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(01/28/16 5:05am)
Prior to visiting Jamaica, junior Kerry Ryffel was interested in sustainability. However, after participating in adjunct faculty member John Galuska’s “Root, Fruits and Resilliency” program last summer, Ryffel realized sustainability was something she wanted to study at school.
(10/02/14 11:15pm)
The work of more than 400 IU students and Habitat for Humanity will be presented in the form of a key when IU’s football team plays University of North Texas on Saturday.
(09/26/13 4:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU’s Vice President for International Affairs David Zaret called President Michael McRobbie’s recent two-week trip to Africa “remarkably productive.” Zaret reflected on the trip’s highlights during a forum Wednesday night in the IU Auditorium. The primary goal of the trip was to connect with peer institutions in Africa to pursue new opportunities for IU, Zaret said. The team departed Africa with numerous agreements, Zaret said, including parternships with Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya, and Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, South Africa. The group visited the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, home of a large collection of anti-apartheid documents, Zaret said. He said he hopes IU’s social science fields can form a partnership with the school to gain access to this research.The current deputy dean of research at the University of the Western Cape, Renfrew Christie, is an old friend of Zaret’s and helped move the historically black university into a top research institution, Zaret said.Renfrew was incarcerated for five years for being the primary source of leaking information about South African attempts to gain nuclear weapons, Zaret said. “There is a certain resilience of someone who is happy and pleasant after they go through an experience like that, and emerges to do great work at the University of the Western Cape,” Zaret said.McRobbie and his team also visited the University of Pretoria, which IU has worked with for about 10 years. The universities agreed to explore opportunities in the areas of health sciences, human rights and assistance with African language instruction. Within the past year, IU has funded about 200 students’ and faculty members’ trips to Africa for various research and teaching activities. About 200 African students currently attend IU, Zaret said.He said the involvement of IU and the universities in Africa have been and will remain to be a “partnership of equals.”“Now is the part of heavy lifting, trying to figure out where are the best opportunities?” Zaret said.Follow reporter Ashlyn Bridgewater on Twitter @ash_bridgewater.
(09/25/13 3:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>President Michael McRobbie and a delegation of IU staff toured Africa last month to witness the progress of an HIV-fighting initiative created by the IU School of Medicine in partnership with Moi University’s School of Medicine in Kenya.The goal was to provide Kenyan residents with the chance to fight HIV/AIDS and to fight against the social stigma that comes along with being diagnosed, said Ryan Piurek, IU news and media director.By 2001, the universities created the Academic Model Providing Access to Health, one of the largest and most comprehensive academic centers for the treatment of AIDS in the world, said Piurek in his blog about AMPATH.The program serves a population of 3.5 million people throughout western Kenya and has enrolled more than 160,000 HIV-positive people, Piurek said. McRobbie is the first sitting president of IU to visit Africa since the start of the program.“President McRobbie remarked that it was one thing to read and hear about all of the awe-inspiring work being done at AMPATH, but that until you see it for yourself, see it up close, you can’t truly understand the incredible impact AMPATH has had in Kenya,” Piurek said.The program and those involved have a philosophy of “Leading with Care.” AMPATH expands beyond the face of HIV/AIDS, Piurek said, and tries to tackle critical problems such as income security and access to food.AMPATH recognizes these issues are intertwined, said Robert Einterz, director of the IU Center for Global Health. “Unemployment and poverty are huge problems in Kenya, as well as issues of gender inequality, so we have had to take on all of these issues,” Einterz said. “One has to address issues of food and income security.”Einterz was involved early on in the creation of the program and is still heavily involved in the partnership. To help fix these communities means to help address the social aspects, Einterz said.“The stigma associated with the disease is also changing, so that is less of a challenge but still a present challenge,” Einterz said.AMPATH has determined that the severity of of non-communicable chronic diseases, such as hypertension, cancer and heart disease in sub-Saharan Africa, necessitates the expansion of the program. They are creating a new building specifically for the treatment of these diseases.The construction of a Chronic Disease Building is expected to be completed by 2015. The building will be partially solar-paneled and will be equipped with outpatient clinics, research areas and seminar areas, Einterz said.“It is very clear, looking forward, that these diseases are going to play a large role in the health of that community,” Einterz said. “This new building, in part, will help them do that.”Einterz said the program hopes to develop models of health care that promote equity and accessibility to care.“I think that these are models of care and care delivery that are applicable beyond the borders of Kenya,” Einterz said.Follow reporter Ashlyn Bridgewater on Twiter @ash_bridgewater
(09/09/13 2:27am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU has maintained its position on the list of top contributors of teachers for Teach For America for the second year in a row. The university was ranked eleventh with 44 students entering the teaching corps.Teach For America released its sixth annual ranking of colleges and universities contributing the largest numbers of graduating students to the teaching corps earlier this month.Almost four percent of IU’s graduating students applied for the 2013 program, according to a press release. Almost 400 IU alumni have taught with Teach For America in the last 23 years.