CU Connections Issue: May 24, 2012

The Human Touch, the literary and arts anthology of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, is now available for free at the information desk of the campus bookstore, Building 500, first floor.

The journal strives to develop and nurture skills of observation, analysis, empathy and self-reflection to promote humane medical care by offering an outlet for creative expression of the connections among patients, family and health care professionals. The works foster an understanding of cultural and social contexts of the experiences of illness and the way medicine is practiced.

Writings and artworks are juried anonymously. Editors are students in the School of Medicine, staff and faculty of the Anschutz Medical Campus. Authors and artists are students, staff, health professionals, and patients from the CU community.

The publication is being offered free to members of the community through the generous support of the School of Medicine. The Human Touch is produced by the Art and Humanities in Health Care Program (Therese Jones, Ph.D., director, and H.N. Claman, M.D., associate director) of the Anschutz Medical Campus Center for Bioethics and Humanities.

A copy of the anthology also is available for checkout at the Health Sciences Library, in the Drs. Henry and Janet Claman Medical Humanities Collection. The collection is located in the Third Floor Special Collections Room, call number WZ 350 U58h. An electronic copy will be available in the Digital Collections of Colorado, at http://goo.gl/8WEcS.

 

Years ago, if a young girl was bullied by female peers, parental advice would more than likely be to “ignore” the perpetrators.

It’s what Rhonda Williams’ mother told her.

But she knows that today’s youngsters need more than placating; they need to learn how to deal with bullying incidents, which have become more volatile, more viral and more violent than ever.

People who know her now would never guess that she was “a follower and oftentimes was a target of bullying” in junior high school. “I remember to this day what I was wearing and what I felt. I’m a woman of 59 and I can still remember it,” she said. She also was the victim of sexual harassment. “There’s a time to stand up and say, ‘I’m not going to take it.’ I found myself having to learn how to empower me. Then it became a mission of how to empower other women, too.”

Williams is associate professor of counseling and human services in the College of Education at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Before returning in 2001 to UCCS – where she previously earned a master’s in counseling -- she spent 11 years as a teacher in different school districts and 15 years as a school counselor, mostly in Colorado schools.

Along with her research on bullying and adolescent girls, Williams is heavily involved in the Smart Girl program, which teaches young girls about bullying and sexual harassment and how to effectively deal with those issues in personally comfortable ways. In addition she’s a community activist, and is writing about and researching mental health in rural America.

During a sabbatical last year, she and her husband traveled around the world, visiting 12 countries. Williams said the trip was enlightening: She loved Costa Rica for the relaxation; South Africa for the beauty, the animals and the wine; Ghana for its people; and she found India’s poverty to be intense and its temples from 700 B.C., amazing.

1. How are you involved with Smart Girl and why is the program important?

The program for adolescent girls is about building confident, self-reliant, empowered young women. Through my encouragement, a program for boys has been developed, too. Through activities, participants learn how to problem-solve and communicate better, how to manage moods, how to work as a team, and understand what you have control over, what you don’t have control over. We also talk about sexual harassment, which is another area of research I’m doing. If you don’t teach them how to resolve these issues or how to refuse peer pressure, then how are they supposed to learn it?

Most research is about teaching individual girls, mentoring them one-on-one, but this program mentors adolescents in groups. I train the guides and coaches, and they, in turn, mentor a group of 10 to 12 girls. It’s wonderful to watch these little girls blossom. There is evidence that the program supports change in young girls and supports career decision-making. The program started in Denver in 1999; I’ve been with them since 2002.

2. How does bullying by girls and boys differ and how can it be combated?

Boy bullying typically is overt, in-your-face, physical and aggressive. Girl bullying is subversive. Usually those that bully are very attractive and popular and they have a lot of power and control over that dynamic. They pick on girls who might not be as assertive or attractive. Boys bully one-on-one. Girls bully collectively: “Oh, can you believe she wore that to school today?” It manifests into destructive behaviors, social aggression and relational aggression, and it creates relational divides. I feel sorry for the little girl that’s been sick for a week because she comes back to school and doesn’t know who her friends are going to be because so much has changed.

