Health & Education Progress 2011

Education 2011

Health

Section

January 23, 2011

& A new look ■

Herald Staff Writer

Altru Family Birthing Center patient care coordinator Karla Miller holds a bulletin board that displays fabric and ceramic tile samples and the new floor plan for the Altru Family Birthing Center.

Altru Health System is giving new life to its family birthing center.

Remodeling is under way at Altru Family Birthing Center, which will give rooms an updated look and improve technological access. The rooms also will be handicapped accessible so mothers with special physical needs will be better served, said Karla Miller, Family Birthing Center patient care coordinator.

As the number of smaller hospitals in the area with obstetrics capabilities has declined, the number of patients at Altru birthing center has

Produced by the Grand Forks Herald’s Features team

increased, Miller said. The last time the birthing center was remodeled was nearly two decades ago.

Remodeling of the first six rooms is expected to be completed by the end of the month or early next month, Miller said. By the end of the year, remodeling is expected to be complete on the center’s remaining rooms.

Six of the rooms are being remodeled now and updates include bathrooms that feature new lighting, new fixtures and walk-in showers with ceramic tile. Some of the rooms also

Taking education to the people LOOK: See Page H2

Mayville State College posts record enrollment; broadens its services

■

By Ann Bailey

Herald Staff Writer

Submitted photo

Mayville State University students interact during a science experiment with some children during the STEM Carnival.

Submitted photo

A child paints during Mayville State University Child Development Program, which has been providing comprehensive programming to Head Start families since 1991 and to Early Head Start families since 2002.

The program provides collaborative programming designed to meet the changing needs of families across the rural service area of Traill, Steele, Griggs, Nelson and Grand Forks counties in eastern North Dakota.

Progress

Altru Health System updates its family birthing center

By Ann Bailey

Eric Hylden, staff photographer

H

Mayville State University is expanding its reach.

Both the number of students taking online classes and seek Gary Hagen, ing a degree have Mayville State increased University president. over the past several years, said Gary Hagen, Mayville State University president. For example, in 2002, 22 students were earning degrees online and now there are 132. The number of students taking online classes, meanwhile, has grown from 125 in 2002 to 407.

One of the university’s most popular online programs is anatomy and physiology, Hagen said, noting that medical students across the United States are taking the classes.

Mayville State University also has increased its reach in area high schools through its dual credit program. Twentytwo school high schools representing 50 communities, Bower said. The university also is reaching out to students through its Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics grant. The $900,000 grant is being used to increase the opportunities for students and teachers in the areas of science and math.

Mayville State has used another grant, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Early Head Start expansion grant, to broaden its services to the Grand Forks community. The university is using the grant to provide Grand Forks with Early Head start

services, which are housed in a building on the UND campus.

As Mayville State University has worked to learning opportunities outside of its borders, it also has maintained a strong presence on campus.

Last fall, Mayville State University had a record enrollment of 982 students, 58 more than the previous record set in 1969. That number included a 50 percent increase in the number of freshman enrolled and a 43 percent increase in transfer students.

The university is working to maintain its strong programs, which include teaching and early childhood education, at the same time it introduces new programs such as the clinical laboratory science degree program. Mayville State University is collaborating on that program with the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences so students take their classes at Mayville State and to UND for their laboratory work.

In the future, Mayville Sate wants to offer more programs aimed at place-bound adults, Hagen said.

“Many of those are single family mothers who need help.

We really need to deliver the information to them.”

The university also wants to continue to increase its distance program learning availability.

“There are lots of people out there who haven’t completed degrees,” Hagen said.

Learning online, something that was virtually unheard of 10 years ago, has opened the university’s doors to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to enter them.

“We’re providing services in different areas without additional buildings and facilities.

It’s taking education where people are,” Hagen said.

Reaching out

Submitted photo

Students participate in a nursing lab practice at Lake State Region College.

Off-campus presence is beneficial to both and Lake Region College and the communities in which they are located ■

By Ann Bailey

Herald Staff Writer

Lake Region College is growing.

Fall 2010 enrollment was a record 524 fulltime students, said Erin Wood, Lake Region director of marketing and communication. Meanwhile, the number of high schools that have a dual credit agreement with Lake Region College continues to increase. About 50 North Dakota schools, located in cities including Grand Forks, Edinburg, Surrey, Velva, Wing and Rugby have dual credits with Lake Region College.

Under the dual credit program, high school students can receive college credits. Courses are taught by high school faculty who meet certain criteria, by a college instructor who comes to the high school, online or through interactive television.

More options

Besides the dual credit program, Lake Region College also offers some of its college courses in towns across eastern North Dakota.

For example, Lake Region nursing students can take courses in Mayville, N.D. In the past, Lake Region has offered nursing classes in the North Dakota towns of Grafton, Northwood, Langdon, Carrington and Cooperstown. During the summer Lake Region’s peace officer program also has off-campus sites in Fargo and Grand Forks.

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Lake Region College President Mike Bower. win,” Wood said.

Lake Region College also is collaborating with Mayville State University on business administration and elementary education degrees and with UND on a master’s in business administration program.

Having a presence off campus is beneficial to both and Lake Region College and the communities in which they are located, Wood said.

“We’re always looking for different partnerships and collaborations with other colleges in the state to meet work force needs and to make college accessible.”

Growth

Another key to Lake Region College’s growth is to offer new programs, such as the wind program. Students can either get a one-year certificate or a two-year associate degree in applied science in the wind program.

