Archive for the ‘University Business’ Category
Accepting Nominations: WSU Vancouver’s 2011 Community Awards of Distinction
July 4th, 2011
VANCOUVER, Wash. Washington State University Vancouver is accepting nominations for the annual Community Awards of Distinction. The awards will be presented to community members or organizations in two categories: Community Partnership and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Any member of the community may submit a nomination.
The award for Community Partnership will be given to an individual or organization whose leadership has made a significant impact on the community. The recipient will have demonstrated commitment to community partnerships, prosperity, vitality and overall well-being within WSU Vancouvers regionSouthwest Washington and the greater Portland metropolitan geographic areas. The nomination form encourages you to elaborate on the following: value to community, length of service, sustainability of effort/impact, leadership and collaboration.
The award for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion will be given to an individual or organization whose exceptional achievement has broadly impacted equity, diversity and inclusion within WSU Vancouvers region. The nomination form encourages you to elaborate on the following: value to community, length of service/effort, long-term sustainability of achievement, breadth of reach, advocacy and impact.
Nomination forms may be entered electronically or downloaded from then click Community Award of Distinction. The deadline for nominations is 5 p.m. Aug. 19. Questions may be directed to Lisa Abrahamsson at 360-546-9600.
Award winners will be selected by a committee of WSU Vancouver staff, faculty and community members. The awards will be presented at Washington State University Vancouvers Scholarship and Service Dinner on Oct. 12.
The 2010 Community Award of Distinction for Community Partnership was presented to Peggy Hays for her service to the children of our community. As spearhead of the Family-to-Family program for the Division of Children and Family Services, Hays works to bring together churches, schools, and private and nonprofit agencies to serve the needs of children and families.
The 2010 Community Award for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion was presented to YWCA Clark County for its longstanding history of serving marginalized individuals in our community. The 94 year-old organization serves more than 11,000 community members each year through various advocacy, educational and outreach programs, services and events.
Tags: Accepting Nominations, Awards, Community Awards
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Howard Marks and The Most Important Thing Hit the New York Times Bestsller List
July 4th, 2011
When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, theyre the first thing I open and read. I always learn something, and that goes double for his book. Warren Buffett
It seems as Warren Buffett is not the only who has been impressed by Howard Markss investment philosophy (see quote above). Markss book The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor recently made the New York Times bestseller list for business books.
To download the e-book or individual chapters from The Most Important Thing visit Columbia University Press Online Access.
You can also save 30% on The Most Important Thing when you order directly from our website. To save 30%, add the book to your shopping cart, and enter code MOSMA in the Redeem Coupon field at check out. Click on the redeem coupon button and your savings will be calculated.
Tags: Howard Marks, Thing
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UW scholarships open opportunities for study-abroad students
July 3rd, 2011
UW junior Elizabeth Benitez didn’t want to study abroad to discover a new culture. Instead, she was going abroad to rediscover her own. One main obstacle, however, stood in her way: money.
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UW junior Elizabeth Benitez wears a poncho and bracelet she purchased in Ecuador while on a study abroad trip funded by the GO! Scholarship.
In recent years, the rising costs in airfare, tuition and housing have left many study-abroad students in debt. In order to account for financial issues, students are forced to use a combination of their own savings and student loans, Global Opportunities Adviser Sara Stubbs said. Stubbs believes that money is a deterrent for many students who want to study abroad.
Stubbs has recently joined the UW Center for Experiential Learning and Diversity to teach students about their options.
“I think [money] is a big concern for students coming from all financial backgrounds, but particularly students who are Pell Grant- and Husky Promise-eligible,” Stubbs said. “Being at the university and paying for the expenses that are associated with all the costs that students face, the additional costs of studying abroad are a concern for those students a lot of times.”
In order to avoid debt, students can find financial relief from the UW to help fund their trips. Stubbs said scholarships offered through the UW International Programs and Exchanges (IPE) office, which awarded 41 scholarships this past fall quarter, are popular among students with financial needs.
The UW offers two scholarships specifically for students going abroad. The Global Opportunities (GO!) Scholarship and the Fritz Undergraduate Scholarship both award between $2,000 and $5,000 to each recipient. Eric Baldwin, the operations and scholarship manager for the UW IPE, said the GO! Scholarship received 419 applicants during the 2010-2011 school year and 429 applicants in 2009-2010.