Our Smart Girl curriculum includes activities to understand bullying and what to do about it. More than 80 percent of adolescents see bullying on a regular basis – daily or weekly. They see it but don’t know what to do about it. Not every kid is empowered or assertive enough to say “stop it.” We give them several options through the acronym A.C.T.I.O.N. “A” stands for “assert yourself.” In middle school I could not have been assertive but I could do “C,” which stands for “create a distraction.” We teach them to be an “upstander” not a “bystander” by standing up for bullied kids in a way that is comfortable for them. We give them skills rather than assume they are going to pick them up along the way.

Bullying is more prevalent, especially cyber-bullying because people can do it anonymously. Adults are more aggressive on the phone than when face-to-face with another person, and our research has found that kids are replicating some of the same behaviors.

3.  Bullying is about power. Hasn’t some form of bullying been around for ages and is it possible to change human nature?

I totally believe in the ability to create change or I wouldn’t be a counselor. What we’ve seen in girls is pretty powerful. I’ve seen it in myself. I’ve heard over and over from the girls who are guides and coaches that because they teach it, they start living it. When they live it, they embrace the concept of non-bullying.

American culture has a lot of impact, and that’s why I’m so compelled to push adolescent social and emotional intelligence. If they can grow up with social and emotional intelligence – as opposed to the way I grew up and others grew up by going along to get along – think how much power they would have through these skills and it then becomes part of who they are.

4. What are the other girl issues you’ve studied and what have you found?

Another aspect is sexual harassment bullying. Girls always are surprised to find out that while 86 percent of girls have been bullied, 79 percent of boys say they have bullied. Girls bully boys, and more importantly, boys bully boys, especially using homophobic language.

The whole concept of body image is hugely impactful for girls. We’re seeing many more girls with disordered eating, if not eating disorders. In our activities, we approach body image carefully. Girls can say positive things about what’s on the inside, but they can’t compliment themselves physically. Our theory is that the younger we teach them, the better chance they have to be strong, confident and empowered.

5. Earlier in your career, you received “middle school counselor of the year” awards, and very recently, you received the Counselor Educator of the Year award from the American School Counselor Association. What are some important lessons you hope to impart?

When I won the middle school counselor of the year award, I did an interview with a newspaper and they asked, “What’s next for you?” I remember thinking it was a good question. At the time, I said that I wanted to get my doctorate so I could teach people to do what I did. I’ve done that. The award inspired me to take the next step. As a counselor educator, you get to work with those who soon will be in your profession. I’m passionate about teaching because I want to model for them what they can do for kids.

I’ve had 26 years of experience in counseling and mental health. Every class I teach, I see the potential to help them become the best they can be as a school counselor and in mental health work. That’s exciting because I want other people to continue to make a difference. My passion gets them going and they think, “Ah, I see how I can use this; I see how this has value.” The desire to make a difference and create change continues to trickle down to the kids that need it the most.

Beginning with today’s issue, CU Connections begins its summer schedule of biweekly publication. The next new issue will appear June 7.

No new issues will appear on the following dates (subject to change): May 31, June 14 and 28, July 12 and 26.

Even if you’re away from your campus for any of the summer, you can stay up to date on happenings across the University of Colorado system by connecting with CU Connections. Throughout the season, the site will be updated with news should events warrant.

If you’re sending postcards from your vacation, be sure to keep us in the loop, too. We always welcome Letters to the Editor on topics of interest to current and retired CU faculty and staff. Please send submissions to newsletter@cu.edu. And if you have a news item or story suggestion you’d like to pass along, please send it to Jay.Dedrick@cu.edu.

Deadline for submissions is noon Friday prior to the Thursday publication.

David H. Grinspoon, an adjunct professor of astrophysical and planetary science at the University of Colorado Boulder and curator of astrobiology in the Department of Space Sciences at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, has been named the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology in the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

The chair is a joint project between the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the Kluge Center.

