|
|
A Lesson in Giving
|
Return to Top |
Kollali, Sapna
Post-Standard - Madison County Bureau, The
|
Nine Colgate University students are giving away $10,000 to a Hamilton-area nonprofit.
The students are part of the Student Philanthropy Council, a new program under the university's Upstate Institute. As part of a yearlong, noncredit study in charitable giving and nonprofit organizations, the sophomores and juniors will donate the money to local agencies.
"I think (the amount of money) gives more seriousness to the philanthropy council . . .," said junior Lisa Henty, of Knoxboro. "We're not just giving away money, we're looking at the needs of the community and making a difference."
Since September, the group has been meeting with Colgate alumni and Central New York nonprofit leaders to learn about demographics of the Hamilton area and determine how to most equitably award the money. The $10,000 award comes from a recent $50,000 gift to the Upstate Institute from the Brennan Family Foundation, an Ohio-based charity headed by the mother of 1981 Colgate alumnus Jay Brennan. The philanthropy council will be funded through the 2010-11 school year, Upstate Institute Director Ellen Kraly said, with a new set of students at the helm each year.
"These students are very engaged," she said. "They come to seminars ready to work and ask questions."
Colgate's effort is similar to the Youth in Philanthropy program that the Central New York Community Foundation runs for local high schools. Oneida has twice participated in the program, which allows students to award $1,000 to a nonprofit in the community.
Each year, several Colgate groups raise money for local charities. One of the groups, the Konosioni honor society, raised $10,000 in last year's charity auction. The group will award that money later this semester to local nonprofits.
Philanthropy council members will finish their introductory seminars Thursday, and on Dec. 2 they plan to hold their first work session to discuss the scope of their grant. They will seek applications from local agencies for programs that fit the students' guidelines. |
|
|
A Personal Cause Draws a Larger Gift
|
Return to Top |
Strout, Erin
Chronicle of Higher Education, The
|
Jay Shaw and his wife, Debi, had always been loyal donors to Colgate University's annual fund, leaving it to the institution to decide how best to use their money.
In September, however, Murray Decock, vice president for institutional advancement, started his pitch differently than he had before. He explained that the Shaws' contributions to the fund were needed to maintain "excellence" in teaching and academics, but that to help the university go beyond the status quo, it also needed larger donations for specific programs.
Armed with a copy of Colgate's new strategic plan, Mr. Decock asked the Shaws, of Old Greenwich, Conn., what they would like their money to be used for. At first, Mr. Shaw, founder of an equity firm, considered his fraternity. Then, he pondered giving to the rugby club. But it was a new wellness program that struck a chord.
With a son who had struggled during his teens with substance abuse and depression, the Shaws thought a perfect use for their gift was for a planned program to help students establish healthful habits as they make the transition from high school to college. The couple gave $1-million, their largest donation yet, to start the program.
The idea for the Colgate Wellness Initiative was enticing to the Shaws personally, says Mr. Decock, but they also liked that the program could help not only students but their families as well.
"I drew it out of them by asking for a campaign gift that would help drive the educational agenda of the college, instead of a gift that was essentially a dollar amount," he says. "It was all about impact, and when the number of undergraduates and parents could be quantified in terms of impact, the dollar amount was never an issue again."
The program will include recreational activities, stress-management workshops, and help with other physical and psychological components of a healthful, active way of life. It will also identify students who may be at risk of having problems with substance abuse, self-esteem, or depression, and offer them assistance early in their college years.
Because of the Shaws' personal connection to such problems, Colgate officials were sensitive to their preferences when publicizing the gift. In the end, the family agreed to have its story released, hoping that it might prompt others to give as well.