Looking at the job opportunities in North Dakota and developing educational programs that will give students the tools they need to take advantage of them is one of the goals of Mike Bower, Lake Re-

LRS: See Page H2

Colleges pressed to give credit for work experience H2

PROGRESS: HEALTH & EDUCATION

www.GrandForksHerald.com

By Jon Marcus

The Hechinger Report

SEATTLE – Laid off at the start of the recession as the marketing director for a regional homebuilder, Leah Schedin quickly realized she lacked something essential for a new job: a university degree.

Schedin had completed courses here and there at a community college, but never enough for a bachelor’s degree. Without one, she found, her 18 years of experience didn’t matter.

“These days, you’re applying online, and you’re filtered out as soon as you get to the question about whether you have a degree,” said the 46-year-old, who’s married and has a teenage daughter.

So Schedin put her talents to work finding a university where she could get academic credit for her work experience. She found one: City University of Seattle, a private, nonprofit institution that’s at the vanguard of a movement catering to the growing numbers of adult learners and military veterans who are changing careers in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. At the end of next semester, she’ll head back into the churning job market with a four-year degree in marketing after just 18 months.

Universities and colleges are being pressed to increase graduation rates and speed up the time it takes for students to complete degrees by awarding college credit for their life and work experience. A national campaign that starts Friday will promote the sometimes-derided practice with a program to help adults prepare online portfolios of their job experience that independent faculty will evaluate for academic credit.

LOOK/

Continued from Page H1

will have bathtubs which will be available for mothers who want to take a bath to help them become more comfortable before they give birth. There will not be water births available at the birthing center, though, Miller noted.

Rooms

The birthing center rooms are designed to look “homier” and less hospi-

One hundred institutions in 30 states are on board.

Top higher-education associations back the coalition, and major foundations are bankrolling it. It hopes to reach tens of thousands of people within five years.

Obama goal

The push coincides with President Barack Obama’s goal of boosting the number of college graduates by 5 million before the end of the decade, and it comes as states and higher education institutions are moving away from strict demands for seat time and credit hours.

There’s a growing awareness that Obama’s goal can’t be reached without encouraging older students such as Schedin.

“My goal is to be back in my career,” Schedin said as she enjoyed some rare downtime in a corner of the CityU cafeteria. “I wanted to get through fast, and I wanted some credit for those years I’ve put in.”

Only a handful of people take advantage of the opportunity to cash in on work experience: Just two dozen out of CityU’s 2,500 American students have sought such credits, a ratio that’s similar to what other schools report.

“It’s just not happening at the pace or scale it should be, given all these people out there with learning that has occurred in other venues,” said Pamela Tate, the president and CEO of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, which is behind the new campaign.

One reason is that many faculty members look down their noses at the practice and discourage their institutions and students from participating.

“They still believe that ‘if you weren’t in my class, you couldn’t possibly know it,’ “ Tate said. tal-like so items, such as glove holders, will be recessed and computer processors will be hidden.

Screens will be mounted on the wall and each room will have a flat-screen television.

The rooms also will be more inviting and comfortable for the families and friends of the mothers and babies. Each room will have a sofa that can be made into a bed. The sofa remains the same size when it is made into a bed, so it won’t have to be around to fit and guests

The idea of credit for learning from experience also took a hit when WalMart announced in June that it would team with a private, for-profit university to offer employees academic credit for things they did at work.

“People thought employees at Wal-Mart were getting college credit for learning how to use the cash register,” said Marie Cini, the vice provost at the University of Maryland University College, the online branch of the Maryland state university system. “If you use a really rigorous assessment process, that is not the case.”

Downside

Credit for work experience can have its downsides. The credits are difficult to transfer if you change universities, and substituting them for introductory requirements can cause problems for students later in their careers, when they can’t keep up with classmates in writing or other basic academic skills.

Experiential learning was first tried after World War I, when returning soldiers who enrolled in college were allowed to skip straight to sophomore year as a reward for their military service. But they proved unprepared for more advanced work, and the practice largely lapsed.

Low U.S. college graduation rates are helping to drive a revival. Less than 60 percent of college students earn bachelor’s degrees within six years, and the U.S. has fallen from first in the world to 10th in the proportion of 25- to 34year-olds with associate’s degrees or higher.

For a variety of reasons, increasing numbers of the nation’s 16 million university and college students won’t feel like they’re in the way.

Besides the remodeling, the Altru Family Birthing Center also will be sending its patients home with some new products, Miller said. For example, they will receive a small bag of Bee Kind natural products, which will include, shampoo, soap and conditioner.

Proceeds from the Bee Kind products will go back to bee keepers. Mothers also will be sent home with a new combination tote-diaper bag.

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are older than traditional high school graduates.

Forty percent are 25 and older.

A study of 48 schools by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning found that students who get credit for their experience are more likely to complete degrees.

“All of our institutional frameworks have been created around 18-year-olds coming out of high schools without any experience.

They’re the empty vessels into which we pour knowledge. But when you’re a working adult, you’re hardly an empty vessel,” said Lee Gorsuch, the president of CityU. “You learn by doing,” Gorsuch added. “We’re not anti-intellectual, but can you balance a spreadsheet or can’t you?”

WORK: See Page H6

Grand Forks Herald, Sunday, January 23, 2011

Erin M. Wood is director of marketing and communications at Lake Region State College.

LRS/

Continued from Page H1

gion college president.

“We have to be alert to what is happening so we can prepare them,” he said. Lake Region re-evaluates its programs every two years to make sure that they are meeting the edu-

cational needs of students.

“We don’t want to offer a program… that I felt like the opportunity would not be there to pursue. We’re very careful about what to advise our students. Even though they may be determined to go into a field, we’ll make them aware of what does or does not exist,” Bower said.

