Monthly Memo - March 3, 2008

James Smith visits with social work students.

Mary Burman, Dean of the SON, and Sherrie Rubio-Wallace, Assistant Lecturer, visit with Lauren Armstrong, a potential nursing student from South Dakota.

FMRP-Casper

A Message from Dean Kelley
I am pleased to announce that Mary Burman, Interim Dean of the Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing, has accepted the position of dean of the school. Mary is valued for her dedication to the profession of nursing, her outstanding teaching and research, and her proven leadership ability. Her list of accomplishments is long. She served as interim dean of the college in 2006 and received a Carnegie Scholar Award from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2000.

She is the director/co-director of multiple research awards at UW and the author/co-author of over 30 journal articles and a variety of other publications in her field of advanced practice nursing and primary care. Currently, Mary is a Fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Program, a member of the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties and of the Downtown Clinic, and serves on the Rural Health Care Delivery Systems Committee of Wyoming and on the Wyoming Council for Advanced Practice Nurses. Mary's appointment is great news for the school, the college, and the university.

News from the Divisions

Social Work
The division has been awarded $75,000 over a three-year period by the Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education to develop an innovative graduate education initiative to prepare social workers to specialize in the care of older adults. According to Principal Investigator Vicki Murdock, Assistant Professor, this new grant will partner with the Wyoming Geriatric Education Center (WyGEC), a recently-funded statewide program housed in the college, and cooperate with the field educational agencies that work with social work students during their graduate programs. This grant is welcome news for the state of Wyoming whose older population is growing faster than the national average.

Congratulations are in order for James Smith, Associate Professor, who was named Professional of the Year Representing Psychology and Social Work by the selection committee of the Cambridge Who's Who. Jim will be listed in the 2007-08 edition of the Cambridge Who's Who Registry of Executives, Professionals, and Entrepreneurs. Jim has also been invited to be the keynote speaker at the faculty and staff workshop "Mind, Body, and Soul" at the LCCC-Albany County Campus where he will present "Emotional Intelligence and Social Work Education: Implications for Graduate Professional Education Student and
Faculty."

Spring Commencement
The college's spring commencement will be held May 10th beginning at 8:30 a.m. in the Arena Auditorium. Procession formation will begin at 8:15 in the Multi-purpose Gym (also called the UniWyo Sports Complex). Please contact the student affairs person in your division if you have questions.

Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing
The school is proud of Mary Behrens who earned her post-master's Family Nurse Practitioner degree in 1998. In recognition of her leadership, dedication, and generosity, Mary will receive the American Nurses Association's 2008 Barbara Thoman Curtis Award during the group's convention to be held in Washington, DC, in late June.

Discovery Days brought many prospective students and their parents to the school's information table to hear about the many options open to those entering the nursing profession and the preparation courses necessary for entry into the nursing curriculum. Current students spoke about their choice of nursing as a major and answered many questions from the interested audience.

The following presentations are slated by the Nightingale Center for Nursing Scholarship (NCNS) for its Spring 2008 Luncheon Series: Mona Schatz, Director of the Division of Social Work, and Vicki Murdock, Assistant Professor of Social Work, will speak about "Listening to the Needs and Wants of the ‘Boomers' as They Age" on March 26th , and Ann Marie Hart, Assistant Professor of Nursing, and Kari Morgan, Assistant Professor of Family and Consumer Science, will discuss "Wyoming Families' Values Regarding Respiratory
Infections: Results from a Statewide Telephone Survey" on April 23rd. The lectures, to be given between 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. in HS 232, are open to the UW community and the public, who are invited to bring their own lunches.

The NCNS will also host Hospice Foundation of America's Fifteenth Annual National Teleconference—"Living with Grief: Children and Adolescents." This educational program, moderated by Frank Sesno, Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University and Special Correspondent with CNN, will be broadcast live via satellite and Webcast on Wednesday, April 16th from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Room 202 of the Wyoming Union. Low-cost continuing education is available for the presentation that will focus on the experience of grieving children and adolescents and the ways all hospice professionals, educators and counselors, parents, social workers, physicians, grief counselors, funeral directors, and clergy can best support these populations as they cope with loss and grief. For more information, please contact Terrie Wiederich (307-766-6821 or terriel@uwyo.edu).

Assistant Lecturers Sherrie Rubio-Wallace and Carrie DeSelms and Associate Lecturer Susie Hager attended the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Regional Baccalaureate Essential Meeting held in Tucson in January. The focus of the session was the continued review of the current "BSN Essentials," the document that provides the foundation for the education of professional nurses.

The school has purchased "Hearing Voices," a program that simulates what a person with schizophrenia may hear. Janet Somlyay, Assistant Lecturer, recently presented the program to 12 junior students who listened to the CD while being asked to do routine hospital/clinic requirements. The practice helped the students "experience" the frustration of patients who are asked to respond to requests, while simultaneously hearing voices, and increased the students' empathy for the chronically mentally ill.

Pamela Clarke, Professor, Connie Diaz Swearingen, Assistant Lecturer, and Susan McCabe, Associate Professor, attended the Bureau of Health Professions meeting of project directors held in Washington, DC. The purpose of the meeting was to encourage networking and collaboration among the 1,000 participants. During the meeting, Pam and Connie showcased the school's LEAP RN/BSN project in a poster session.

