HoofprintsA Monthly Newsletter from

UW’s College of Health Sciences

102nd EditionJuly 19, 2010

A Message from Dean Steiner

Dear Friends,

Dean Joseph F. "Joe" Steiner

You will read below about a current College of Health Sciences’ student

attending the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders. I

am very pleased to tell you that of the 15 UW women at the conference, four

were CHS students. Scholarships funding attendance at the conference

were awarded through a competitive process. The college was able to

support one student, while the other three received outside sponsorship.

I am gratified to hear that our students are interested in developing

their leadership potential. Now more than ever, we need people to aspire to

leadership positions in the health care professions. I have often seen many

desirable management positions go unfilled for long periods of time despite

active recruitment efforts. A few years ago, for instance, I was amazed to

see a well-paid position as director of a hospital department go unfilled for

over a year. This disturbing trend can also be seen in academics.

I am sure there are multiple reasons people avoid leadership

opportunities, and I will not attempt to discuss them here. There are several

things, however, we can address at the college level. These include instilling

an interest in leadership, encouraging students to develop their leadership

capabilities, and providing the resources for early leadership development.

For the past year, representatives from each of the college’s divisions have

been working on “a program to encourage, promote, and nurture

scholarship, leadership, and professionalism in our future physical and

mental health care professionals.” This program is called ASPIRE, and I am

giving it my full support. It is my hope that we can identify promising

students and ask them to participate in a curriculum that will develop their

management skills. I am also exploring the possibility of a minor in health

care leadership that will be open to all CHS students. However, I do not

want that to be the only avenue for interested, motivated students; the

courses should be open to all students. I will also seek outside funding to

stimulate and promote the program.

As you can tell, this idea is in its infancy, and I would appreciate any

thoughts, concerns, or suggestions. You can contact me at

joe.steiner@uwyo.edu.

Regards,

Joe

Student News

Maya Martinez, a social work student from Cheyenne, is very enthusiastic

about the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders

(NCCWSL) she recently attended at the University of Maryland. According

to Maya, “Everyone I met had a positive, upbeat, empowering attitude. I

learned that nothing is impossible through goals and perseverance.” Maya

and the 14 other UW women students who attended would like to share

their interest in the conference and its message by promoting leadership

and establishing a Women’s Leadership Conference or other activities at

UW.

Congratulations are in order for speech, language, and hearing sciences

students Brooke Bodar from Dubois and Aaron Richardson from Kemmerer

who received John L. Kemmerer, Jr. Scholarships. The scholarship program

was established in 1992 by the Kemmerer family to help young, motivated

students from the Kemmerer area who demonstrate academic achievement

and leadership through extracurricular activities.

Senior nursing students Danielle Gifford from Kimball, Nebraska, and

Sara Teeters from Lingle, Wyoming, have been

accepted to join a medical mission to Africa this

month. The mission, which is sponsored by

Intervarsity and Nurses Christian Fellowship,

will take the two to Uganda to work with the

country’s college students in an outreach to

children, visit the national nursing council, work

with local AIDS prevention and support groups,

visit Mulago and Kagondo Hospitals, and work

Senior nursing students Danielle Gifford (left) and Sara Teeters (right) are members of a medical mission to Uganda.

with Ugandan nursing students. Danielle and Sara plan to build on this

international experience by joining a clinical trip by the Fay W. Whitney

School of Nursing (FWWSON) to Agua Salada, Honduras, in November.

(Please see the related article in Service, below.)

Research

The Center for Cardiovascular Research and Alternative Medicine

(CCRAM), a multidisciplinary research group based in the School of

Pharmacy (SOP), is having an extraordinarily successful 2010. Members

have published over 40 articles in major national and international journals

and have been invited participants for meetings and symposia across the

country and around the world, speaking on key subjects such as

cardiovascular health, diabetes treatment and prevention, and physiological

conditions associated with obesity. Founding directors Jun Ren and Bruce

Culver and current administrator Sreejayan Nair of the SOP are justly

proud of CCRAM’s efforts to put UW on the national research “map.”

Program Updates

During a ceremony at the governor’s residence, the Family Medicine

Residency Program at Cheyenne (FMRP/Cheyenne) recognized Michael D.

Abrahams, M.D., Jody A. Cousins, M.D., Peter Hanna, M.D., Lorraine H.