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Teens go old school, quit social media PROGRESS: HEALTH & EDUCATION

Grand Forks Herald, Sunday, January 23, 2011

By Nicole Tsong The Seattle Times

SEATTLE – Starting one recent Monday, Tanner LeCount, 16, began calling his mom instead of texting her to let her know what he’s doing. Eimanne El Zein, 17, gave up Facebook for runs with her dogs.

Nicholi Wytovicz, 16, replaced status updates with chores and homework.

Whose children are these?

For one week, Shoreline, Wash., high-school students were testing a life where text messages and Facebook don’t exist. As part of a project dubbed The Social Experiment, more than 600 students gave up texting, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter for a weeklong social-media blackout. It ended Dec. 12.

Under the rules, students could call each other but until the experiment began, many of them never had.

Cole Sweeten, 17, found out some of his friends are awfully awkward on the phone.

“They don’t know what to say,” he said.

But the Shorewood High School junior likes getting calls. He prefers a real “Hey, how are you?” to a “Hello” text with a smiley face.

“People sound different when they’re on the phone,” he said. “It’s emotion, not just little lines.”

Idea inspiration

The idea for The Social Experiment started with Trent Mitchell, a video-

McClatchy Tribune

Shorecrest High School students Jesse Hoefer, left, Nicholi Wytovicz, Mara Harris, Samuel Chudler and Corey Smith are video documenting “The Social Experiment,” a project where hundreds of Shoreline high-school students are giving up social media for one week.

production teacher at Shorecrest High School. In early October, he saw the movie “The Social Network,” a story about the founding of Facebook.

Mitchell wondered whether his students, who often walked into class heads down, typing away on their phones, could cut themselves off from text and Facebook.

Mitchell, 36, who remembers when big, clunky car phones were the rage in the 1990s, talked to his video-production class and told the students that he didn’t think they could tear themselves away from social media. Then he polled them. Half the students said they could do it; the other half thought it was the worst idea they’d ever heard, he said.

Mitchell pulled in friend

and teacher Marty Ballew, Shorewood’s video-production teacher, and together, they created The Social Experiment.

The theme: What was life like in 1995?

“Things are so much different than when we went to school,” said Ballew, 37.

“It’s kind of unfathomable, the leap we’ve taken from the early ‘90s to now.”

To promote the project, students made video trailers spoofing “The Social Network” and the Harry Potter series. Video students are documenting the process with confessional videos and interviews with students and staff, some of whom also volunteered to cut themselves off. The schools will combine the results for a final documentary film on the experiment.

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Some students went to extremes to make sure they didn’t break the rules.

Five Shorewood students handed their cellphones over to Ballew. One girl gave him her Facebook password and asked him to change it for the week to avoid temptation.

The experiment was based mostly on an honor system, but secret spies roamed the halls, sending text messages to students and instant messages to people breaking the rules on Facebook. Answer the text (some students did) and you might get the response: “You’re out of the Social Experiment!”

Kids who made it through the week were entered in a drawing for a gift card, Mitchell said.

“Some are doing it for a gift card,” Mitchell said mid-experiment. “Some are seriously challenging themselves.”

Cold turkey

Count Sweeten among the latter. He deleted texts as they came in, but it could be hard to remember he wasn’t supposed to answer text messages. On the second day, he heard the familiar buzz-buzz, grabbed his phone, ready to hit the button to read the new text message, when he remembered.

“No!” he shouted, and dropped the phone to the floor.

“I miss texting,” Sweeten said.

Last year, El Zein was sending or receiving 200 texts per day, or about 6,000 per month. It was

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enough to get her phone confiscated by her parents for a week. This year, she said, she has averaged 20 to 50 a day, until the experiment week that is.

It was “weird” not checking her e-mail, text and Facebook as soon as she wakes up. But each day got easier. She has gotten more exercise, for one thing.

“I run my dogs, other things I like to do but don’t always do because I spend all my time on Facebook,” she said, as the experiment was ongoing.

Wytovicz has done chores with his free time, an idea that sounds like it came from his parents, but he claims he wanted to do

H3

it. He also figured out activities such as shooting hoops or watching basketball are better distractions than ones that take 10 or 15 minutes, he said.

“Do something that fills time in large segments,” he advised.

Tanner’s mom, Pam LeCount, said cutting out text messages changed how she talks to him during the day. She missed getting quick responses from him. But she also liked getting calls from Tanner and having conversations with him.

“I’ve had more calls from him in these last four days than in six months,” she said.

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Tinnitus treatment music to some sufferers’ ears H4

PROGRESS: HEALTH & EDUCATION

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By Sarah Avery

The Department of VetIt s a growing problem among vets erans Affairs reports that more s thanbeen 760,000 former and the general public, and it service members have neglected. been diagnosed with the

McClatchy Newspapers

It drives people nuts.

Ringing. Buzzing. Hissing.

For people with tinnitus, a phantom sound only they can hear plagues their every waking moment.

Imagine a Salvation Army bell ringer camped out in your head every day, all day.

Despite afflicting an estimated 50 million people in the United States, often as a result of injury or repeated exposure to loud noises, the condition has no cures and few effective treatments, though a newer approach is now available at Duke University.

The intervention, called Neuromonics, retrains people to manage how they hear the internal sound.

But it’s not covered by insurance and is expensive – about $4,500 for a device that resembles a portable music player and for sessions with an audiologist to tailor the treatment.

Teri Kim, 48, of Cary, N.C., started the therapy in August, and almost quit a month into it when she still hadn’t gotten relief from the high-pitched whine that has blared in her head for years. Then she gradually began having good days and even good weeks as the whine began to diminish.

“It was wonderful,” Kim said.

The therapy works on the finding that many cases of tinnitus (pronounced teh-NYE-tus or TIN-eh-tus) are produced inside the brain, not the ear.

