2 | CITIZEN | Hyde Park | Week of July 11, 2018
NEWS briefly EDUCATION
UIS ANNOUNCES SPRING SEMESTER 2018 DEAN’S LIST SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The University of Illinois Springfield has released the Dean’s List for Spring Semester 2018. A total of 519 students were selected; 77 are students in the College of Business and Management, 39 are students in the College of Education and Human Services, 323 are enrolled in programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 66 are enrolled in programs in the College of Public Affairs and Administration and 14 are non-degree seeking or undecided. In order to qualify for the Dean’s List, a student must be an undergraduate who took at least eight graded semester hours and maintained a grade-point average of at least 3.75 for the semester.
HEALTH
STUDY FINDS THAT ONLY 23% OF AMERICANS GET ENOUGH EXERCISE A new study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has found that only 23% of Americans get enough exercise. What does “enough” mean? The government’s recommended physical activity guidelines call for healthy adults to do a minimum of two and a half hours of moderate intensity activity - or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity – plus at least two muscle strengthening days a week. OSF HealthCare Exercise Physiologist Michael Johnson says this lack of movement has a giant ripple effect across the country. “We’re seeing that there’s an increase in disease process as far as cardiovascular disease. We’re seeing an increase in diabetes, obesity, and all that can be linked to a lack of exercise or even a lack of physical activity. And as we’re going to see that, we’re going to see health care costs rise, and quality of life decline,” said Johnson. OSF HealthCare, an integrated health system owned and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in Peoria, Illinois, includes OSF Healthcare System consisting of 13 acute care facilities and two colleges of nursing.
LAW & POLITICS
BELLOCK NAMED DHFS DIRECTOR Gov. Bruce Rauner recently announced that Patricia R. “Patti” Bellock has been named director of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (DHFS). Bellock has served in the General Assembly since 1999 and is retiring from the House of Representatives where she became the first woman to serve as Deputy Minority Leader in 2013. She replaces interim DHFS Director Teresa Hursey who stepped in last month when Felicia Norwood left for the private sector. Hursey will remain as Medicaid Director. A native of River Forest, Bellock graduated from Saint Norbert College in Wisconsin, where she received a bachelor’s degree in History and American Government. She has received dozens of awards over the years from numerous organizations for her work on various health care policy issues, particularly in the areas of mental health, developmental disabilities, and children’s health. The appointment is effective today, July 11, 2018.
40 Under 40 Young Women’s League Supports Success For Black Girls Continued from page 1 BY KATHERINE NEWMAN
In 2015, Cheresa Purnell founded the 40 Under 40 Young Women’s League, a philanthropic network of young professional African American women, ages 25 to 39, who support the development of girls as future leaders. Each year, 40 new African American women are inducted into the 40 Under 40 League and join the collective to not only support the development of young girls, but also to support each other. When she was just 21 years old, Purnell started working as a mentor and an outreach specialist and said that mentoring has always been her life path. Eventually, Purnell was led to start her own collective and with the help of a parent organization, Demoiselle 2 Femme, she launched the 40 Under 40 League as a way to activate successful young women to engage in mentoring the younger generation. Each year at the annual Awards
Ceremony the 40 Under 40 League inducts 40 new members based on nominations made by current members. An individual is also able to nominate themselves. “One of the things that I am extremely passionate about is leadership development. There are a lot of successful people, but in my mind, success doesn’t always equate to you being a leader,” said Purnell. “Not only do we want to acknowledge successful women and not only is it an honor, but this is also a call to action.” The 40 Under 40 League works with young women ages 18 to 24 in their Emerging Young Women program. Within that program, they have two initiatives, College Connection and T3. “We have our College Connection which is young women who have already started the path and are in college. We support them with care packages, scholarships, internships, we do a lot of workshops and seminars, and we also do a monthly support phone call with them,” said Purnell. The T3 initiative stands for Transition,
Transform, Transcend and is a 10week boot camp that offers workforce development. “This is for the young women who finished high school and didn’t have a plan. They didn’t go to college whether they felt that college wasn’t for them or they just had a lot of barriers or obstacles that kept them from attending,” said Purnell. The theme in all the 40 Under 40 League initiatives is to inspire towards success. The goal is not only to get girls jobs or get girls off to college, it is to provide a network of support to guarantee a new generation of female African American leaders. “This is not just about finding a job, we want to inspire them to have a career because that’s where the social mobility and the economic sustainability is, in being able to have a career. This is bigger than a job for us. This is us wanting to support you holistically,” said Purnell. To learn more about the 40 Under 40 Women’s League, visit www.40under40ywpl. org.
COMMENTARY How to survive hot weather at work — and not fall out with colleagues BY CRAIG KNIGHT
When I am too hot at work I like to open a window, retrieve an ice lolly from the kitchen and kick off my shoes. But for many people, this is not an option. Finding the right temperature can make a big difference to how happy – and productive – we are at work. It can also be the cause of some serious arguments. The idea of a perfect temperature though is something of a red herring. Research into workplace psychology shows that, ultimately, people just want to have a level of control over their environment. Take Steve, for example. I interviewed him as part of a research project looking into people’s well-being at work. Commenting on the heat of an earlier August he said: You watch the sun moving ‘round the office. When it gets to you, you know you’re going to cook like a Sunday joint. And it’s always sticky. We have to ask [the facilities management team] to get the temperature turned down, but by the time they’ve done it the weather’s changed and you’re bloody freezing instead. TEMPERATURE ADVICE Unions and official bodies advise ideal temperatures for various workplaces.
Craig Knight
So discomfort and bad performance, it would seem, lurk for organisations operating outside of a prescribed band on the thermometer. There are even some rather unlikely claims that have been made for companies who hit the thermal sweet spot. A Cornell University study calculated that at 25 degrees Celsius workers are 155% better at typing than those processing words at 20 degrees celsius. That such a small shift in warmth accelerates the average worker from 90 to 230 words per minute seems pretty extraordinary. Of course it may be tied to assertions that workplace temperatures are fixed in favour of men. These suggest that ideal operating temperatures
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were calculated in the maledominated 1960s, when ambient environments were geared to perfection for 40-year-old men who weighed a little over 11st or 70kg. There was even a video that went viral, which made a joke about this: We are told that physiologically, women tend to carry more body fat and less muscle than men; they require more external heat to be comfortable. Younger men’s faster metabolisms create higher natural body temperatures. Meanwhile older adults tend to prefer warmer rooms to their younger peers. But as a species, all human beings – dressed in everyday mixes of cotton, polyester and wool, and of all genders and ages
– operate comfortably between about 14 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees Celsius. Within that range, psychological research suggests, that there is no such thing as a single temperature that maximises productivity. Not all women like a warm room, not all men like a cool one and some 60-year-olds prefer to sit by an open window. The way people feel about their environments is also largely influenced by their relationship to it. If you work in a large room where the management dictates where you sit, how you behave and what the temperature will be, for example, then your sense of autonomy will be reduced. There’s a big range of temperatures in which humans can happily operate, yet the thermostat has the potential to cause irritation, complaint and even illness. The crucible for dissatisfaction and underperformance is clumsy organisational management. The scientific evidence suggests that people should be allowed to choose their own ambient conditions. Retaining temperature control within the management sphere panders to financial myopia and treats staff like children. Costs saved by denying them simple choices are heavily outweighed by depressed Continued on page 6