“The reason so many IU students are deciding to apply for Teach For America is because of their belief in expanding educational opportunity and the responsibility for making an impact after graduation,” said MaryCatherine Wright, Indiana recruiter for Teach For America. “I think a lot of seniors see Teach For America as an opportunity to do this.”Teach For America recruits and trains high-talented graduating students to enter the teaching field in communities facing challenges such as poverty and minimal educational opportunities.The corps is composed of many different avenues of study and students from all fields of education, according to the press release.Once recruited, students will spend at least two years teaching in neighborhoods. This fall, Teach For America will be able to reach more than 48 urban and rural regions with 11,000 student teachers and 32,000 alumni working toward the same goal of increasing education.A large number of teachers will go to Indianapolis this year, Wright said.Although the program does not require students to graduate with a degree in education, the Dean of the IU School of Education Gerardo Gonzalez, said he has noticed more recruitment of students within the School of Education.Education majors tend to be more capable and prepared to get up to speed in their Teach for America work, Gonzalez said. “It only makes sense that you would want to recruit the best and most prepared students to make an impact,” Gonzalez said. Recruiters seek teachers who are committed to expanding educational opportunity, who are passionate about the endeavor and who display leadership qualities, Wright said. IU students have shown drive and dedication through their work in Teach for America, she said. “Students at IU are very aware that there is educational inequality in our system,” Wright said. “They are really fired up about the necessity to solve that for our future generations. It really is an injustice what is happening in our communities.”The School of Education offers a minor in partnership with the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) in order to help students who are not in the School of Education prepare for Teach For America.The minor is designed to provide students with training and education they need when going into a classroom that they would not otherwise have, Gonzalez said.The next deadline for students to apply to Teach for America is Sept. 13, through the organization’s website. Students who meet this deadline will be notified of an offer by Oct. 31.“IU is recruiting talented students,” Gonzalez said. “I think the combination of very talented students and a large campus, and an emphasis in the liberal arts creates a pool of potential Teach For America students.”
(09/05/13 3:50am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Incoming students will face a more extensive set of criteria to receive merit-based automatic scholarships because of a recent increase in applicants. These changes will affect the graduating class of 2018, said Ron McFall, interim director for the Office of Scholarships. The new scholarships will be referred to as Achievement Scholarships and have an expanded set of criteria compared to previous scholarships. Students must complete their applications by Nov. 1 to be considered for the Achievement Scholarships.IU previously offered scholarships to any incoming freshman that met a certain GPA requirement of at least 3.7. Students were also eligible for the scholarship if they had an SAT score of at least 1220 or an ACT score of at least 27, according to the Office of Scholarships website.“Our previous program was effective and served as a sound approach for the past few years, but the University has changed during that time,” McFall said.The University began its Automatic Academic Scholarships program in fall 2008, according to a press release.Merit scholarships are evaluated and adjusted each year to better suit the changing student body, McFall said. Changing the scholarships allows the university to continue to offer awards to eligible students while keeping the university affordable for the student body, McFall said. The students selected for the scholarships are based on multiple factors, including GPA, SAT/ACT scores and academic rigor, McFall said.Award amounts vary from $1,000 to $6,000 for in-state students, which are referred to as the Provost’s Scholarship. Dean’s Scholarships, which are for out-of-state applicants, range from $1,000 to $11,000. The scholarships are renewable for up to four years, given that students maintain a 3.0 GPA and are enrolled in at least 12 credit hours.Current students receiving a merit scholarship will not be affected by the change, McFall said. Students can find an extensive list of scholarship opportunities on the University’s scholarship page. Award amounts and criteria are also listed. There are in-state, out-of-state, incoming student and current student options.“The financial impact of this new approach allows IU to continue to offer impactful merit-based scholarships to high-achieving students,” McFall said.
(08/26/13 3:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Thanks to a $1.9 million research grant, the Indiana University Center for Research in Extreme Scale Technologies will collaborate with the University of Notre Dame and Purdue University on a shockwave physics research project. The primary goal of the research is to identify how shock waves create new materials, said Andrew Lumsdaine, CREST director and professor in the IU School of Informatics and Computing, in an email.The research will provide a way to simulate activity in a cheaper and more efficient manner, he said. Notre Dame will be leading the research. CREST will have the responsibility of making sure the programs that Notre Dame creates can efficiently and quickly run on a supercomputer, Lumsdaine said. He said the programs are like long mathematical problems that take large supercomputers to calculate, and CREST has to re-work the problems and programs so the computers can read and solve them. “The computational science team at Notre Dame needs to be able to develop their software in an efficient way, and they need to be able to deploy it on some of the fastest machines in the world,” Lumsdaine said.The goal of the research is to limit physical experiments, but this only can be possible to a certain extent, he said. To verify the accuracy of the computer simulations, some actual recreations must be played out. At this point, the team can compare the computational model to the physical experiment. If there are too many differences, the computational models, mathematical models and software will have to be slightly reworked to better match the physical experiment.Thomas Sterling, CREST associate director and professor in the IU School of Informatics and Computing, said IU was chosen to be involved in this research because CREST is recognized as one of the leading research centers in high-performance computing, he said.If the research is successful, future research collaborations may occur, Sterling said. Engineering fields, as well as science, will reap the benefits.“This is an exceptional opportunity for IU and its partners and perfectly timed to exploit recent findings while positioned to produce future results of value to other programs in the near term,” Sterling said.