Safety Protocols Everywhere, and No One Paying Attention?

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Ms. Michelle S. Fryling

I don’t really think much about safety in the workplace. Maybe because the most dangerous thing that could happen to me in my third-floor office in Sutton is that I get overly caffeinated (I love coffee and have my own personal Keurig).

But thankfully for people at job sites that have dangerous chemicals and machinery, there are people who do think very strategically about workplace safety.

I really enjoyed a recent meeting with Jan Wachter, associate professor of Safety Sciences. Dr. Wachter has a very diverse past, including study at a theological seminary. He’s not your typical safety professional, but he’s incredibly knowledgeable and has extensive experience in many different work sites. What intrigued me about his current work was that he was looking at safety from the perspective of the worker, not management.

Dr. Wachter got a $90,000 grant from the Alcoa Foundation to study “worker engagement” in the safety process.

WAIT! Don’t click away just yet. I promise, it’s interesting.

Here’s what that means. If workers have an accident, even if it’s because of a mistake that they make, it might not really be their fault, Dr. Watcher argues. It might be that they just aren’t buying into safety protocols and guidelines.

So the fault, dear reader, is not in their stars, but with management.

Here’s what he says: “While human error has been associated with the majority of incidents in the workplace, motivation and worker engagement may be the keys to human-error reduction.”

Dr. Wachter hopes that the outcomes of this research, once instituted in the workplace, could reduce lost workdays due to accidents by 20 percent.

The key difference in this study, as opposed to other research on safety in the workplace, is that Dr. Wachter will investigate how well–or how poorly–workers are engaged, or buying into, a shared accountability for identifying at-risk situations and responding to them.

There’s more about Dr.Wachter on the Research at IUP website, and I encourage you to stay tuned. I expect some very out-of-the-ordinary results from his research.

Rocking the Classroom

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Dr. Michael J. Powers

If you walked by Cogswell Hall this morning, you might have heard “Louie Louie” ringing through the halls. A lot of “Louie Louie.” As in, a full hour of “Louie Louie.” After all, it’s “Louie Louie” Day in Gen Choral.

“Gen Choral” is what students call Music professor Laura Ferguson’s General/Choral Methods class. And although Ferguson admits it has a reputation as “the rock band class,” it’s actually a class that teaches music education students the “very traditional” skills they need to lead choirs and choruses–along with general musical training to help them work with the many other ensembles they may be asked to lead, including world drums, microphone techniques, steel drumming, and, yes, rock band.

The mix of skills taught in Gen Choral derives from new thinking about what school music programs should provide for students. “There’s this real disconnect between the kinds of music we make in schools and the kind of music we find authentically in our culture,” notes Ferguson. Instead of making students fit the mold of what we already have–concert band, choir, orchestra–why not fit the mold to them? Why not open the door wider so more students participate in school music programs?

Ferguson is not the only music educator asking these questions. More primary and secondary schools are bringing popular music into their music curricula each year, and there is a growing body of research on the approach. In Britain, an organization called Musical Futures trains teachers to build upon students’ “existing passion for music.” And in the U.S., Little Kids Rock supports “teaching methods that are rooted in children’s knowledge of popular music forms such as rock, rap, blues, hip-hop, and more.” (Check out the New York Times‘s “Fixes” blog for more on Little Kids Rock.)

But Ferguson believes she is the first person to create a college course for music educators that revolves around these new approaches to teaching music.

A key element of Ferguson’s approach to the rock band part of the course is separating music students from the instruments they have spent years learning to play. It’s not an easy transition for many, as years of musical training have convinced them that they should not play music at all unless they can play it very well. But not playing the instrument they usually play forces music ed students to be more “like their future students.”

Hence “Louie Louie” Day.

Within a single class session, Ferguson’s students pick up the electric guitar, electric bass, and sit at a drum kit for the first time. They learn their first three power chords and start playing a recognizable song. For many, it’s a completely new way to learn music–and they are surprised to see how quickly beginning music students can start making music that they enjoy.

It’s a lesson these future educators will take with them when they graduate. So don’t be surprised if you hear “Louie Louie” coming from the choir room at a high school near you.

A Gen Choral Sample

While “Louie Louie” Day isn’t open to the public, the Gen Choral concert is. This final class activity is a concert where students direct each other in choir performances and play music on the instruments they started playing only a few weeks earlier.