“Costs like tuition, fees, and living expenses have always been a big issue for students with significant financial need, especially Husky Promise- and Pell Grant-eligible students,” Stubbs said. “The GO! Scholarship is designed to help provide access to study abroad to students with significant financial need.”
Last winter, Benitez was awarded $2,000 for her trip to Ecuador. Without the money she received through the GO! Scholarship, Benitez would have been forced to take out loans to fund her trip.
While the Fritz scholarship requires a minimum 3.0 GPA and is directed toward students in the social sciences, the GO! Scholarship is open to all majors who are Pell Grant- and Husky Promise-eligible.
This was important to recent UW graduate Aparna Lakshman, who found few scholarships open to biology majors studying abroad. Without the GO! Scholarship, she would have been unable to travel abroad for a pre-med study abroad program.
“A lot of scholarships are limited to citizens and to certain majors, and I am not a citizen,” said Lakshman, who emigrated from Oman four years ago. “I had to pay for my trip out of my own pocket, and I definitely couldn’t have gone [without the scholarship]. Basically, I was relying on it.”
Stubbs said the GO! Scholarship, which is funded by the Washington state Legislature, has awarded around $210,000 to students with financial need per year for the past two years. The application process includes an 800-word essay in which students explain why they want to go abroad, along with a 300-word essay to explain adverse factors such as financial limitations.
“We want them to be able to articulate how this experience is going to broaden their worldview,” Stubbs said. “We also want them to be able to articulate more about global citizenship, and that can mean something very different to different students.”
Benitez kept these points in mind when writing her essay for the GO! Scholarship. She spoke about her own worldview and explained how going to Ecuador would help her break the language barrier she’s faced with her own parents, who only speak Spanish.
“I have a lot of difficulty communicating with my parents because of the language barrier, [since] they don’t speak English,” she said. “I speak pretty decent Spanish, but not enough to fully get my point across and say what I really want to say. I kind of halfway say what I mean because I don’t have the vocabulary to say it.”
Laksham, however, took a different route with her essay. With the help of IPE advisors and the UW Writing Center, Laksham wrote about her immigration to America and how that affected her desire to enter the medical field.
Scholarships such as the GO! and the Fritz have opened up opportunities for students such as Laksham and Benitez, which makes Laksham grateful, as she believes that “you shouldn’t allow money to be a boundary.”
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Sera Young on Craving Earth
July 2nd, 2011
Last week, Sera Young, author of Craving Earth: Understanding Picathe Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk Living Earth about the book.
Below are some excerpts from the interview. You might also want to visit the Facebook page for Living on Earth which includes listeners experience with eating dirt and pica.
GELLERMAN: So, why do people eat dirt?
YOUNG: That’s a very good question and it’s one I’ve been studying for the last decade or so. There are a number of explanations, and what we’ve found is that the best one, the one that fits the most of the observations that we’ve made is that it’s a protective behavior. So, clay is a big component of the earth that’s eaten. And clay is really good at binding, it almost acts as like a mud mask for your face, except it’s a mud mask for your gut in a way. It sucks up these pathogens like viruses and bacteria and harmful chemicals and lets them evacuate from your body without entering your bloodstream.
GELLERMAN: There’s something in the dirt that protects us? YOUNG: Exactly. And what’s so, sort of, paradoxical about what we’ve found is that dirt can in fact be cleansing. People are really selective about the dirt that they eat. It’s not just any dirt, and the dirt that’s preferred is, well, often described as ‘clean dirt’. And it’s also very clay-rich, so what you find is very soft, malleable, it’s not like the sand you find at the beach, or the black humus-y kind of soil that you’d like to plant your tomatoes in.
GELLERMAN: I have a bag of dirt that we got from Sam’s General Store in White Plains, Georgia. It’s called ‘Grandma’s Georgia White Dirt’ and I just got it it says: Not intended for human consumption, but I’m going to try it anyhow…
[BAG RUSTLING]
YOUNG: (Laughs).
GELLERMAN: It looks like chalk and it feels slippery…ooh it is… and it gets all over my hands.
[CHEWING DIRT]
GELLERMAN: It crumbles….yeah, it tastes like chalk, clean chalk.
GELLERMAN: Well, the word pica comes from the word magpie, which is a bird.