"There is no question that at the college level — as well as at the high-school level — a significant portion of the population suffers from some kind of emotional problem," says Mr. Shaw. "I think, though, that a lot of it can be avoided if they have the resources to get through it." |
|
|
Talents shape history
|
Return to Top |
Black masculinity represents freedom for all of African Diaspora, according to Michelle Stephens, associate professor of humanities at Colgate University, who presented her theory during the University's New Direction Lecture Series titled "The African Diaspora and Black Masculine Performance." Investigating the significance that early 20th century black male performances have had on cultural and political systems governing the nation today, Stephens said her goal was to "historicize black masculinity."
Stephens examined the contributions of three mainstream black performers from the 1920s, hoping to shed light on the influence these men have had on political discourse. Since masculinity itself is extremely unstable and readily susceptible to change by intercultural and racial pressures, she said, masculinity is a reflection of the nation's history.
She began by looking at the life and works of Burt Williams, a prominent black minstrel performer in the 1920s. Under the weight of objectifying black masculinity, Williams challenged himself to study both black and white personas in an attempt to accurately portray typical black Americans. The implications of Williams' "black-on-black" performances proved to be very great for Stephens, who derived a severe distinction between color consciousness and race consciousness.
Stephens furthered her argument by discussing the influence blackness has had on politics. She believes that failing to understand race derives from a history of ideals that is integrated in basic white supremacy. Law that upholds human subjectivity of racial ideas is therefore a racially biased law. Regardless of human ideology, Stephens said, "abandoning race is countered in the fact that blackness needs to be preserved due to history."
To draw intercultural ties between the New World and previous black history, Stephens introduced another black, male performer from the 1920s, Paul Robeson. A film actor and singer famous for his black spirituals, Robeson shifted Williams' comic portrayal of the typical black American to a tragic depiction of a new world slave. Through Robeson's spirituals, Stephens said he was able to "reflect and parallel the dual roles of a national and cultural hero."
Robeson reintroduced the controversial concept of slavery as a means to promote freedom and liberty. Stephens credited this as a way of integrating slavery into the rhetoric and discourse of the early 20th century.
Frantz Fanon, a French essayist, upheld the beliefs of both his contemporaries, but introduced a new concept of black masculinity: triple conscientiousness. In triple conscientiousness, a black performer must be able to balance his body, race, and heritage, while remaining wary of the influence each one has over the other.
This creates a phenomenological dynamic in which someone is always attentive to how they perceive themselves, and not necessarily how others perceive them, said Stephens. The significance of this, said Stephens, is that it can be used as inference to the rest of black males in our society. "The black male is always performing and worrying about how he is perceived," she said.
To Stephens, "the black male body represents a certain kind of freedom." If black male performances continue to reinvent themselves with respect to past performances, Stephens believes black communities will be able to perpetuate themselves into the future. Stephens cited such performers as Bob Marley and Spike Lee as innovators in the current generation. In studying renowned performers like Marley and Lee, Stephens said that she hopes to be able to understand the racial implications their works will have on cultural injustice and political affairs. |
|
|
Father of modern patient care
|
Return to Top |
Harvey Picker may not be a household name, but we have many reasons to be grateful to him. Without him we may not have had ultrasound prenatal scans, several types of cancer radiotherapy treatments and portable X-ray units. We might even have lost the last war.
At the age of 90, this American physicist, businessman, inventor, professor of international affairs and philanthropist has packed more into his lifetime than most of us could hope to squeeze into 20. But what will mark him out most to future generations is not his amazing contribution to medical and military technology but that he kick-started the whole idea of patient-centred care; in fact, he created the phrase.
Twenty years ago he founded the Picker Institute in Boston, the first body to investigate scientifically not just what patients really wanted from healthcare but how doctors and healthcare staff could improve the patient experience. The institute now has offices in Germany, Switzerland and the UK, and it has provoked a global revolution in healthcare planning. The patient-centred approach is vaunted as central to the UK Government’s NHS plans. Without it there would be no “Patient Choice” initiative, the Department of Health’s flagship (and as yet unproved) policy of allowing patients to decide where and when they have their surgery to suit their needs best.
