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Hoofprints
A Monthly Newsletter fromUW’s College of Health Sciences
104th Edition
September 15, 2010A Message from Dean Steiner
Dear Friends,
I always find the start of a
new academic year a time of
renewal and chaos. Renewal in
that a whole new group of
students is starting their various
programs and current students
are returning from their summer
breaks. The city of Laramie
wakes up from its summer slumber. The restaurants are full, parking near
Dean Joseph F. "Joe" Steiner
the campus is at a premium, traffic has significantly increased (amazing
what inexperienced drivers attempt), and the cultural and athletic
opportunities are abundant. The UW campus is at its best at this time of
year. The flowers that have been carefully tended all summer are in full
bloom and are spectacular. It looks from the extended weather forecast
that a mild fall will continue. I am undeniably appreciative of this since it
may be my first Dean’s Advisory Council meeting not called on account of
snow even though the first two were scheduled in mid-September and late
April.
The chaos has also arrived and makes September an invigorating
month. Faculty and staff have returned and are working hard to assure that
the semester is off to a great start. There are many ceremonies welcoming
students into the various health care professions for most of our divisions.
There are many meetings of various constituents of the college and
university, too many to list. Athletic events, tailgates, cultural events, and
other activities add to the flavor of the month. Deadlines and commitments
are coming fast, and any procrastination from the summer is catching-up.
We also realize that the beautiful fall days are limited, and many of us are
still trying to get a few days to enjoy Wyoming’s wonderful outdoors in the
warm weather before we start to enjoy the Wyoming winter.
I always look forward to the month of September and always marvel
at how fast the time goes and October rolls around.
Regards,
JoeNews from Across the College
The annual college health fair
coordinated by pharmacy students and
conducted by students in College of
Health Sciences (CHS) programs will
be held on Saturday, November 6th
Pharmacy students have coordinated a college-wide health fair to be held Saturday, November 6th.
from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. in the Union Ballroom. This is a great
opportunity for faculty, students, and local residents to receive free health
services and screenings ranging from HIV and fitness stress testing to
hearing and vision screening to blood pressure and blood glucose checks.
For more information, please contact Jessica Hopper (307-766-5460).
The CHS is proud to announce the beginning of a new Ph.D.
program in biomedical sciences. The program is designed to address
important workforce demands for doctoral-level biomedical research
expertise and to position graduates for long-term competitive success in the
rapidly changing and multifaceted health-related arena of the 21st century.
Don Roth, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology and Associate Director of
UW’s School of Energy, will direct the program, the first interdisciplinary
doctoral curriculum based mainly in the College of Health Sciences. Four of
this fall’s eight candidates are in the School of Pharmacy (SOP).
For over three years, interdisciplinary teams of College of Health
Sciences and UW students and faculty, local health care providers, and
Wyoming residents,
along with members of
the non-profit, non-
governmental
organization Shoulder
to Shoulder, have been
visiting Agua Salada in
the mountains of
Honduras, bringing
desperately-needed
health care to the
isolated villagers. The
visits have become so beneficial that the returning providers have been
welcomed as family. To accommodate the growth of the program, plans are
being made to build a small clinic in Honduras to house full-time
Children in Agua Salada, Honduras, welcome their returning Wyoming "family."
Honduran nurses and doctors, as well as Wyoming task force members. On
August 22nd, Fay and Roy Whitney hosted a beautiful “Dinner on the Ranch”
at their home in Wheatland to help raise funds for the project. UW and
college administrators and their spouses joined 45 people from Cheyenne,
Laramie, Wheatland, Casper, Powell, Pinedale, and Jackson to hear
compelling stories from past brigade members Robert Monger, M.D., of
UW’s Family Residency Program in Cheyenne; Ronald Iverson, M.D., of the
Wyoming Medical Center in Casper; recent nursing graduate Emily Bodner
from Wilson, Wyoming; and pre-medical student Joe Johnson from Laramie.
The excitement generated by the speakers was palpable and inspired guests
to double the fund’s donations to $40,000 and Laramie physician Jean Allais
and her family to sign on as members for the brigade’s next visit to Agua
Salada. To learn more about this worthy project, please visit
www.clinicadeaguasalada.org.
The Wyoming Geriatric Education Center (WyGEC) received
major continuation funding
from the Health Resources
Services Administration. The
new funding, expected to be
$2.1 million over the next five
years, will allow WyGEC to
continue its efforts to meet
the needs of practicing health
professionals who serve
Wyoming’s rapidly aging
population. Since its founding in
2007, the center has educated
over 1,000 health professionals through a variety of venues—college
classrooms, a 10-week telehealth series, on-site trainings, and three state-
wide conferences. With the extended funding, WyGEC will join the
Cheyenne Regional Medical Center and the Community Health Center of
WyGEC members (from left) Christine McKibbin, Evaluator and Faculty Associate; Colleen Murphy-Southwick, Deputy Director; Jenny Garcia, Librarian; John Vandel, Dean of the SOP; Deb Fleming, WyGEC Director; Maggie Farrell, Dean of UW Libraries and Faculty Associate; Kem Krueger, Associate Professor of Pharmacy and Faculty Associate
Central Wyoming in Casper to form a statewide consortium. For more
information about the center’s expanding prospects, please contact Deb
Fleming, WyGEC Director ([email protected]).