Below, you can enjoy a now-legendary (among IUP music students) performance from one of those concerts: “Lorraine’s Lament,” an ode to Lorraine Wilson, professor emeritus and former chair of Music:

Nursing Simulation Lab Makes Music Video Debut

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Ms. Michelle S. Fryling

IUP’s Nursing and Allied Health Professions degrees are some of our most rigorous programs, and for good reason–the things that the students learn there ARE a matter of life and death.

The faculty work very hard to create real-life experiences for students, so they are well prepared for work in hospitals and other health care settings. In September 2010, faculty members Lisa Palmer and Julia Greenawalt were successful in receiving amost $300,000 to create a simulation lab, which mirrors the home of a rural patient with a common chronic illness. The lab is designed to help train nurses for home health care especially and includes telehealth monitors used by home health care agencies. Dr. Palmer explained that with the shortage of nurses, more and more patients are being treated in their homes, and this laboratory offers a significant advantage to IUP students who go on to work with home health care agencies.

This new home health care simulation lab adds to the department’s current simulation laboratory, established by the department in 2007 and renovated in 2009. This lab includes manikins of all “ages,” including an infant, two simulated hospital rooms, and IV and other training devices.

While this laboratory gets very heavy use by students and faculty and will undoubtedly help future nurses save lives, it was the site of a very unusual project this summer.

David Altrogge, a 2006 IUP art studio/graphic design graduate, is making a name for himself as a cofounder and creative director of Vinegar Hill, a full service production company and creative agency based in Indiana. IUP has used his company for projects, and he has used IUP and Indiana places and spaces for several of his productions.

David recently was contracted by Centricity Records to produce a music video for Aaron Shust’s My Hope Is in You. The story is about a couple waiting as their daughter is treated in a hospital following an accident. I won’t give away the ending, but you might want to have a few tissues handy while you watch it.

If you’ve ever visited Johnson Hall (home to the department), and the “hospital” in the video looks sort of familiar to you–well, that’s because it is. IUP’s Nursing and Allied Health Professions Department’s simulation lab is the hospital, and the hospital lobby is the lobby of the Nursing department in Johnson. The video features several IUP Nursing graduates, including Megan Wallwork (doing chest compressions), Janelle McCombie, and Kristi Altrogge. The Bennets, of Indiana, are the grieving parents.

While IUP is proud of David’s work, we are also proud to know that the simulation lab did exactly what it was supposed to do, albeit in a fairly unorthodox setting: It offered a very real hospital environment, with a realistic patient and believable injuries. A win-win for all involved.

A Million Reasons to Thank an IUP Student

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Ms. Michelle S. Fryling

I don’t normally like to generalize about IUP students, because the more students I meet, the more I realize that they are very different from one another.

However, I don’t think that I’m too off the mark when I suggest that 98 percent of IUP students are probably snuggled up to their pillows on Saturday mornings and enjoying dreamland. (I have two twenty-year-old sophomores, so I also feel fairly informed on the habits of this particular species.)

But, this past Saturday, September 17, some 150 IUP students blew that stereotype. And it wasn’t for cereal and cartoons, but to benefit community agencies in Indiana.

Last Saturday was the fall Into the Streets event, organized by IUP’s Office of Service Learning. Students volunteered for this national day of service at seven sites in Indiana County. Students did everything from painting curbs to helping with the United Way demolition derby fund-raiser to cleaning up around Indiana Borough with borough employees.

The Into the Streets project is in its ninth year at IUP. It happens every fall and spring, and, in spring 2011, there were 300 students who volunteered for service at 13 different community sites. In fact, there were so many students interested in participating that the Office of Service Learning had to go back out to community agencies to ask for more volunteer opportunities. That makes me very proud of our students. The spring event is the bigger of the two, as there tend to be more service opportunities at that time of year, Service Learning officials tell me.

While I’m pleased that 150 students took part in the event this fall and I believe that number is noteworthy, it’s really just a very small part of what our students do each year.

In 2009-2010, 8,752 students volunteered for some kind of community service. That is 58 percent of the IUP student body. And it wasn’t just a one-shot deal for most students: Those IUP students performed 136,810 hours of community service during that academic year. (Totals are still being compiled for 2010-2011.)

So, that means that MORE THAN HALF of IUP students volunteered for their home community in a nine-month period, most in a sustained kind of way. Measured by the current national minimum wage, these work hours would be valued at $991,872.50. That’s just short of A MILLION DOLLARS.

What did they do? Food drives; books for the Community Guidance Center; selling daffodils for the American Cancer Society; helping children learn to read better; cell-phone drives for women in domestic violence situations; being a “big heart” for children in the Big Hearts Little Hands program.