“If you’d told me when we started that we would influence healthcare in leading countries in such a way, it would have been beyond what I’d ever imagined,” he told me on a visit to London this week.
Picker, now something of a healthcare guru, is in the UK to attend an international conference on healthcare quality, and to present the Government’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, with a Picker Award for his contribution to improving patient safety in the UK. His campaigning course, given a background of privilege and influence, may sound surprising, but it’s typical of a man who admits to finding life “a candy store”.
He took over the pioneering Picker family business of developing and marketing X-ray machines, and his late wife, Jean, was a US Ambassador to the United Nations, an acclaimed journalist for Life magazine, and a personal friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. But the couple’s personal experiences of healthcare changed everything. As president of Picker X-Ray, Harvey was in constant contact with the healthcare system. And Jean had regular stays in hospital because of a chronic and incurable infection of her neck and head.
“I am under no illusions that my wife and I were given above-average attention in hospital,” he says. “But while we were there we saw how other patients’ needs were badly neglected. They were left unattended on stretchers in corridors for hours. This was happening all the time in the 1960s and 1970s, in the UK as well as America. Now, of course, if it happens it gets far more publicity.” It was all a symptom of the way healthcare had developed. “Until the middle of the 20th century, if you became ill there were few things we knew how to cure, so patients got very personalised nursing care for almost everything, trying to pull the person through the illness,” he says. “Then, with penicillin and the introduction of other medical technologies, there was a complete flip. Because you could cure people, personal care became less important and the attitude of healthcare professionals changed from looking at the person to looking at the disease. The pendulum had swung too far the other way.”
Ironically for someone whose fortune was founded on medical technology, the consequences of this worried Picker. And rightly so, as subsequent research has revealed that patients get better results when they are involved in their own care and are treated as human beings.
Spurred on by his concerns, he persuaded the board of the foundation set up by his family to support the academic development of radiologists to change tack. The board agreed and in 1986 the foundation started developing research techniques to help institutions to find out what patients really wanted from their care, and ways of feeding that information back to healthcare providers. The following year Picker sold the family business and joined researchers at Harvard Medical School to embark on seven years of research into patient-centred care.
It was a typical about-turn for a man who, in his tenth decade and hard of hearing, still exudes an aura of old-world philanthropy (his two daughters have also established philanthropic organisations with family money) and an appetite to do and learn. He moves at a speedy shuffle, and brushes aside a recent operation to remove a skin cancer from the top of his head as a little reminder of too much time spent sailing, canoeing and skiing.
He still sails and gave up cross-country skiing at 85. The secret of his longevity, he assures me, is picking the right parents, and lots of luck. But it may also have something to do with his daily exercises, and a careful diet.
What about winning the war for us? This was all on account of Picker’s allergy to wool. Volunteering for service in the US Navy from college, well before America entered the Second World War, he rose to lieutenant commander. (At the same time he was developing a field X-ray machine that was used throughout the world during the course of the war.) Serving as a deck officer in the North Atlantic, he found his naval uniforms caused a childhood wool allergy to flare up again. In danger of being invalided out, he says he blundered into an interview with an admiral at the Bureau of Ordnance.
“He asked me if I’d like to work on a super- secret project, warning me that I’d go to jail if I used its name in public. Well, I jumped at it.” It turned out that the project was the development of radar, something that the British had turned over to the Americans because of a shortage of scientists. Picker was instrumental in liaising between the Armed Forces and Nobel prizewinning physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology radiation lab to ensure that the new scanning technology was usable. “It’s generally agreed that this technology saved Britain because a blockade of German submarines was depriving the country of food and supplies,” he says. “But with microwave radar they could be picked up and bombed.”