Grinspoon is a researcher in planetary science and is the author of “Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life” and “Venus Revealed.” In the application for the one-year appointment, he detailed a book he wants to write about the Anthropocene Era, a series of workshops he wants to run, and a panel discussion to which the public would be invited at the Library of Congress.

Grinspoon is an adviser to NASA on space exploration strategy and serves as Interdisciplinary Scientist on Venus Express, the European Space Agency’s first mission to Venus. In 2006, the American Astronomical Society awarded him the Carl Sagan Medal for excellence in public communication of planetary science.

The CU President's Teaching and Learning Collaborative (PTLC) on Monday hosted its second annual poster session, featuring research topics as wide-ranging as Clickers and delusion.

The collaborative offers faculty from all campuses an opportunity for professional development and the experience and intellectual practice of work in two scholarly endeavors: teaching and research. It also assists university faculty in developing scholarly research projects on teaching and learning intended for refereed publication.

PTLC Director Mary Ann Shea welcomed participating faculty researchers and presenters:

Marylou Robinson, CU Anschutz Medical Campus College of Nursing Sonja Braun-Sand, UCCS Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Ronica Rooks, CU Denver Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences Farah A. Ibrahim, CU Denver School of Education and Human Development Alison Hicks, CU-Boulder University Libraries John B. Basey and Anastasia Maines, CU-Boulder Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Cory Christiansen, Elaine Cheesman and Mary Jane Rapport, CU Anschutz Medical Campus School of Medicine Kari L. Franson and Christopher J. Turner, Kathleen McCartney, Shaun Berning and Jennifer Trujillo, CU Anschutz Medical Campus Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Radu Cascaval, UCCS Department of Mathematics Robert Gist, UCCS Department of Physics Lupita Montoya, CU-Boulder Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering

Initiated in 2006, the collaborative promotes the practice of inquiry in teaching and measuring student learning, known nationally as the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). This year’s session at CU Anschutz Medical Campus also welcomed guests from the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), including Lauren Scharff, director for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning program. The USAFA and PTLC have built a collaborative relationship.

 

CU faculty and staff are likely to come across a familiar name while exploring the wilds of the African Savannah at the Denver Zoo. The zoo on Monday renamed its award-winning exhibit that features lions, hyenas and African wild dogs the Bruce D. Benson Predator Ridge, in honor of the CU president and longtime Denver Zoo advocate.

“Bruce Benson has had a profound impact on Denver Zoo’s innovative leadership in education, conservation and exhibits,” said Katie Schoelzel, chairman of the zoo’s board of trustees. “He also is a dedicated philanthropist who has made tremendous investments in Denver Zoo and so many other worthy organizations in our community.”

Benson spearheaded the 1999 Zoo Improvement Bond Campaign that enabled the development of the zoo’s parking garage as well as exhibits including Predator Ridge. He successfully led efforts to update the zoological foundation’s cooperative operating agreement with the city and county of Denver and helped form the Colorado Zoological Trust that manages the zoo’s endowment, among other contributions.

An Honorary Life Trustee of the Denver Zoological Foundation, Benson served as chairman of the board from 1997-2000 and on the executive committee for 15 years. He continues to serve as counsel and adviser to the foundation’s board of trustees.

“Bruce helped us accomplish tremendous things in support of our mission to secure a better future for both wildlife and people by encouraging our board and staff to think creatively and act boldly,” said Denver Zoo President and CEO Craig Piper.

The new name was unveiled with Benson, his wife, Marcy, their family and close friends attending, as well as CU regents Steve Bosley, Sue Sharkey, Michael Carrigan and Irene Griego, CU-Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano and Rick Lawrence, president of the CU Foundation.

For more photos from the event, click here.

 

If your classroom is like Pong, your students are bored. If it's like Pac-Man, which has 25,000 routes in which Pac-Man can travel to escape the ghosts, they will likely tune in.

Jeff Borden, vice president of instruction and academic strategy at Pearson eCollege, used this videogame example to illustrate how education must adapt to changing technology and learning patterns in order to serve the students of tomorrow. These are Generation M students – multitasker, media, multimodal, multinodal – and they want their education to happen anytime, anywhere and certainly not to be confined to the traditional classrooms and rote teaching styles of yore, he said.