Rebecca Price, an audiologist at Duke who provides the therapy, said the internal sound is often accompanied by hearing loss.

When the ear can no longer pick up a certain sound frequency, scientists theorize, the brain fills the void, causing a non-stop din.

For most, the sound is a minor nuisance, but about

Jennifer Born director of public for the American Tinnitus Association

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Teri Kim of Cary, North Carolina, puts on the two earpieces for her Neuromonics tinnitus treatment during a test session in Duke Hospital’s Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology in Durham, N.C. 12 million sufferers in the United States find it so troubling they seek medical help, according to the American Tinnitus Association, an advocacy group.

About 2 million people claim some degree of disability from the disorder.

Unraveling the mystery

Brain imaging has provided researchers with clues to the cause, homing in on areas involved in auditory processing, as well as regions associated with

memory and emotion.

And that’s where sound therapy can be effective.

Using the Neuromonics device, people like Kim can reprogram their brains to filter out most of the offending sound. The process starts by creating a recording of the person’s unique internal menace, as the patient describes the sound and the audiology team works to mimic it. The sound is then masked under a benign “white” noise such as waves or a radiator hissing.

That combined sound is

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then layered under a series of four different musical compositions, including classical and New Age selections. Each of the pieces has been further modified to reduce the bass and amplify the higher tones.

For at least two hours a day for two months, patients listen to the special music with a portable player – any combination of the four tunes they want.

The doctored music drowns out the ringing.

“Patients love it,” Price said, adding that by easing the phantom sound, patients begin to associate relief with the music.

After two months, the second phase starts, this time with the white masking noise removed, leaving just the music and the recording of the patient’s sound.

“We’ve already trained their brains to respond positively to the music, so when they hear ringing, they don’t freak out about it,” Price said.

After about four to six months in the second phase, the brain is retrained to filter out much of the phantom sound.

Kim, who has stayed in the first phase for four months, possibly because her case was so severe, recalled that before the treatments, the ringing in her head grew so loud as the day wore on, she suffered physical pain.

“It made my teeth hurt,” she said.

Although the sound has diminished since she began the therapy, it has not been silenced. And the

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cost was a huge hurdle.

No. 1 goal

For those reasons, finding a cure is the primary objective of the national tinnitus advocacy group.

Jennifer Born, director of public affairs for the American Tinnitus Association, said research funding into the condition has increased ten-fold in five years, to $10 million, in large part because of interest from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Born said tinnitus is the leading cause for disability payments to service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, whose training and combat missions involved heavy equipment, explosions and loud gunfire.

condition, which is typically grounds for a partial disability payment “It’s staggering, but it’s a fact,” Born said. “It’s a growing problem among vets and the general public, and it’s been neglected.”

Many of those in the general public who have the condition blame loud music. Born traces her tinnitus to a concert she attended at age 15. And the threat of a widening epidemic grows larger with the use of ear buds for MP3 players, which blare music directly into the ear.

Kim offered a cautionary tale: “I had to give up listening to music because it made it worse.”

Now after treatment, she said she can at least listen to some music, although songs in upper pitches still cause discomfort. The real test will be when she can again listen to her muchloved ABBA without hitting the roof.

PROGRESS: HEALTH & EDUCATION

H5

Laser tag, karaoke keep finals from being a test of nerves

Grand Forks Herald, Sunday, January 23, 2011

By Larry Gordon Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES – It was just before midnight and hundreds of students in the Caltech cafeteria were digging into plates piled high with eggs, bacon, doughnuts, french toast and fruit. Nearby, several top administrators, including President Jean-Lou Chameau, whipped up omelets for the noisy crowd of future physicists and engineers.

The idea was to make it easier to swallow the next item on the menu for these students: final exams.

Caltech junior Jessica Davis, who was about to launch into a four-hour take-home exam in quantum mechanics, said she appreciated the social interlude and free food at the “Midnight Munchies” party last week. “It certainly is a way of forcing students out of their rooms and de-stressing before taking their finals,” said Davis, 21, an astrophysics major from Kansas.

Lowering student stress during end-of-term exams, scheduled for this week at many colleges, is the goal of a growing number of serious and wacky events at campuses in California and across the nation. College students have always tensed up during finals, but school officials say the bad economy and scary job market are increasing the pressure even more this year.

So, along with extended library hours, extra counseling and quiet study spaces, colleges are offering bounce houses, laser tag, pajama runs, petting zoos, oxygen bars and chicken soup deliveries.

There are karaoke singalongs, labyrinth walks, artificial snowfalls, comedy hours and miniature golf.

And of course, hot chocolate and neck massages.

At Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, 10,000 tiny rubber balls are scheduled to be dropped from a dorm roof to eager students wait-

It s not just abou grades. It s about be a whole person.

Tom Mannion student

McClatchy Tribune

Dylan Sures, 19, a sophomore chemistry major, guesses he has about one pound of bacon on his plate, as he looks for friends inside Chandler Dining Hall on the campus of California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena, Calif., during “Midnight Munchies.” ing below. At Oberlin College in Ohio, the library sponsors single-song dance breaks. Johns Hopkins University in Maryland holds a gingerbread house decorating contest. Emory University in Georgia has a Harry Potter-themed snack night, with non-alcoholic “butterbeer.” Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks ran a night of car decorating and caravanning to view Christmas decorations. And students at Illinois’ Roosevelt University wrote their anxieties down on postcards and mailed them to counselors.

High anxiety

Skeptics may see this as childish indulgence of a generation of college students who grew up pampered and overprotected.

School administrators concede some of that is true.