After the war, Picker and colleagues from the radiation lab built on their discoveries and went on to develop ultrasonic scanning in pregnancy. They discovered that ultrasonic waves in water behaved in much the same way as microwaves in air, and because the human body is two thirds water, they experimented with it as an imaging technique. Until then, X-rays were the only means of scanning, which could be harmful to mother and foetus. “At first the radiologists weren’t interested. Then the obstetricians said they wanted it, and that was it; ultrasound was up and running,” he says.
Picker, however, is not one to dwell on past achievements. He is taking a real interest in the way patient-centred care has moved up the political priority list in the UK but is still worried about that pendulum being centred. “There’s a long way to go,” he says. “But I think we’re all convinced that it’s possible to treat patients as human beings, meeting their wants and worries, as defined by them, and not the doctor.”
As I leave, representatives from Dr Foster, the British organisation that compiles data on health services, are being rushed in. Picker explains to me that the UK is more advanced in collecting data to inform patient choice than the US. He wants to learn how it’s done.
Doesn’t he ever plan to retire? “When I get old enough,” he twinkles.
www.pickerinstitute.org
Health landmarks in a long life
Born in 1915, these are the events that have shaped healthcare in Harvey Picker’s lifetime
When he was . . .
3 50 million died in worldwide flu pandemic 7 Insulin was found to be a lifesaver for diabetics
13 Fleming discovered penicillin
23 Electric shock therapy was first used
24 Picker’s company produced mobile X-ray units 35 Chemotherapy drugs first developed
38 The structure of DNA was discovered by Watson and Crick
39 First successful kidney transplant took place, and the polio vaccine was introduced
50 Ultrasound machines first used for foetal-scanning
57 The first Cat scan of a brain took place
63 The first MRI scan took place
65 The World Health Organisation declared smallpox eradicated
66 Aids was officially recognised
72 Prozac was first prescribed in the US
86 The human genome was sequenced |
|
|
Health briefs
|
Return to Top |
| See the light: What's one of the easiest ways to beat the "autumn blues"? "Find a sport or outdoor activity that makes you look forward to cold - like hiking or walking," says Dawn LaFrance, assistant director of counseling and psychological services at Colgate University. "Getting your heart pumping can really affect your mood." |
|
|
Don't tag all libido swings as disorders
|
Return to Top |
Kelley, Pam
Charlotte Observer
|
Dysfunction. That was the word that caught my attention in a recent Wall Street Journal health column.
The column, in Q&A format, offered this query: "Is it known what percentage of women experience sexual desire declines around menopause?"
In her answer, the columnist cites a study that found 42 percent of women in early menopause "had scores indicating sexual dysfunction." In late menopause, 88 percent "had scores below the cut-off for sexual dysfunction."
Whoa. A couple questions leap to mind.
Why does a decline in sexual desire mean you're dysfunctional? And if almost everyone in a study -- 88 percent -- scores the same way, how come they're the dysfunctional ones?
I'm hardly the only person with questions.
Numerous critics are now speaking out about what they say is the creation and marketing of a sexual disorder.
"We've really pathologized the menopausal process and post-menopausal process," says Meika Loe, a sociologist and author of "The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America."
Even before Viagra hit the market in 1998, pharmaceutical companies had begun searching for an equivalent product for women.
In 2004, a Food and Drug Administration committee turned down Proctor & Gamble's request for approval of Intrinsa, a testosterone patch designed to treat low sexual desire. It cited insufficient data about long-term effects.
You can bet other products are in the works, however.
But back to the basic question: What happens to sexual desire as women age? What's normal?
The answers aren't at all clear. You can find some studies that say desire doesn't decline with age. Others conclude it drops like a rock.
Lenore Pomerance, a psychotherapist and a co-author of "Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause," says yes, desire does decline for some women. But other women report a resurgence.
Both estrogen and testosterone levels decline during menopause. It's testosterone, not estrogen, that can affect sexual desire.
But a woman's sexual desire isn't exclusively a function of hormones, Pomerance says. Many factors, including a woman's satisfaction with her partner, can fuel or dampen libido.