Research
The Center for Cardiovascular
Research and Alternative Medicine (C-
CRAM), based in the SOP, has welcomed two
post-doctoral fellows. Yingmei “Megan” Zhang,
M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist-physician scientist
focusing on cardiology care in diabetes, is
investigating a number of health issues
pertinent to the center, issues such as cold
temperature exposure, sepsis, and high-fat-diet-
induced obesity. She also directs
undergraduate and graduate students and has presented her work at
national, regional, and local conferences. Machender “Reddy” Kandadi,
M.Pharm., Ph.D., whose focus has been on the treatment and prevention of
insulin resistance and the development of type-2 diabetes, is now studying
anthrax-toxin-induced cardiovascular complications and molecular
mechanisms in cardiac hypertrophy.
SOP faculty members Weeranuj Yamreudeewong, Professor Emerita
of Pharmacy Practice; Kurt Dolence, Associate Professor of Medicinal and
Organic Chemistry;- and Glaucia Teixeira, Associate Professor of
Pharmaceutics, will present results of their joint research during the 45th
American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Annual Midyear Clinical
Meeting to be held in early December in Anaheim, California.
Sreejayan “Sree” Nair, Associate Professor of Pharmacy and C-
CCRAM Director, was
invited to present “New
Generation Chromium
Complexes in Treating
Machender "Reddy" Kendadi, new C-CRAM post-doctoral fellow
Sreejayan Nair was an invited speaker during the 2010 Meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists.
Insulin Resistance-Technologists held in mid-July in Chicago. Sree will also
travel to Japan in late October to deliver an invited paper—“Novel
Chromium Complexes in the Treatment of Type-2 Diabetes”—during the 5th
International Niigata Symposium on Diet and Health. The conference will
focus on the present status of the security of the world’s food supply.
New Programs
The Universal Service Administrative Company has approved funding
for Wyoming’s Federal Communication Commission’s Rural Health Care
Pilot Program. The
project, which is
being managed by
the Center for
Rural Health
Research and
Education in cooperation with Qwest Communications and the Wyoming
Telehealth Consortium, is a huge step for Wyoming and the WyNETTE-user
community toward fulfilling their vision of improving access to health care
in the state. Forty sites in Wyoming, including hospitals, clinics, and
counseling and mental health centers, have been approved to receive high-
speed broadband connections as part of the Wyoming Network for
Telehealth (WyNETTE).
Upcoming Events
The SOP will host its annual Pharmacy Weekend September 23rd-
25th. A highlight will be the Otis L. Hoy Memorial Seminar on the 24th with
its keynote speaker Wendy Duncan, Ph.D., Dean of Pharmacy and Vice
President of Academic Affairs at St. Louis College of Pharmacy. Dr. Duncan
will discuss how to better educate student pharmacists to advance the
profession in Wyoming. For details and complete weekend events, please
visit http://www.uwyo.edu/pharmacy/showevent.asp?eventid=31564 or call
307-766-6120.
The CRHRE will manage a new state-wide telehealth program.
The college’s Fall 2010 Commencement will be held in the
Wyoming Union Ball Room. For further information, please contact Phyllis
Brecher (307-766-3010) or Nancy Holman (307-766-3495).
Student News
The Division of Communication Disorders welcomes its largest
graduate class ever—20 campus students and eight distance students. One-
third of the campus class are UW graduates with bachelor’s degrees in
speech, language, and hearing sciences; one-third are UW graduates with
degrees in other fields; and one-third are out-of-state students learning
their way around our campus and town. In addition, in the past two years,
division undergraduate majors have increased by 50 per cent to more than
100 students. The division
and its student organization,
the National Student Speech
Language Hearing
Association, treated all new
and returning students to a
potluck at Laramie’s Alice
Hardie Stevens Center on
September 1st.
Members of the
WWAMI Medical
Education entering class of
2010 began their first day of classes on August 2nd. The E2010 class consists
of 16 students from hometowns in 12 of Wyoming’s 23 counties. The
students finished their first course, trunk anatomy, on August 23rd. They are
now engaged in six courses—biochemistry, histology, human behavior, cell
physiology, clinical methods, and medical information. The students are off
to a wonderful start, and the program looks forward to a great year. The
program also welcomes Holly Barker, its new staff assistant, with her
wealth of accounting and organizational skills.