But they also emphasize that tough competition for jobs and graduate school admission, along with worries about higher tuition and loan burdens, are mak-

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ing today’s collegians more anxious than previous classes about grades and their futures.

In addition, colleges have been paying more attention to students’ mental health in recent years, several experts said. The exam week programs are part of that change, and are healthy alternatives to alcohol and drugs for “getting through this tense time,” said psychologist Keith Anderson, who is active in the American College Health Association.

“More schools are willing to invest a little more in prevention along those lines,” Anderson, a staff psychologist at New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said of exam-time activities. “That does not necessarily mean the students are more coddled, but they do have more options available.”

Brian Van Brunt, president of the American College Counseling Association, compared the pre-finals yoga and snacks

to the bicycle helmets students were urged to wear in childhood. “It helps make a safer, easier journey,” he said. And current college students do expect more services, he said: “The word I’m tempted to use is ‘entitled.’ “ Still, campuses should be genuinely concerned about student stress and offer good care with “some fun attached to it,” said Van Brunt, who is director of counseling and testing at Western Kentucky University.

That was evident recently at Pomona College as classes ended for the semester and a finals study period began. On a lawn at the Claremont campus, two fenced pens were set up, one containing six bunnies and the other with 10 puppies. Over two hours, about 300 students took turns climbing inside and playing with the animals at the student-organized event.

Adam Griffith, a freshman at Claremont McKenna College, which is

also a member of the Claremont University Consortium, said he had only seven hours sleep over three days last month as he finished four papers for classes. “It was rough, but I got it done,” said the government major from Danville, Calif. Now, he said, he was taking a break from studying for a Spanish exam to romp with the dogs.

“Stuff like this is a really, really good idea, especially since it doesn’t take too much time,” Griffith, 18, said. “I appreciate seeing that from the faculty and staff, acknowledging that we are under stress.”

Study break

Standing by was Neil Gerard, Pomona College’s associate dean of students, who said the school also provides late-night breakfasts and free massages at the semester’s end. Seniors particularly feel “an aura of pressure,” as many worry about the possibility of moving home after graduation and competing with older people for entrylevel jobs, Gerard said. But most students cope well and just need a fun break

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from studying, he said.

At Caltech’s midnight breakfast, Tom Mannion, the school’s senior director for student activities, agreed that such events might have been unthinkable a generation ago. “I think we know a little bit more of what is good for students now,” he said as he prepared to help with the cooking. “It’s not just about the grades. It’s about becoming a whole person.”

Across the San Gabriel Valley, meanwhile, Cal Poly Pomona held its oncea-quarter “Midnight Madness” event last week.

About 1,000 students played laser tag, sang karaoke, ran a portable obstacle course and ate free hot dogs, kabobs and ice cream.

Organizer Pulkit Jain, a third-year biotechnology major from Diamond Bar, said he thinks the festival helps improve many students’ performance on finals. But the 20-year-old conceded that some classmates are too anxious to attend.

“There are still students who really just want to study and don’t care about anything else,” he said.

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Physician cuts prices, overhead by refusing insurance PROGRESS: HEALTH & EDUCATION

www.GrandForksHerald.com

By Bill Glauber

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

GREEN LAKE, Wis. – Tall and folksy, Thomas Willett is the living, breathing definition of a country doctor.

For decades, he has tended the aches and pains of patients who live on farms and in small cities and communities across a lush, rolling stretch of Wisconsin.

But little did anyone here know that beneath the doctor’s calm, authoritative demeanor beat the heart of an honest-to-goodness radical out to change America’s health care system one patient at a time.

For the last seven months, Willett has been engaged in a remarkable experiment to bring affordable healthcare to those who need it most, patients who either have no insurance or only catastrophic coverage.

What he has done is create a clinic with reduced rates, a tiny staff and one very prominent feature: He doesn’t accept insurance.

He has cleared away the back-office overhead required for the care and financial feeding of the health insurance industry and passed on the savings to the patients.

Need a 15-minute checkup? That’ll be $39.

The rates are set right where the patients can see them, in an easy-to-understand two-page menu.

Prices range from an $8 blood draw to a vasectomy for $500. He doesn’t prescribe narcotics. He’ll take cash, check, credit card or debit card.

Experiment

“I’m independent, and everyone else works for the man,” Willett says with a broad smile on his face.

He’s giving this experi-

WORK/

Continued from Page H2

Gaining acceptance

Even more established institutions such as the University of Maryland University College and Valdosta State University in Georgia are beginning to accept credits from experience.

“It’s coming back now in a big way because there is this national push from the federal government,” Maryland’s Cini said.

“We’re looking for new ways to help people realize that, even if they’ve been out in the work force and have three kids and a busy life, there are ways to get a college degree that won’t take 20 years.”

Universities aren’t doing this solely out of altruism.

Adult learners increasingly seek schools that give them credit for experience, according to a survey

McClatchy Tribune

Getting a blood test to monitor if his lymphoma is still in remission, Guy Rossberg, left, talks with family practice physician Thomas Willett at his clinic in Green Lake, Wis. Rossberg, who has no insurance, was charged $5 for the test in lieu of a CT scan that would cost him thousands of dollars. ment two years, roughly the time it takes to establish a practice in a small town. He wants to see if he can deliver the lower-cost care to the patients while also making a living. Don’t worry for him, though. He’s 68 and financially set after a long, successful career.

And he hasn’t turned away his longtime patients, either, although, an area hospital handles the backoffice insurance work.

So far, through word of mouth and two advertisements in a local paper, he has attracted 70 patients a month to the new practice, called Access Affordable

Healthcare.

The clinic has drawn attention of state Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who represents the area.

“He’s an honest, real guy,” Olsen says of Willett.

