some of the same treatment high-scoring schools are right now: hundreds of visitors.
Do many individual teachers get hundreds of visitors? I dont think so yet. If you believe, as I do, that the field is way too steeped in ivory tower theory, and not enough research from the best schoolteachers, research on teaching methods will advance if we can get past the whole school level and think more deeply about the individual teacher level, in part because the transaction costs will be lower to find teachers who, based on imperfect data, at least seem to be unusually effective.
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