Technician - Sept. 11, 2014

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TECHNICIAN

thursday september

11

2014

Raleigh, North Carolina

technicianonline.com

Pharmaceutical CEO speaks at Wells Fargo Lecture Series Sasha Afanasyeva Staff Writer

VIBHAVARI VEMPALA/TECHNICIAN

The Suicide Awarness Candlelight Vigil held on Wednesay on Harris field, drew a large group of victims and supporters to raise awarness about suicide.

Suicide prevention vigil raises awareness, remembers victims Laura Love Coorespondent

About 120 students gathered at Harris Field to recognize the World Suicide Prevention Day for the fourth consecutive year Wednesday evening. Several students and faculty members shared stories about their personal experiences dealing with suicide. Bob Kochersberger, associate professor of English, spoke about his son, Charlie, who suffered from heroin addiction and later took his own life. Kochersberger reminisced about when his son first came to him and his wife to talk about his addiction. The struggle the Kochersberger family experienced dealing with the death of their son is shared with countless families across the globe. Every 40 seconds a person dies by suicide somewhere in the world, according to the World Health Organization. At four-year colleges, suicide is the leading cause of death for students.

“Last year about 10 students here at NCSU committed suicide,” said Karen Miller, the program coordinator for NCSU Suicide Prevention Program. Susan Addams, the vigil’s emcee and chaplain for the Suicide Prevention Program, said suicide does not discriminate against gender, race, ethnicity or faith, and anyone can be a victim of suicide. The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) is a leading sponsor of the vigil. Avi Aggarwal, president of the NC State chapter of NAMI and a junior in chemical engineering, also spoke at the event. “We want to both remember those who have been lost to suicide and prevent future losses by promoting awareness of the issue, dispelling myths and stigma about suicide and mental illness and encouraging students to get help and/or become trained in suicide prevention,” Aggarwal said. Other organizations that helped to sponsor the vigil were the GLBT center, the NC State Counseling

Center, CHASS Dept. of Social Work, Dept. of Student and Community Standards and the NC State University Suicide Prevention Program. Adam Ward, who represented the GLBT Center and is a graduate student in comparative biomedical sciences, said the GLBT community is at an especially high risk for attempting suicide if faced with family rejection. To help spread awareness, Addams urged students to become educated about the warning signs of suicide and the programs available for those in need and those wanting to help. The Question Persuade Refer program offered at the Student Health Center gives students the opportunity to “learn the warning signs, know how to instill hope, and where to get help,” said Miller. The QPR program is a 90-minute program free to students, staff and faculty who wish to become gatekeepers. Including RAs, RDs, TAs, mentor groups and student leaders, Miller said more than 1,600 people have

been trained by QPR through NC State in less than two years. HopeLine, Inc. is another available tool for those who are thinking about attempting suicide. Those at the hotline are there to offer support and listen to what callers have to say. “The reason we have the vigil each year on World Suicide Prevention Day is to remember loved ones, show support for suicide prevention and help stop the stigma associated with suicide,” Millers said. “It’s so important to hold events such as these because they help raise awareness about prevention resources on campus and in the community.” The Counseling Center is continuing to honor Suicide Awareness Month is helping to eradicate the stigma surrounding suicide by hosting “What’s Your Story,” a part of Stop the Stigma at the Brickyard on both Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

More than 200 students, faculty and business leaders joined James C. Mullen, CEO of DPx Holdings, the parent company of Patheon, in Nelson Hall Wednesday evening to discuss the strategy and leadership that turned his company around. Mullen became CEO of Patheon, a Durham-based pharmaceutical manufacturer, in 2011 when the company was on the verge of going out of business. “They had no customer, growth or financial strategy, and they were burning through money,” Mullen said. “They had maybe 24 months of cash left.” After taking the position of CEO, Mullen used the first few months to learn the business and then gathered company leaders from around the world to show them how badly their businesses were doing at the time. “We were adding new people while gross profit was negative, and so my punch line to the group was ‘You guys are flawlessly executing a going-out-of-business strategy,’” Mullen said. “We were just not in touch with the customers or what we were doing.” In one of his first steps to turn the company around, Mullen replaced some of the top-paid employees. The company also had 10 sites that operated nearly independently at the time, some even competing against each other on the same bids. “We didn’t have the talent to run this business,” Mullen said. “We had to replace within 24 months over a quarter of the top 200 positions within the company. No factory has the same general manager in 2014 as it did in 2011.” Improving customer relations was another big move Mullen had

FARGO continued page 3

Forum critiques NCSU’s gen-ed program Erin Coonfer Correspondent

The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy hosted a panel discussion in Talley Student Union Wednesday regarding flaws in the current general education requirements for NC State students highlighted in the center’s report titled “General Education at NC State.” CH A S S De a n Jef fer y Braden moderated the panel which consisted of Jay Schalin, the author of the report and the director of policy analysis at the Pope Center, David Zonderman, a professor and associate department head in history at NC State, Student Body President Rusty Mau and Jasmine Scheitler, a sophomore in marine biology. Schalin’s report criticizes the current state of NC State’s General Education Program. Although some of the report’s

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claims about NC State’s GEP were generally accepted by the rest of the panel, much of the discussion consisted of opposing viewpoints and arguments on both the content and the style of the report. Some of Schalin’s specific critiques on NC State’s GEP included the idea that the courses offered as Gen Ed requirements cover too broad of a spectrum of topics. In his report, Schalin describes the GEP course catalog, which includes over 700 course options, as a “smorgasbord” of potentially trivial courses, such as PB 219: Plants in Folklore, Myth, and Religion. “Students are taking advantage of the smorgasbord, not just picking out the marshmallows and leaving the fruits and vegetables,” argued Zonderman. According to Schalin, General Education should facilitate the ability to reason well, giving students’ experience thinking about and solving

real world problems as employers expect in the workplace and providing a guide for how best to live within American society. Mau said he agreed most universities, including NC State, should put more emphasis within their General Education courses on necessary skills to succeed in the workplace and world after graduation, such as financial literacy and civic responsibility. Howe ver, Z onder ma n pointed out NC State has already implemented a Quality Enhancement Plan to ensure more rigorous and challenging General Education courses. “Here at NC State, we are taking critical and creative thinking very seriously,” Zonderman said. Mau said he was in favor of a more broad general education program, but he agreed with Schalin, stating improvements could be made

JAMES ARDEN/TECHNICIAN

Faculty and students along with Jay Schalin formed a panel at Talley Student Center to debate the merit of NC State’s general education. Schalin is director of policy analysis at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy and author of the report, “General Education at NC State.”

to the GEP program. “The flexibility of the Gen Ed Program at NC State was a major reason I chose to attend [this university],” Mau said. Schalin said the GEP should be reformed to provide both breadth and depth in core

subjects, offering meaningful knowledge, such as extra writing courses, applicable statistics courses, more rigorous science courses and both philosophy courses to expose students to more ideas. Other suggestions from the Pope Center include drop-

ping health and fitness requirements from two courses to one, introducing a logic course in writing instead of math, and removing interdisciplinary requirements from the GEP.

FORUM continued page 3

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Technician - Sept. 11, 2014 by NC State Student Media - Issuu