“He just wants to see if this will work. He’s genuine.”

Olsen recently invited Willett to testify before a Special Committee on Health Care Access in Milwaukee. Willett lightened the mood when he told the panel: “This is going to be refreshing for you. I’m going to save you money.

I’m not going to ask you for money.”

Willett has been stewing

about the health care system for years. He expressed his frustration with his longtime office manager Holly Thorp and her son, Andrew, a nurse who now attends medical school and helped him craft the plan for the clinic.

Grand Forks Herald, Sunday, January 23, 2011

“I have 62 percent overhead,” Willett says. “So, I work until the end of July, seven months, for nothing.

If you cut out all that stuff, that is what medicine is worth.”

Some parts of overhead can’t be cut. Buildings cost money to buy and maintain. Good staff costs money, too. But Willett zeroed in on two items: billing and third-party payment, the insurance coding, claim filing and appeals that tend to swell the back offices of medical practices.

Cut the overhead and he could cut prices by up to two-thirds. Moreover, his salary could remain the same. He would charge only what he was receiving from insurance companies, through their reimbursement.

At least, that’s the theory.

He doesn’t know if it will work. And he doesn’t know if the model could be applied to Medicaid and Medicare patients. After all, those programs require record keeping.

“The big debate in health care is if it’s a patient’s right or not to get medical care,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s one thing I wish we could take care of every patient. On the other side, you’re in a capitalist system. Why should we abandon that system? Or, is there another way without involving the government to get health care to everyone.”

Patients

Right now, he’s making a big difference in the lives of his patients who otherwise might not be able to afford medical care.

Some of his longtime patients, who are no longer insured, now see him in the new program.

Jodi Jaeger, 62, a breastcancer survivor, likes the peace of mind of knowing exactly how much an exam will cost.

“You’re paying for what you get,” she says. “You’re not paying for the paperwork. You’re here, you pay and you’re done.”

Guy Rossberg, 62, a cancer survivor, comes to the office frequently to have his blood tested – a substitute, albeit an imperfect one, for a far more expensive CT scan that he cannot afford.

“People around town can’t believe they can see a doc for $39,” he says.

Linda Rather, 53, an independent crop consultant, says she can get her blood work done through the clinic for half the normal going rate.

“Doc Willett is someone you can implicitly trust,” she says. “He doesn’t beat around the bush and waste time but he takes time. He gives it to you straight.”

Willett is hopeful that the plan will work. And, if it doesn’t, he says he won’t have any regrets.

“I work for the people,” he says. “I try to work for the patients.”

Cutting overhead

Willett often lamented how much his own health insurance premiums cost, saying, “This is really stupid. What did medicine cost when I started?”

He looked at his own office.

For 5th and 6th graders

Saturday, April 16, 2011 UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences

by the higher-education marketing company Stamats. That means the potential for more tuition and more applicants, which enhances an institution’s reputation.

While no one tracks the number of credits awarded in this way, Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges, a consortium whose members offer academic credit for military experience, reports that 45,892 students earned 805,473 credits last year for their military training and experience.

For those military students who are pursuing four-year degrees, that’s an average of about 22 semester credits each out of the 120 to 180 credits that usually are needed.

Navy veteran John McGowan was awarded enough credits for his electronics training and other military experience that he got a bachelor’s degree in half the usual time from Irvine, Calif.-based Brandman University, even while

working full time. “I went from zero college to a bachelor’s degree in two years,” McGowan said.

Some universities offer institutional or standardized tests, while others that accept work-experience credits require students to take, and pay for, courses in which they put together autobiographical portfolios for faculty review.

“From the outside, it looks easy, but it takes a lot of work,” said Anthony Boben, 49, who earned credit from his work experience toward a bachelor’s degree in economics at Lehman College in the Bronx, N.Y., after he was laid off from a six-figure accounting job.

“What they’re rating is, ‘Does this person have the equivalent amount of learning I would expect a student to have when they finish a course with me?’ “ Cini said.

Schedin found the process “ridiculously

hard.” She prepared a 250page portfolio to apply for credits, and ended up receiving the maximum 45 toward the 180 she needed for a degree.

Her classmate Mark Ball, who also lost his job when the economy crashed, was awarded 25 credits for 22 years as a restaurant manager and music producer. He’ll finish his four-year bachelor’s degree next semester after only 18 months.

“It’s like the game of Life,” said Ball, 41, sitting in an empty classroom in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. “Except I started life first and went to school second.”

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H6

Rise of the iKids

PROGRESS: HEALTH & EDUCATION

Grand Forks Herald, Sunday, January 23, 2011

By Bruce Newman

San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Before, during and even between classes at Hillbrook School this fall, seventhgraders have been spotted on the Los Gatos, Calif., campus, sometimes burbling Spanish or Mandarin phrases into the glowing screen in their hands, other times staring into it like a looking glass. iPads – the Apple of almost every adolescent’s eye – are being provided to students at several Bay Area public and private schools this year, including Hillbrook, which claims to be the only K-8 school in America using tablet computers in class and sending them home. This has led to a lot of 12-year-olds swanning around the wooded hillside campus, talking to their iPads.

Summoning up a virtual keyboard recently, Sophie Greene quickly typed a note to herself in iCal, a calendar program, then played back an audio file in which she was speaking Spanish. “We record a conversation, e-mail it to our teacher, Senorita Kelly,” she explained, “then she critiques the lesson in Spanish and sends that back to us.”

For the 28 seventhgraders entrusted with iPads at Hillbrook, the pictures that flash across the device’s screen open a window to a wider world. The iPad allows them to take daily excursions across time and space to such exotic ports as ancient Mesopotamia and modern China.