Manciet, M.D., Behice Ozbay, M.D., and Anna R. Wilkins, M.D., for

successfully completing the program’s residency requirements. The happy

graduates were congratulated during a reception following the ceremony.

Casper’s FMRP also recognized its graduates: Maria Cornelius, M.D.;

Caroline Kirsch-Russell, D.O.; Kathy Lynch, M.D.; Kelly McMillin, M.D.;

Matthew Moore, M.D.; Rachel Myers, M.D.; and Rachel Otto, M.D.

The Wyoming Institute for Disabilities (WIND) Resource Library

received $1,000 from the Association of Specialized and Cooperative

Library Agencies for its award-winning project “Disability Etiquette and

History Infusion Units: Changing Attitudinal Barriers at the University of

Wyoming Oct. 2008-Oct. 2009.” During the project, 850 UW students

learned basic disability history and conversation tips, as well as an

understanding of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The library is just one

of WIND’s many services that make the institute Wyoming’s source for

disability education and assistance.

The SOP’s Sterile Products Lab offers students hands-on training in

the complicated techniques used to prepare,

dispense, and administer parenteral

(intravenous) admixtures, nutrition,

chemotherapy, and opthalmics. The College of

Health Sciences continues to be UW’s

pacesetter for

preparing students

for workplace challenges before they encounter

patients and clients.

WIND’s Assistive Technology Resources

(WATR) recently hosted

the Vendor Venue at UW’s

Outreach Center in Casper. During the two-day

session, vendors spoke about and demonstrated assistive technology (AT)

devices for daily life and the

classroom. AT can greatly improve

achievement for individuals in Wyoming on vocational, educational, and

personal levels. If you or someone you know might benefit from AT services,

please contact WATR (watr@uwyo.edu) or visit http://uwyo.edu/wind/watr.

WIND has made two more booklets of useful information available to

individuals and agencies working with individuals with disabilities. “What

You Need to Know about the National Instructional Materials Accessibility

Standard (NIMAS) and Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM): A Guide

for Decision-making Teams” contains sections defining AIM and print

disability, legal obligations, decision-making team considerations, and

acquisition options for WINDS’ accessible media and materials. “Wyoming

WIND's WATR program reaches individuals with disabilities in the classroom and in their daily lives.

Pharmacy's Glaucia Teixeria (left) instructs a student in the proper techniques for administering intravenous medications.

Procedures for Providing Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM)”

discusses the establishment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education

Improvement Act, the implementation of NIMAS in Wyoming,

responsibilities of state and local education agencies, and procedures for

determining student need for AIM. For more information and/or copies of

the brochures, please contact Kathy McWhorter (307-766-5770 or

kmwhort@uwyo.edu).

New Programs

The FWWSON will change its Nursing Career Fair to a Health

Professions Career Fair so students and vendors from other health

disciplines can participate on Friday, November 5th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in

the Wyoming Student Union Ballroom and meet health care employers and

representatives. All health sciences divisions are asked to encourage their

students to attend and to give lists of interested vendors to the Center for

Advising and Career Services (CACS). For more information, please contact

CACS’s Linda Brooks (lbrooks@uwyo.edu).

Service Two or three times a year, a brigade of

UW nursing and medical students and

Wyoming physicians, pharmacists,

engineers, and psychologists visits the

rural Honduran town of Agua Salada to

provide quality health care to the local

villagers. Through community surveys and

close relationships with town leaders, the

group has identified and overcome barriers

to health care by providing clinical services, medications, health education,

nutritional support, and home visits. To create a sustainable health care

program offering on-going access to health care for the community and

great clinical and research opportunities for UW students, the building of a

clinic is now a necessity To support the building project, a fundraising

Wyoming students and health care professionals have established personal and medical ties to the people of Agua Salada, Honduras.

dinner will be held at the Whitney ranch in Wheatland on August 22nd. For

more information about the brigade and the dinner, please contact Penelope

Caldwell (pcaldwel1@uwyo.edu).

The FWWSON sponsored a workshop led by authors of the best-selling

resource Evidence-based Practice (EBP) in Nursing and Healthcare.

