August 2009 Archives

Several CoH administrators were headed to a college meeting before the Gulf Coast convocation yesterday when we witnessed a horrifying auto accident on Hwy. 49 just south of Wiggins.  The nightmare of bleeding bodies, crying people amd wailing sirens unfolded for about 45 minutes before emergency personnel bid us on our way.  We made the convocation but had to scratch the earlier meeting with CoH faculty and staff.  What follows is part of what I'd hoped to tell the troops.

CoH can look back to some impressive highlights of the recent past that carry us to the present moment and help us look toward the future:

            • A solid administrative team is now in place - "newbies" Sue Hubble, Tim Rehner, Steve Cloud, Rick Green, and Patsy Anderson on the coast, in addition to the chair/director veterans Katherine Nugent, Jane Hudson and Kathy Yadrick.

            • An exciting array of externally funded projects - great work that covers the full range of our teaching, research, and service missions and that produces significant revenue for the university.          

• Some excellent new hires, despite last year's semi-freeze - in all 8 tenure-track faculty in 4 of 7 units.

            • Important new or extended academic programs - notably the Doctor of Nursing Practice, with an inaugural class of 11; and a specialized Master of Social Work program for upgrading the credentials of public child welfare workers.

            • New movement on a much-needed nursing building - a $1.5 million federal planning grant that will yield "design specifics" and bring us the point of being able to break ground (when we raise the rest of the money needed!).

            • Approval of a "limited scope" interdisciplinary Center on Aging.

Classes kicking off today.  Energy in the air combines with cooler temps and hordes of roving students to signal that fall semester - the big one - is indeed underway.
 
Two sweeteners add to the mix for CoH: First, the inaugural class of the brand-new Doctor of Nursing Practice degree; this group of 11 impressive advanced practitioners, along with half as many new PhD students, convened for orientation and fanfare yesterday at a hyper-chilled Harkin Hall.  Second, today's announcement that Deena Crawford, a superlative social worker and CoH/Social Work alum, has been named director of USM's counseling services.

Good beginnings.  Great things ahead. 

Notes from immensely different points on a continuum of thinking about health in the longer range:

First, we have the wild and woolly "protests" over the health care reforms (so-called "Obama Care") under debate now in Washington.  Is more misinformation about a single issue possible?  Fears about immediate and dramatic cuts to Medicare, government bureaucrats being required to approve every doctor's prescription, and mandatory euthanasia of the aged and infirm seem to dominate "discussion."

In a wholly different vein are newly voiced concerns about national security stemming from global warming - at least one impact of which, it seems certain, will be a variety of pandemics let loose by climate change.  Mass illness, along with the related demons of violent storms, droughts and mass migrations, will contribute to new tests for world order and stability.  Notably, voicing these fears are not ecology activists, but U.S. military and intelligence analysts.  Here the problem is not "bad information," as one might argue about the health care reform frenzy, but an abundance of good information (the supposed stuff of rational action) that questions our capacity to act rationally in our own best interest.

Mississippi once again tops one of those nasty lists you don't even want to be on - the list of most obese states.  It's frightening enough to think that 23 states, according to CDC data, saw jumps in their rates of adult obesity.  It's positively chilling to realize that fully 32.5% of adult Mississippians are obese, qualifying us for the inverted recognition of being the "fattest state in America."  (And  perhaps even more horrifying - our kids are not far behind, with 44.4% ages 10 to 17 either obese or overweight.)

No one can argue with Miss. Dept. of Health director Ed Thompson's observation that while most adults know they should eat less and exercise, "the hard part is getting people to actually practice these things."  Hard indeed.  But the urgency of success could hardly be greater, especially in light of the alarming track that our kids are on.  The alternative to mastering "the hard part" is an accelerating decline in the health of Mississippians, and with it the accompanying ills of soaring medical costs, lost economic productivity, and unrelenting poverty.

August 1 - The "dog days" are upon us.  If history is a guide, there's little but hot and humid ahead - on the one hand relieved (for the moment) by a brief hiatus in classes, but on the other intensified by the financial meltdown that threatens university programs and people alike.  How "hot" it gets awaits the closing work of the Academic Planning Group and the decision of the president's cabinet on which colleagues may soon be seeking employment elsewhere.  I'd take a decade's worth of Augusts to escape this kind of "heat," but, sadly, that option's not available.