Pomerance, who's 64, remembers when post-menopausal women weren't supposed to be sexual at all.
Now, the pendulum has swung the other way. You're supposed to want to have sex until you die. And if you don't want to? You're dysfunctional.
"This is disease mongering," she says.
Pomerance is trying to promote a happy medium: "If you don't want to, that's OK. The ideal is that we can be the way we want to be. And we're accepted for that."
Don't expect the drug companies to embrace that message, however. As Meika Loe wrote recently: "Before long, you and your loved ones will be deemed sexually dysfunctional. My advice: Arm yourself for the onslaught." |
|
|
Talking Hands
|
Return to Top |
** Editor's note: This television story has been run by outlets in Syracuse and Albany, N.Y.; Amarillo and Austin, Texas; Atlanta; Wichita, Kan.; Green Bay, Wis.; Tallahassee, Fla.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Kansas City, Mo. To view the segment, go to http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392868.
In the 2000 presidential campaign, many observers labeled Al Gore as stiff. Lauren Solomon, an image consultant, has worked with politicians and executives for 13 years on how to handle themselves in public speaking situations. She thinks the problem wasn't just his language, it was his body language.
"If you don't believe that there is a link between your words and your gestures, then you're only going to get half of the languaged message across to your audience," she says.
Colgate University neuroscientist Spencer Kelly found that hand gestures actually influence how our brain processes speech. "Some people think that gestures are actually separate from language," he says. "I believe they are part of language and that means if you're going to understand language, you can't just focus on speech, you have to focus on speech and gesture."
Kelly used an electroencephalograph (EEG) machine to measure the electrical brain activity of volunteers while they were shown gestures that contradict what's spoken. "I present gestures that convey one piece of information like gesturing to the shortness of an object and then I present a word like 'tall,'" Kelly says. He found that while witnessing contradictory gestures, volunteers produced the same brain wave pattern as people listening to confusing language -- called the N400 effect.
Discovered in 1980 by University of California, La Jolla, researchers Marta Kutas and Steven Hillyard, the N400 effect is a signature negative brain wave with a peak at approximately 400 milliseconds after the final word is spoken. "If you say, 'the man likes cream and sugar in his socks,' the brain finds that to be unusual," says Kelly. "It doesn't make sense given the sentence ... So the N400 reflects a violation of your expectation of what a word should be."
As featured in Scientific American Mind, that suggests that the brain sees gestures as an integral part of communication. Without them, our brains only get part of the story. According to Kelly's paper, may be integrated into the brain in early or late stages of language processing.
Kelly, a self-proclaimed "prolific gesturer, for better or worse," theorizes that gesturing can be good for both people trying to communicate information and for audiences trying to understand that message. "Hands aren't just good for changing tires, or writing letters, hands are also good for thinking. And when you're speaking, these things are ripe for the taking," he says.
Volunteers heard the word "tall" while watching a video of a hand moving towards a short glass. Kelly observed the N400 effect during these gesture mismatches.
image: Colgate University
But he also warns politicians about contradictory hand gestures. "I once saw a politician when describing some policy issues in the Middle East, say, 'We must bring piece to the Middle East.' And simultaneously, multiple times, made pounding gestures with his fist," he says. He suggests that this politician may have been saying one thing, but thinking another.
So his advice to politicians: "It's probably safe to keep to the scripted gestures." But when they go off the script, like during a debate, he says that politicians should make sure that their gestures speak along with their words.
He says teachers can also use this advice when introducing new words to their kids, whether it's a foreign language teacher saying a new word or other teachers introducing new ideas. "If students' brains are wired up to connect gesture and speech, you better use gestures with your speech to best increase learning for those children."
Kelly's future research will look at how we change our communication style when we can't gesture, like when we talk on the phone.
Kelly's research was featured in the October/November 2006 issue of Scientific American Mind and published in Brain and Language, April 2004. This study was funded by Colgate University. |
|