No excuses

The only drawback is that with their assignments all composed on iPads, the one excuse that no longer works for Hillbrook’s seventh-graders is, “The dog ate my homework.”

At Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose – which introduced 32 iPads

McClatchy Tribune

Teacher Christina Pak, left, helps Chase Kerley use his iPad during history class at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, Calif. The school is one of a handful that has issued iPads to students to use in the classroom as well as home. into the classroom this fall – the devices are used only in class. And Stanford’s School of Medicine gave 92 iPads outright to its first-year students this September. At Hillbrook, which received its iPads last summer as a gift from the parents of two students, seventh-graders like Sophie slip the handheld devices into backpacks at the end of the school day.

Hillbrook’s program has been such a hit that it will be expanded next year to include eighth-graders.

As the high-tech tablets complete the first phase of these academic tests, the future of the iPad as an educational tool is raising questions about whether the most plugged-in technology will be remain the exclusive digital domain of the wealthiest schools.

With studies about the value of computers in the classroom indicating that results are “all over the map,” according to one local educator, low-income

schools aren’t even sure what they might be missing.

“The achievement gap is alive and well,” said Judith McGarry, Rocketship Education’s director of development. “Private schools and very wealthy public school districts are absolutely going to have all sorts of resources to throw at their kids. We believe that in our society, all children need to be technologically literate.”

Rocketship, the awardwinning nonprofit charter school network with three San Jose schools, recently declined a donation of iPads from two large Silicon Valley companies, preferring to wait until more textbooks are published digitally.

Woodside High School recently acquired about 25 iPads for Mandarin language classes, but quickly reassigned a handful for Aaron Blanding’s special ed classes for students with orthopedic impair-

ments. “It’s maybe not as important academically,” Blanding said, “but our kids like that when they take them into general education classes, they hear the other kids talking about how cool they are.”

No looking back

Hillbrook English teacher Tom Bonoma hopes he never has to go back to teaching the old way.

“The iPad has really been a game-changer,” he said. “It allows us to do a lot of things in real time that weren’t possible before.” During a class discussion of “A Raisin in the Sun,” a play about a struggling black family set in post-war Chicago, students used Animation Creator HDto record their interpretations of a scene. “It puts the sugar in the medicine of taking notes,” Bonoma said. “They suddenly look forward to doing that because they get to interact with this

www.GrandForksHerald.com

■

Schools test iPads in classrooms

gadget.”

Apple essentially had cornered the consumer tablet market when administrators at Hillbrook, Mitty, University High School in San Francisco and San Domenico in Marin were considering the iPad last summer as an educational implement.

“It seemed clear to us that it’s a revolutionary kind of tool,” said Brent Hinrichs, Hillbrook’s head of middle school. “It gets everyone involved all the time. That interaction is critical in having them think and experience every moment that they’re in the classroom.”

Revolutionary or not, using it as an educational tool was so untested that “tech mentor” Elise Marinkovich had to configure the iPads herself. Trying to figure out how to block Facebook, and to install the kid-friendly browser from Mobicip, she made countless visits to the Genius Bar at the Los Gatos Apple store. All the effort paid off.

During a recent Hillbrook history class, students fetched files on the achievements of ancient Mesopotamians, wrote several paragraphs about them on the Pages app, inserted photographs from Geo Photo Explorer, then e-mailed their work to teacher Christina Pak. She projected results onto an interactive “smart board” for discussion. You can almost imagine Elroy Jetson asking her a question by instant message.

So far, only one of the $500 tablets has been damaged badly enough to require repair. “It’s an educational tool,” said Marinkovich, who was thrilled when head of

H7

school Mark Silver decided the kids should be trusted to take their iPads home.

“If we just stop it at school, how is that helping them?”

Mitty administrators weren’t ready to make that leap, although the school may loosen its policy next year. “The interface is very open and collaborative, and I think it fosters a lot of independent inquiry and research,” said Lisa Brunolli, an assistant principal in charge of the school’s test program. “But it quickly became frustrating that students couldn’t take them home and use them for homework.”

Old school

Rocketship’s schools don’t use computers of any kind in the classroom, believing them to be a distraction from “the social learning experience,” according to McGarry. But they do promote online literacy with computer labs, and are conducting research of their own on whether computers are a help or a hindrance to learning. “We think they’re helping,” McGarry says.

Books for the current school year had already been purchased when iPads were added to backpacks at schools where tablets are being tried out.

Educators cling to the hope that they will be able to buy selected chapters of textbooks for use on the tablets, the way music fans pick individual songs on iTunes.

That would suit Sophie just fine. “In sixth grade my backpack was 27 pounds,” she said. “Ohhhh, my back! It was so sore.

This would definitely lighten it. And it would be way more eco-friendly.”

Spoken like a true iKid.

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H8

PROGRESS: HEALTH & EDUCATION

Family members rely on each other for kidney transplants

By Lisa Gutierrez

Scott Seetin received a kidney from his brother Kyle Seetin, back right, and his mother, Sandy Seetin, center, received a kidney from her brother. Also pictured is Seetin’s father, Dennis Seetin, who has only one kidney and was crucial in getting family members to donate their kidneys. The family posed for a portrait at their home in Kansas City, Kansas.

McClatchy Newspapers

R001543037

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – When the Seetins of Kansas City, Kan., gather around the dining room table – Mom, Dad, two grown sons – they have eight kidneys among them.

They’re just not where you’d expect them to be.

Oldest son Scott has three kidneys. So does his mother.

Scott’s brother has one kidney.

So does his father.

Over the last two years the Seetins have made a medical journey that has brought them to where they are now: healthy and alive.