YOUNG: Right. Its a bird that was thought to have an indiscriminate appetite because it builds its nest will all of these sort of found objects. And so, in the early, I think it was the early 1300s, this name was given to the phenomenon of women, of pregnant women typically, who were craving all of these non-food substances.
But, with the case of the bird, it was a misnomer, they weren’t eating these things they were building their nests with them. And in the case of the pica phenomenon in humans, it’s also a misnomer because people are not indiscriminate at all people have extremely, extremely specific cravings.
GELLERMAN: So what is it about pregnant women?
YOUNG: Pregnant women’s behavior is easily dismissed because pregnant women: they know not what they do. But in fact, they’re immuno-compromised. Which means that their immune system is tamped down to avoid rejecting the fetus or the embryo, and at the same time they really need to be shielding this very vulnerable thing growing in them from insults including pathogens like viruses and bacteria and other harmful chemicals.
So, people with rapidly dividing cells such as pregnant women and also young children are at greatest risk, or in most need of protection. Geophagy is a protective behavior. It fits with our hypothesis because in fact it is pregnant women and young children who do this most frequently.
Tags: Craving Earth, Earth, Sera Young
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Overton is not a pimp
July 2nd, 2011
Venoy Overton might be a lot of things: a once-great college athlete, a disgraced alumnus, and, now, in danger of violating the plea agreement he made earlier this year in regards to the misdemeanor charges of furnishing alcohol to a minor.
But Overton is not — at this writing — a convicted pimp, and that’s something at least a few Huskies need to remember.
The breadth of the English language gives its users the opportunity and the pleasure to say the same thing in so many different ways. Usually, this lets us say exactly what we mean (which of us could have gotten through our composition credits without Synonym.com?).
But in some contexts, such as the law, it’s important that very specific words be used and that their very specific definitions be understood.
One Dailyuw.com reader (“Keep him in jail”) commented on The Daily’s June 3 news story about the most recent charges against Overton, “Seriously, does this idiot not take a hint? First he rapes a minor, and now he’s playing at being a pimp.”
I appreciate the willingness to comment on the issue, because it’s an active readership that keeps a news source relevant. However, “Keep him in jail,” Overton has only allegedly acted as a pimp — or, to be more specific, he’s allegedly guilty of promoting prostitution in the second degree, which is a Class C felony.
Thankfully, erroneous claims within comments are usually self-correcting: Another reader (“Reader”) replied, “Venoy is guilty of many things but rape of a minor isn’t among them (at least that we know of).” “Reader,” that’s exactly how I would have phrased it — and similar to the way I have.
It was in another arena that I first heard statements that troubled me in the same way “Keep him in jail”’s words did. Before Overton’s name was even associated with the then-redacted police report in which a 16-year-old girl accused him of sexual assault, my women studies class was deep into a conversation that included phrases like “the basketball player who raped that girl” and “that athlete-rapist,” shouted across dozens of rows of the lecture room. The accusations outlined in that police report never even amounted to sexual-assault charges, much less a conviction; the phrasing used during that in-class conversation, then, was especially distasteful in hindsight.
When a person is in a prominent leadership position, as UW student-athletes often are, it shows exceedingly poor judgment for that person to provide alcohol to teenagers. Knowing that he would be held in the public’s view to a higher standard of behavior should have caused Overton to avoid such incriminating situations. The poor choices we know he has made can influence the way we talk about him. It is very difficult for someone to rid his or her name of a sex scandal, even if it turns out to be a rumor. Indeed, once a prominent individual is brought to trial, the elevated publicity of such charges can mean a guilty verdict rendered by the public before the legal proceedings are over, and a bad name long after. Although the alleged rape charges against Kobe Bryant several years ago were later dropped, people still refer to “The Kobe Bryant rape case” as if the rape had legally existed.
Promoting prostitution is a serious crime, and one for which its commissioners have to be held responsible. If Overton is guilty of the accusations laid out in the charging documents, that puts him among the lowest of the low and confirms behavior involving dangerous, sex-related offenses. That’s exactly why it’s so dangerous and discourteous to suggest he is already. Until and unless Overton is found guilty of the most recent charges against him, let’s refrain from calling him a pimp; the law rightfully allows him the benefit of the doubt, and the language surrounding his name should too.
Tags: Overton, Overton Pimp
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