Members of this year's graduate class of the Division of Communication Disorders
Pharmacy students Yu Ting Ti from Fremont, California, and Teddy
Jemaneh from Laramie recently completed their required primary care
rotations at Salud Family Health Centers in Longmont where they worked
with Tracy Mahvan, Associate Professor of Pharmacy, and served a wide
range of patients in Colorado. The month-long primary care rotation
provides students a taste of the experience, insight, knowledge, and
professional skills they will need to practice effectively in an ambulatory
care setting, skills such as blood pressure and lower extremity edema
evaluations and comprehensive patient workups and interviews.
Faculty News
The CHS is pleased to welcome eight new faculty members.
Wook-Jin Kim, Assistant Professor of Social Work, earned his Ph.D. at the
University of Chicago. Wook-Jin’s research interests include neighborhood
revitalization and workforce development, minority entrepreneurship, and
immigrants and refugees. He has published articles about these topics and
spoken about them during national and international conferences. Neely
Mahapatra, Assistant Professor of Social Work, earned her Ph.D. from the
University of Texas at Arlington. Her research interests—violence against
women and human trafficking issues—are reflected in her teaching
concentrations of cultural diversity and social justice and generalist social
work practice. After earning her Ph.D. in applied social psychology from
Colorado State University (CSU) in 2008, Jenifer J. Thomas has joined the
Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing (FWWSON) as an assistant professor.
Jenifer has presented abstracts during several national and international
conferences and was recognized as the Outstanding Graduate Student of
2007 by the CSU Department of Psychology. C. Susan Christman, previous
part-time lecturer, is currently an assistant lecturer in the FWWSON. Susan
earned her master’s degree in nursing from UW in 2002 and has held
several positions at the Wyoming Medical Center in Casper and in the
School of Nursing at Casper College. She has helped train staff members of
the Casper-Natrona County Public Health Department Nursing for incidents
of bioterrorism, and her master’s thesis was recognized for its merit by the
Mountain and Plains Partnership Program. After serving as Director of the
Nightingale Center for Nursing Scholarship, Anne M. Bowen is currently a
professor in the FWWSON. Anne earned her Ph.D. in clinical (child)
psychology from West Virginia University and is recognized nationally and
internationally for her expertise in HIV/AIDS prevention and reduction in at-
risk populations. Micky Routson has joined the clinical faculty of the
Division of Communication Disorders. Micky, an externship supervisor for
the division for many years who was honored by the division as its
outstanding alumna of 2009, will provide part-time clinical supervision to
speech pathology graduate students in the Speech and Hearing Clinic. R.
Tucker Readdy, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Health, earned his
Ph.D. in exercise and sport science from Oregon State University (OSU) in
Corvallis. He has published articles in Research Quarterly for Exercise and
Sport and Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science,
presented invited papers at national and international conferences, and
received OSU’s 2007 Herbert Frolander Outstanding Graduate Teaching
Assistant Award. Christine M. Porter, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and
Health, actively pursues her research interests of childhood obesity
prevention, ethics-centered community health promotion, and
documentation of strategies for inclusive community organizing across race
and class divides. Christine earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, and has served as manager of the London office of
Community Science and curriculum manager of the Fiji Ministry of
Education’s AIDS Education Program.
The Division of Communication Disorders recently said goodbye to
Jennifer Keeler, Clinical Supervisor. Two years ago, Jennifer spearheaded
an innovative clinical educational experience for the division’s graduate
students at Laramie’s Ivinson Memorial Hospital; now, she and her
husband, Tim, have returned to North Carolina for his medical practice. The
division will not fully lose Jennifer’s expertise, however, because this fall,
she will teach the graduate dysphagia course, a series of weekend classes.
Doug Petersen, Assistant Professor of Communication Disorders, and
master’s student Dakota Dye from Cody, Wyoming, travelled to Utah for a
day-long training in Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and
Related Disabilities (LEND), a program funded by the Maternal Child
Health Bureau of the Health Resource and Services Administration to
improve the health of infants, children, and adolescents with disabilities.
LEND prepares trainees from diverse professional disciplines to assume
leadership roles in their respective fields by ensuring high levels of
interdisciplinary clinical competence.
Friends of the College
Mary Gullikson, a UW alumna and tireless supporter of UW’s
College of Health Sciences, was chosen as this
year’s grand marshal of the Loveland Old-
fashioned Corn Roast Festival, that Colorado
community’s oldest celebration. Mary was one of
the initial proponents and champions of the Health
Sciences Center that brought all divisions of the
college with the exception of Kinesiology and
Health under one roof. The College of Health
Sciences Complex provides the setting for the
college’s dynamic interdisciplinary research and
health care education and realizes Mary’s dream of providing “an improved
learning environment for future health sciences students and faculty.”
Mary has been called the college’s “head cheerleader,” but she also shares
her time, energy, and enthusiasm with her hometown, Loveland.
Mary Gullikson, avid supporter of the College of Health Sciences