For that, they are grateful in this new year. So they took a recent vacation to California (despite the cold rain) “to kind of celebrate the second chance at life we’ve had,” says Scott, 30, a graphic designer.

They went to watch Scott ride on the Donate Life float in the venerable Tournament of Roses Parade, sharing a spotlight with other organ recipients and donors.

Scott intended to be a living donor, too, until a twist of fate wound up saving his own life.

More than 108,000 people across the country are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant right now.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” says Erin Gregory, spokeswoman for the Midwest Transplant Network in Westwood, Kan. Sandy Seetin, Scott’s 53-yearold mother, could have been one of those waiting. The Seetins’ story begins with Sandy, who works part time in a floral shop.

She learned about five years ago that her kidneys were failing.

She began dialysis in 2007, and it did not go well.

“I knew I couldn’t stay on dialysis the rest of my life,” she says.

Watching their mother struggle, Scott and his brother volunteered to donate the kidney she needed.

Though he would have liked to, Sandy’s husband, Dennis, couldn’t help because he has his own kidney issues.

Dennis, 55, who works for Philips Medical Systems, learned about 15 years ago that one of his kidneys had never fully developed and

McClatchy Tribune

had stopped functioning. He had it removed.

So in the spring of 2008, the Seetin brothers started down the donor path. After weeks of countless blood draws and tests, Scott and Kyle, 26, a mapper/drafter for Kansas City Board of Public Utilities, were both pronounced matches for their mother.

For reasons still unknown to the family, the transplant team tapped Scott for the surgery.

“It was kind of bittersweet that they did because that’s how he found out,” Sandy says. “If they had just taken Kyle, then...”

Bad news

In May 2008, Scott was sitting in a doctor’s office waiting to clear a final hurdle before the transplant. When the doctor walked into the room, “he just had this look on his face like ‘I have something bad to tell you but I don’t know how to tell you,’” Scott remembers.

You can’t donate, the doctor

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his kidney after all, she said, “Well, that’s fine. I’m glad you offered, and I still have Kyle. And (Scott) said, ‘I have to have a kidney, too.’

“That was pretty shocking. I don’t think I heard what he said at first.”

She insisted that Kyle’s kidney now go to Scott.

Back at square one, Sandy’s younger brother and sister, who had both earlier offered to be donors, began the cross-matching process.

Sandy’s sister, who lives in Florida, was scheduled for the transplant, but two weeks before, doctors found plaque in the kidney’s arteries.

Once again, Sandy lost her donor. Eventually her brother, Don White, a Kansas City firefighter, was cleared to donate, and on Nov. 13, 2008, they underwent their surgeries.

The brothers came next. In yet another wrinkle, the week before their transplant operations in October 2009, an anesthesiologist noticed an irregularity on Kyle’s EKG. He was quickly green-lighted, though, and Kyle “saved my life,” says Scott, who, like his mother, now has three kidneys in his body – standard practice when kidneys aren’t infected or cancerous.

Scott and his mother got their

told Scott. You need a kidney as badly as your mom.

Scott couldn’t believe what the doctor said next – that his own kidneys were functioning at only 18 percent.

There’d been no signs. Well, maybe his ankles did swell and ache, and he got overly tired sometimes.

“It’s kind of a silent killer,” he says. “The kidneys deplete at such a gradual pace. It could have been happening for years, and I never really knew.

“I was pretty upset, but I think I was more upset at the fact that I wasn’t able to help my mom. She gave me life, and I was ready to repay the favor.

“I didn’t know how I was going to tell Mom that not only is she losing a donor but a son to the same disease that she was fighting so hard to beat.”

Just as Scott could read his doctor’s face, his mom could tell by his that all was not right when he walked in the front door of the family home a few The Hearthstone is a skilled nursing hours later.

When Scott neighborhood designed to support the told her that he changing needs of those diagnosed with couldn’t donate

second chances, and Scott isn’t about to waste his.

He met Mandi Clifton, a North Kansas City schoolteacher, about a month before his transplant.

On their first date he told her that he had some “medical problems.”

She stuck with him through the transplant and his recovery, and before they left for California last week, he proposed to her.

She said yes.

“No matter how hard life punches you or puts you down, no matter how many curveballs or doors they slam in front of you, never give up,” Scott says.

“Stay positive. The negative light shines very bright, but if you stay positive it’ll get you through that.”

By the numbers

Every 13 minutes another name is added to the national organ transplant waiting list.

On average, 18 people die every day because they don’t get an organ they need for a transplant.

In 2008 (the most recent year statistics are available), there were 7,984 deceased organ donors and 6,218 living organ donors, resulting in 27,961 organ transplants.

One donor can save or enhance the lives of more than 50 people.

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LEEDing the way

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LEED® Silver means GREEN for UND and North Dakota

A new day is dawning for the Education Building at the University of North Dakota.

Originally built in the 1950s, the building was little changed until last summer. Thanks to Stimulus funding appropriated by the North Dakota Legislature, a renovation and expansion of UND’s Education Building is setting the standard for merging efficiency, environmental protection, and educational impact.

The LEED® Silver-certified project has been designed for optimized energy efficiency.

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If you would like to partner with us on this groundbreaking project, please contact Dan Rice, Dean of the UND College of Education and Human Development, or Jena Pierce, Director of Development, at 701-777-2674. To learn more about the project, visit our Web site at:

The LEED® Green Building Rating System TM is the national benchmark for design, construction and operation of high-performance “green” buildings. It promotes a wholebuilding approach to sustainability. Visit the U.S. Green Building Council’s Web site at www.usgbc.org to learn more about LEED rankings and standards. (Renderings courtesy of JLG Architects Ltd., of Grand Forks)

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