I got a call from the former director of Big Hearts Little Hands (formerly Big Brothers Big Sisters) not too long after I started at IUP. “I want to talk to you about your students,” she started, and I braced myself. “Oh, no, what happened?” I asked, really not wanting to hear the answer.

“Without IUP students, this program couldn’t exist,” she said. “These students are wonderful. It’s a big sacrifice to give up your free time when you are a student and to care about someone else’s child, but they are amazing. I am proud of each and every one of them. Thank you.”

Enough said.

Raindrops, Sure…But Probably Not Satellite Parts (Falling on My Head)

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Ms. Michelle S. Fryling

I am old enough to remember the celebration surrounding America’s first lunar mission and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. (“One small step for mankind” is part of my heritage.) I also remember the ORIGINAL Apollo 13 mission (not just the movie with Tom Hanks), and I was one of the many people who were extremely impressed to have former astronaut Jim Lovell here at IUP for the First Commonwealth Lecture Series. To my generation, astronauts like the late Patricia Hilliard Robertson (a 1985 IUP Biology graduate) are heros, and space travel and NASA still have a major wow factor.

I also remember Skylab and how worried everyone was about the possibility of being hit by space junk falling from the sky. It did sort of tarnish the space program for me, mostly because it was such fodder for late-night comedians and the show Northern Exposure. (Who else remembers that was how Maggie O’Connell’s first boyfriend died?)

Fast forward thirty-two years, and here were are again. “Satellite the size of a school bus poised to fall to Earth at an undisclosed location,” television news reporters state with the appropriate look of concern. But I think Americans have a lot less panic and a lot more amusement over this satellite than Skylab.

Ken Coles I know what I think, but I’m more interested in what our faculty experts have to say about current issues. Kenneth Coles, associate professor of Geoscience, did not disappoint on the subject of NASA’s UARS satellite and the “threat” of it hitting something–or someone–here on Earth.

“Thousands of old satellites, rocket boosters, and pieces of debris orbit the Earth. Many are in orbits that eventually decay due to friction with the very thin uppermost atmosphere,” he explained.

“When they lose enough energy to fall to Earth, smaller objects burn up in the
atmosphere, but very large ones can make it to the ground. NASA and NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) track a lot of ‘space junk’ and give as much warning as practical of such events.

“Compared to the other perils of everyday life (such as riding in a car) the hazard is very minor for us on the ground, but space junk is a much greater problem in orbit, where collisions can cause considerable damage to a satellite or spacecraft.”

Even NASA experts are pretty calm about the possibility that you could be hurt by a falling piece of satellite. They predict that twenty-six parts of the satellite will survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and the odds of getting hit by one of those pieces is 1 in 3,200.

So, while I am not a statistics expert, considering that Pittsburgh has an average of 152 snowy or rainy days each year, maybe I should do my own television news story: “This just in: Residents of Western Pennsylvania have a 41 percent chance of getting wet from snow or rain on any given day!”

Wonder if that will make Good Morning America? I’m ready for my closeup. …

The Importance of Building a Culture of Philanthropy

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Regan Houser

You probably noticed the signs and sidewalk chalk messages during the first week of school. They were part of an educational campaign the Annual Giving Office sponsors to help students understand the impact of gifts from alumni and friends of IUP. It’s part of an effort to build a culture of philanthropic giving on campus. Students who understand how private gifts affect their education are more likely to understand why we ask them to give when they become alumni–and then respond by giving.

Activity like this is essential to the fund-raising process, and schools like IUP–state-owned institutions–have an additional hump to overcome, because of a misperception that we are fully funded by the commonwealth. Earlier this year, the New York Times ran an article that included interviews with administrators from numerous public universities. It described the misperception well:

When the State University of New York at Geneseo surveyed its alumni three years ago as part of a plan to increase fund-raising, the initial response was heartening. Former students described their time there with words like “love” and “the best four years.” Then came what one administrator, Michael J. Catillaz, called “the cold shower.” Asked if they would donate, almost all said they thought the university was financed entirely by the state. The state’s contribution was actually 25 percent, and it has been dropping ever since.

“Inviting alumni in large numbers to actively support the college is a foreign notion,” said Mr. Catillaz, the vice president for college advancement.