Bernadette Melnyk, Ph.D., Dean of the Arizona State University (ASU)

College of Nursing, and Ellen Fineout-Overholt, Ph.D., Clinical Professor at

ASU, shared their insights regarding evidence-based practice and led

workshop participants through the process of critical appraisal and

integration of EBP into courses. The text will be used in fall nursing

courses.

Faculty News As the college welcomes David A. Driggers, M.D., as its

new Director of Medical Education, we extend a hearty

“thank you” to W. G. “Jerry” Saunders, M.D., who initiated

the position when he joined the college in 2007. Dr.

Saunders left five years of retirement after 27 years as an

obstetrician/gynecologist in Sheridan to coordinate and

oversee the family medicine residency programs in

Cheyenne and Casper and teach clinical techniques to

Wyoming’s first-year WWAMI students. Having served on

the university’s board of trustees and given time and

experience to training physicians in Afghanistan, Dr. Saunders brought a

wealth of experience to the college and its students. He has been aptly

called “a doctor’s doctor”; we will miss him but wish him well.

Mary Anne Purtzer, Assistant Professor of Nursing, was honored with

the FWWSON’s Communication of Wisdom Award in recognition of her

2009 Western Journal of Nursing Publication article “Processes Inherent in

Mammography-Screening Decisions of Rarely or Never-Screened Women.”

Mary Anne received the award during the school’s Nightingale Center for

The college says "Thank you" to Dr. W. G. "Jerry" Saunders.

Nursing Scholarship’s annual scholarship celebration to encourage and

show support to nursing faculty and their research.

Faculty in the Division of Kinesiology and Health are having another

successful year as they publish their research results in national and

international journals. Jayne Jenkins, Associate Professor, anticipates the

publication of “A Qualitative Analysis of Individual Interest in Middle School

Physical Education: Perspectives of Early-adolescents” in Physical

Education and Sport Pedagogy and “Task Progression in Early Field

Teaching Experiences,” which she wrote with John Haefner, Instructor, for

Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. Jayne and Tami

Benham-Deal, Associate Professor, published “Change in Parental Influence

on Children’s Physical Activity over Time” in Journal of Physical Activity and

Health and “The Impact of Professional Development to Infuse Health and

Reading in Elementary Schools” in American Journal of Health Education.

Furthermore, Principal published Tami’s article “The Road to Health

Literacy—Principals Take the Wheel.” Tristan Wallhead, Assistant

Professor, and Mark Byra, Professor and Division Director, look forward to

the publication of “A Didactic Analysis of Student Content Learning during

the Reciprocal Style of Teaching” in Journal of Teaching in Physical

Education, and Tristan and Jayne published “Influence of High School

Physical Education on University Students’ Physical Activity” in European

Physical Education Review. Tristan and Derek Smith, Associate Professor,

anticipate the publication of their “Sport Education and Extra-curricular

Sport Participation: An Examination Using the Trans-contextual Model of

Motivation” in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. Circulation will

publish “Role for an Age-dependent HIF-α Defect in Impaired MIF-“AMPK

Activation and Ischemic Recovery in the Senescent Heart” by D. Paul

Thomas, Professor, and Toxicology Letters published Paul’s “Intra-

myocardial Delivery of Mesenchymal Stem Cells Ameliorates Left

Ventricular and Cardiomyocyte Contractile Dysfunction Following

Myocardial Infarction.” Journal of Applied Physiology published a series of

articles—“The Biological Limits to Running Speed Are Imposed from the

Ground Up,” Point: Artificial Limbs Do Make Artificially Fast Running

Speeds Possible,” “Rebuttal: Artificial Limbs Do Make Artificially Fast

Running speeds Possible” –by Matthew Bundle, Assistant Professor, and

Biomedical Sciences Instrumentation Journal published Matt’s

“Instrumentation Array for Biomechanical Reproducibility.” Journal of

Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance will publish

“Hefting to Perceive the Affordance for Long Distance Throwing: Smart

Mechanism or Function of Learning” by Qin “Arthur” Zhu, Assistant

Professor.

Penelope Caldwell, Assistant Lecturer of

Nursing, received one of three Visual Arts

Fellowships presented by the Wyoming Arts Council

in Casper. Artists from Ohio, Maryland, and Arizona

judged the entries. Each winner received a $3,000

cash award and will be featured in the 2010-2011

Fellowship Biennial Exhibition.

Penelope Caldwell, recipient of a 2010 Visual Arts Fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council