Borden was the keynote speaker at last week’s CU Online Spring Symposium. About 100 faculty and staff from the University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus attended the all-day, 11th annual event at Tivoli Turnhalle.

Because Pac-Man involved strategic, not just reactionary, challenges for the player, it opened the floodgates to videogame design, said Borden, whose talk centered on the future of the technology-enabled classroom.

"There's a reason a new game is released every 2 1/2 hours," Borden said. "People need new things to stay engaged, to stay motivated. If your classroom is the same every day, your classroom is the equivalent of Pong. ... People need newness. They need things that are different and differentiated to stay engaged."

Driving his point further, he mixed music, video clips, audience participation and singing -- along with sobering statistics -- into his presentation. Among the statistics:

In 2011, the average student lived 78 miles from their college or university; in 1980, they lived 5 miles away. Online course enrollment is growing an average 30 percent a year.

Borden noted that students are effectively learning about welding, cars, microscopes, cadavers, architectural software, bridge construction, foreign languages and many other subjects through low-cost web-based classes.

"Our students are requiring this," he said of online options. "Our students are starting to say, 'You know, if you don't have what I need I'll find it somewhere else.'"

Creativity and innovation are the most sought-after skills in the workplace, he said, but they get short shrift in the classroom. Teaching the traditional core competencies is no longer good enough, he said. Universities must deliver cultural, communication and technological competencies so that students can "connect the dots" between academia and the real world.

Borden said education must also:

Stop ignoring research Offer cross-curricular courses Use real-life assessments Deliver personalized learning

A condensed way to look at it, he said, is "create, consume, remix, share." "This is what the experts say we've got to get through in order to fix education," Borden said. "If we can get our students doing that in a multimodal, multinodal way we are going to be successful."

The symposium included breakout sessions by faculty and staff on subjects including online lecture alternatives, the iPad as a teaching tool, and data analytics in higher education. It also featured, as has become custom, an entertaining student-produced video conveying the digital transformation of education.

Bob Tolsma, assistant vice chancellor for Academic Technology and Extended Learning, gave the symposium's opening remarks, highlighting the growth of open educational resources and online courses nationwide. He noted that a "massively open online course (MOOC)" offered by a Stanford University professor had 100,000 students enrolled worldwide.

With universities across the country developing online programs -- including all the Ivy League institutions -- online programs no longer struggle to earn legitimacy and respect, Tolsma said.

With events such as the CU Online Symposium, "there's kind of a celebratory thing that what you're doing is important," Tolsma said. "You don't have to worry about being thought of, online, as a second-class citizen."

For the second consecutive year, the symposium presented its CU Online Innovation Award. This year's winner is Brian Yuhnke, former instructional technology and web media production coordinator at CU Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus. Yuhnke, who now works at Case Western Reserve University, was cited for his creativity and ability to make learning compelling.

 

It is difficult to tell who gets more out of a partnership between the University of Colorado College of Nursing, University of Colorado School of Medicine and Urban Peak – the volunteers or the young people who receive services in the Urban Peak health clinic.

Urban Peak helps homeless youth and youth at risk of becoming homeless overcome real life challenges. It provides essential services and a supportive community, empowering them to become self-sufficient adults. The organization’s shelter gives young people a safe place to sleep and offers case management, GED classes, job training and placement programs. Each of the young people in the program also has access to health care.

That’s where the CU College of Nursing and CU School of Medicine come in. Each person who comes through the clinic receives a physical examination that includes several health-screening tests – including HIV and tuberculosis. Residents from the CU School of Medicine rotate through each semester under the supervision of Christine Gilroy, M.D., MSPH, associate professor in adolescent medicine and medical director at Urban Peak.

Thanks to the efforts of Scott Harpin, Ph.D., MPH, APRN-BC, assistant professor in the CU College of Nursing, student nurse volunteers also are pitching in at the clinic one day a week. Harpin undertook similar work in Minnesota and moved to Colorado about a year ago.