In truth, some of our current students have been inspired to give or facilitate philanthropic action on behalf of the university. The IUP Ambassadors, for example, conducted numerous fund-raisers to name a room in the new Kovalchick Complex. Members of the IUP History Club work tirelessly to make sure the Eric Slebodnik Memorial Scholarship, housed in the Foundation for IUP and established in memory of a student who died in the line of duty in Iraq, continues to help a deserving student. These same students also raise money for the Jack Kadlubowski Scholarship, established in memory of a late faculty member. There are other examples, but the point is that instilling in students the importance of the impact private gifts have will, we hope, reap long-term rewards after they leave us for the greater world.

Stories about student and alumni philanthropy that we can share with funding agencies and large-gift prospects often inspire them to also give. When members of the campus community give, they are expressing their belief in the institution. That’s a powerful thing. After all, charity does begin at home.

Chad Hurley’s New Delicious Venture

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Regan Houser

YouTube cofounder and IUP alumnus Chad Hurley is jumping into a new venture by purchasing Delicious, the link sharing and organization tool, from Yahoo. As an off and on Delicious user, I’m excited by the prospect, because Hurley and his colleague Steve Chen seem to understand how so many of us are overwhelmed by the all good stuff we might want to keep track of on the web. The New York Times tells the story better than I can.

I first discovered this nugget of information when a few of my Facebook friends subscribed to Hurley’s Facebook page. When I visited, I was delighted to find his profile picture was one Keith Boyer, our university photographer, shot for IUP Magazine. (The photo appears in the print edition, not the online edition.) Hurley earned a BFA at IUP in 1999. Through a gift, he named the arena in the Kovalchick Complex in honor of his track coach, Ed Fry, a retired professor.

Good News “for a Change”

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Ms. Michelle S. Fryling

I truly do enjoy my job, and I am very appreciative of the folks who go out of their way to tell me that they are happy with the media coverage I’ve arranged. One of my favorite things is when folks e-mail me or stop me out walking around campus with story ideas. Alumni, especially, are very loyal to IUP, and they like to see their university represented fairly for the accomplishments of its students, faculty, and graduates. So, I try not to take it personally when I hear, “Let’s get some good news out there about IUP for a change.” I know they care deeply about IUP and its reputation and are just trying to help.

For the past several years, I’ve been maintaining a log of media hits on the What They Said web page. I think it’s a nice record of IUP in the news, and I hope that people (hint, hint: This means YOU, blog reader) visit it often.

But I’ve not really done an “official” count of media hits for several years, so, last year, I was asked to count and measure the number of “good news” stories about IUP out there with circulation information. Here’s what we found:

There were 435 positive stories about IUP from January 2010 to January 2011 in 46 different media outlets locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.

This does NOT include the hundreds of stories featured on our local radio station OR any stories on athletics. … I imagine the number would probably triple if I counted sports reports and features.

Anyway, these media hits ranged from places like Religion Dispatch (with a circulation of 2.3 million), the New York Times (circulation 740,007), and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune (circulation 534,750) to 29 hits in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (circulation 393,071), 22 hits in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (circulation 319,987), and 310 stories in the Indiana Gazette (circulation 16,000). Using what researchers call the “industry multiplier” (how many people actually read or hear news reports), this means that good news at IUP “for a change” reached 76,474,622 people. Yes, 76.5 million people.

Of course, we don’t catch every media hit, so this is just what I’ve been able to document. I think it’s a pretty impressive number.

That’s the good news. But be assured, I’m working to get that 76.5 million up past 100 million for 2011-2012,…so story tips and ideas are always welcome!

IUP-TV Crew Dazzles CBS Sports Crew

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Regan Houser

IUP received great publicity when CBS Sports Network broadcast last night’s home football game (September 15). There were at least two alumni watch parties in distant places, and alumni from across the country gave us likes and comments to promotional announcements we made on IUP’s Facebook page. IUP nearly upset nationally ranked Bloomsburg.

What you may not have heard: The students of IUP-TV came to the CBS crew’s rescue. CBS forgot to bring along a particular cable–an essential piece of equipment needed to use IUP-TV’s editing system. The students and station technician Chris Barber juryrigged some equipment to make it possible for the crew to use the system. The CBS crew was impressed again by the students’ ability to edit the footage shot of campus and of Indiana that was shown during the broadcast. IUP-TV students also worked in various paid support positions during the broadcast. All great stuff for aspiring broadcast industry professionals.

Here’s a sample of the IUP-TV sports crew’s ability, produced after the home opener against East Stroudsburg.

Around the Oak Grove

A blog of IUP stories by the IUP Office of Communications

Monthly Archives: September 2011