On March 19th, "Supporting Rural Family Caregivers" will be broadcast via satellite from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The discussion, which is sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services, will investigate the difficulties faced by rural family caregivers and how to support them in areas with limited provider agencies, manpower shortages, and transportation challenges. For more information, please visit http://registration.casals.com/cms/register_locations.ap or contact Terrie Wiederich (307-766-6821 or terriel@uwyo.edu).

Professors Pamela Clarke and Pamala Larsen served on the Nursing Education Program Review of the US Health Resources and Services Administration held in mid-February in Rockville, Maryland.

Approximately 48 faculty and students attended Nurses Day at the Legislature on February 19th in Cheyenne. Much of the current legislative session focuses on budget matters, but there are also a number of health-related bills such as a pilot study of health insurance reform and payments to hospitals for uncompensated trauma care that are of interest to those in the nursing profession. To track legislative outcomes, please visit http://legisweb.state.wy.us/.

Kinesiology and Health
Division faculty continue their outstanding research. Tami Benham-Deal, Associate Professor, was awarded $160,000 by the Wyoming Department of Education to study physical and health education in Wyoming schools, and Derek Smith, Assistant Professor, received $210,000 to fund his study "Clinical Outcomes in Rural Populations."

Division faculty also extend their impressive list of publications. American School Health Association Publication recently issued the training manual The Mariner Model: Charting the Course for Health-promoting School Communities by Tena Hoyle, Assistant Professor, and Sport and Exercise Psychology: International Perspectives contains the chapter "Exercise Relative to Other Treatments for Reduction of Anxiety and Depression: Overcoming the Principle of Least Effort" by Brandon Alderman, Assistant Professor.

Wyoming INstitute for Disabilities (WIND)
Rick Hufnagel, Project Coordinator for WIND's Head Start Collaboration Project, has been invited to join the advisory committee of the first SpecialQuest Birth-five: Head Start/Hilton Foundation Training Program. The goal of the program is to create  welcoming, supportive, and inclusive communities for young children with disabilities and their families across the country, with a specific focus on improving practices in Early Head Start and Head Start Programs.

WWAMI
Sylvia Moore, WWAMI Director, has been invited to participate in the American Medical Association's Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (PCPI) as a member of the Work Group on Preventive Care and Screening. On February 13th, Sylvia attended a meeting of the group to review and update five existing clinical performance measures—tobacco use, problem drinking, adult influenza immunization, colorectal cancer screening, and screening mammography. Participants hope to present the final revision for approval during the PCPI's meeting in late May.

Pharmacy
Xin L. Ma, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, presented "Post-translation Protein Modifications and Their Potential Therapeutic Values" as part of the Otis L. Hoy Seminar Series. Lunch was provided for those attending, and following the program, Jun Ren, Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology, hosted a reception to honor Dr. Ma.

Ji Li, Clinical Assistant Professor of Biochemical Physiology and Pharmacology, made a very successful trip to China at the end of January. Ji had been invited by the Sichuan University School of Medicine, the Chengdu Institute of Biology, the Kanghong Pharmaceutical Group, and Yunnan Spirin Biotech. Co. Ltd. to present "MAPK and AMPK: Critical Mediators of Cellular Stress." After his lecture at Spirin, Ji was informed by the company's president that he would receive $70,000 to determine the pharmacologic effect of natural products from Chinese herb medicine on ischemic heart diseases. Furthermore, four abstracts from Ji's lab have been accepted for publication in the American Diabetes Association's (ADA) 68th Scientific Sessions Abstract Book, three of those abstracts were selected for poster presentations at the ADA's convention.

From a large number of submissions for the 15th International Social Pharmacy Workshop 2008 in Queenstown, New Zealand, the abstract by Linda Gore Martin, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Social and Administrative Pharmacy, has been selected for presentation during the workshop's Education Day Oral Presentation and will be published in the June 2008 edition of the Pharmacy Education Journal.

Casper Family Medicine Residency Program (FMRP-Casper)
The FMRP-Casper continues its successful practice and widens many existing programs:
1) Recruiting—A record 74 applicants for the program were interviewed, and two outstanding candidates have already been matched. They will be joined by six others to form what promises to be another excellent class of residents.
2) Electronic Health Records—By partnering with the Cheyenne Family Medicine Residency Program in Cheyenne, FMRP-Casper is moving to an electronic health record system.
3) Property—Plans to remodel the clinic in order to allow increased production and include a procedure center are under review.

Student Affairs
After years of planning, the Office of Student Affairs is pleased to announce several collaborative events with the Colorado health professions advising offices. CU-Boulder has expanded its annual preprofessional health fair into a regional event. This development will give UW students the opportunity to attend a preprofessional health fair within easy travel distance, and CU will attract more students by including another institution. The office has also been invited to send students to a premed event at CSU. Through these collaborative efforts, our students are offered valuable professional opportunities.

During the past year, the office's preprofessional advisors have instituted several workshops to help students better prepare for professional school. We have sponsored an MCAT prep course, as well as an interview workshop, mock interviews, personal essay workshops, and programs for submitting electronic letters of evaluation. After attending one or more of the events, students feel more confident and better prepared for the admission process ahead. 

Posted on Monday, March 10, 2008