Harpin said Urban Peak, the clinic and Gilroy, specifically, have a reputation for providing appropriate, respectful health care.

“I’m still learning the scene here in Denver. But often, health care services for the homeless youth population are scattered and piecemeal. So having a central location is important for the best delivery to the young people,” Harpin said. “I heard about Christine and her leadership. We had coffee and I told her I would love to get nursing students involved in the clinic. We made it happen, and it worked out quickly.”

Gilroy said the clinic runs more efficiently with the CU College of Nursing volunteers, most days doubling the number of patients they can see in a half day to 10. And after 16 years at Urban Peak, she said the interaction with the young people is rewarding. “I can see someone who says their knee hurts and test them for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases and talk to them about risky behaviors that may not be top of mind.”

Harpin and the student volunteers set up a Facebook page for students who want to learn more about the volunteer effort at Urban Peak. Jesse Francomano is one of the student leaders.

“The kids here are motivated to move on. If I can help in any way, shape or form – I am happy to do so,” Francomano said. As for the clinical experience - he called it invaluable. Due in part to his experience at Urban Peak, Francomano wants to work in adolescent health when he graduates in May 2013.

The Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) recently recognized 12 faculty members with Excellence Awards. Honorees each receive $3,000 and a plaque to commemorate the award.

This year’s recipients are:

Excellence in Service: Angela Bielefeldt, Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering; Brian Argrow, Aerospace Engineering

Excellence in Teaching: Oliver DeWolfe, Physics; Myles Osborne, History; Hanspeter Schaub, Aerospace Engineering; Harihar Rajaram, Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering

Excellence in Research, Scholarly and Creative Work: Susan Kent, History; Michael Radelet, Sociology; Matt Sponheimer, Anthropology

For photos from the event, visit the BFA’s Facebook page.

Five CU licensees recently were selected to receive matching grants through Colorado’s Bioscience Discovery Evaluation Grant Program (BDEG-Co). The state of Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade began the BDEG program in 2007, providing early stage matching “seed” grants to enable the development and commercial validation of technologies that are licensed from Colorado research institutions by Colorado based start-up companies (as well as proof-of-concept grants to move promising CU biotechnologies closer to market readiness).

CU-based companies slated to receive funding in this round:

Amide Bio – provides research reagents and clinical products for a diverse array of research and commercial targets. The company’s proprietary technology platform, based on the work of CU-Boulder associate professor Michael Stowell, identifies critical molecular targets in finding therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.

Flashback Technologies – using machine learning to enable fast, non-invasive detection of acute blood loss volume and prediction of cardiovascular collapse in emergency situations. Based on work by CU School of Medicine professor and surgeon Steven Moulton and former CU-Boulder computer science researcher Greg Grudic, the company received BDEG funding in fall of 2009, in addition to this year’s grant.

OnKure – a company developing novel compounds that inhibit cancer cell growth and metastasis, based on the work of CU-Boulder professor Xuedong Liu.

Shape Ophthalmics – developing shape memory polymer (SMP)-based devices for the delivery of medication to the surface of the eye, for the treatment of eye diseases. Based on work by CU School of Medicine faculty members Malik Kahook and Naresh Mandava, and CU Denver/CU-Boulder professor Robin Shandas.

Suvica – an early-stage cancer drug discovery and development company, developing compounds that enhance the efficacy of standard cancer treatments. Based on the work of CU-Boulder professor Tin Tin Su, Suvica also received BDEG funding in spring of 2011.

“These are high-potential, Colorado-based companies that have emerged from CU research laboratories and are making their way forward into the commercial world,” commented David N. Allen, CU’s Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer. “We would like to thank all the legislators and others who have supported this program, which has helped these and numerous other companies become a part of the growing Colorado bioscience sector."

In addition to these companies, in fall 2011 two other CU licensee companies received funding through this program: Crestone Inc. (developing novel antibacterial compounds) and Sophono Inc. (implantable bone anchored hearing devices).