ON THE RIDGE Partnership with the Niagara Falls School District Will Increase Mental Health Services Available to Students Niagara University’s College of Education has partnered with the Niagara Falls School District to implement a five-year Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration project that will enable the district to better serve its students with behavioral and mental health issues. The initiative, funded by a more than $2.49 million, five-year U.S. federal grant secured through the Department of Education, will add 15 part-time staff annually, increase community and family outreach, provide training to help teachers identify needs early, and expand the pipeline of mental health professionals into the school setting to reduce shortages.
As part of this project, 15 interns, with the majority coming from Niagara University’s school psychology and school counseling graduate programs, will be placed in 11 city schools each year to work hand-in-hand with the district’s current employees to serve the 7,200 students in grades prekindergarten through 12.
The grant will also allow for professional development initiatives to help teachers recognize trauma-induced behaviors sooner, allowing for early intervention and to support implementation strategies related to improving student social and emotional development. “Training the teachers is important, because they are the first line of service,” said Dr. Chandra Foote, dean of Niagara University’s College of Education. “Right now, the counselors are overloaded. You can’t send every child to the counselors that we have in place and actually have their needs met. We’re happy to partner with (the district) on these services and to prepare teachers who will be able to do it in the future, as well as counselors, school psychologists, and social workers.”
At the end of the five years, it is anticipated that 75 new mental health professionals will have been added to the district’s staff. The grant will allow us “to have a cadre of mental health professionals to support the children of … the entire district,” said Niagara Falls City School District Superintendent Mark Laurrie, ’84, M.S.Ed.’12. Dr. Foote added she is confident that, if offered positions within the Niagara Falls School District, the interns will choose to accept them. “They’re Niagara University candidates,” she said. “We attract students who want to serve, especially serve those who are in the highest need, and Niagara Falls has some pretty high needs. So when we attract them and then we prepare them to do that service, this is exactly where they should stay.”
Teaching Socrates, Aristotle, & Logic to Business Majors Dr. Michael Barnwell’s course “Philosophy for the Business World” may be the only one of its kind in the U.S., and perhaps the world. While most universities offer business ethics classes, this one takes a completely different approach to the topic by using philosophy as the foundation, creating a new discipline— philosophy business consulting.
“Business leaders keep saying that critical thinking is one of the top skills they seek,” said Dr. Barnwell. “Despite the fact that philosophy is the lone discipline devoted primarily to fostering the ability to think critically, there have been few interactions between business and philosophy in business schools. Meanwhile, philosophers keep talking about how important their classes are for the real world, but they have not done anything to demonstrate this fact.” Launched in spring, Dr. Barnwell’s course is an attempt to bridge that gap. Focusing on the works of Tom Morris, who is widely considered the pioneer of applying philosophy in the business world, students learn how the tools and insights of philosophy, such as conceptual analysis, epistemic humility, Socratic interviewing, logic, and consulting theory, can be applied in the business world.
One of the most unique aspects of this course is the opportunities students have to use their philosophical critical thinking skills to help businesses succeed. In the inaugural class, teams of two to three students served as on-site “philosophy business consultants” for 13 area businesses,
including a health insurance provider,
financial firms, a charter school, a television newsroom, a business enterprise foundation, a toxic remediation company, a major manufacturer, and a biotech firm. They were given access
to CEOs or COOs and sat in on meetings. Another class project had the students collaborating on presentations that explained how important logical concepts and fallacies, typically reserved for the philosophy classroom, play a
role in business. They also had the opportunity to meet Morris personally during a class visit. “It was a passion of mine to show how philosophy is useful for the real world, especially the business world,” said Dr. Barnwell.
EAGLE/FALL 2019
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