AURORA, Colo. (PRWEB) April 09, 2015

As a growing number of workers and volunteers travel abroad to assist during times of disaster and crisis, they often are exposed to unfamiliar and sometimes extreme situations for which they are unprepared. Presented by the University of Colorado Department of Emergency Medicines Section of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus, the free Coursera Foundations for Global Health Responders MOOC teaches responsible engagement during health care crises near and far.

Launching May 4, Foundations for Global Health Responders gives the introductory global health knowledge needed to contextualize experience, optimize self-reliance and situational awareness, and allow learners to be more effective in their work in low-to-middle-income countries. The six-week course focuses on changing trends in the 21st century, including urbanization, environmental stress, and resource scarcity, as well as global health security with a focus on access to food, water, and energy. Other areas of focus include the global burden of disease, human rights and how to prepare to be an effective global health participant and savvier world traveler.

After the Haitian earthquake in 2010, thousands of well-meaning humanitarian responders flooded the country in hopes of providing assistance and relief, yet many of them were unprepared for the conditions and ill-prepared to take care of themselves, and ultimately were more of a hindrance than a help. The course is not about disaster response; rather it is about responsible engagement, to provide the introductory foundational knowledge necessary to be a meaningful participant in the world of global health.

Designed and led by experts from CU, Harvard School of Public Health and Weill Cornell Medical College, Foundations for Global Health Responders will also provide basic competencies for organization or university members traveling abroad with a goal toward mitigating institutional risk. We developed this course as a starting point for all-comers, and have invoked the guiding principle of medicine as our mantra: Do No Harm, said Jay Lemery, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine in the CU School of Medicine.

The six-week course is a primer for people who seek the knowledge and skills to effectively participate in global health ventures. Participants should plan on spending between three and six hours studying each week. The course is meant to be a stand-alone introduction to global health, but also serves as the first step toward a more advanced certification. To sign up or to learn more about the Foundations for Global Health Responders MOOC, please visit http://www.coursera.org/course/ghresponder.

Those wishing to obtain additional hands-on skill sets are invited to participate in an in-person three-day Global Health Advanced First Aid courseoffered throughout the world in 2015to be certified as a Global Health Responder through the University Of Colorado School Of Medicine. CU Medical School Facultyleaders in austere care medical educationwill be leading the courses. Details including dates and locations can be found at CU Wilderness and Environmental Medicine.

About Coursera Coursera is an online technology platform that hosts open, full-length, higher-education academic courses in a wide variety of topicsfrom art to computer science to writing and beyond. For more information, go to https://www.coursera.org.

About the University of Colorado & the Section of Wilderness & Environmental Medicine The Section of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine of University of Colorados Department of Emergency Medicine is a university-based enterprise to promote research, best practice, education, and outreach to advance health and wellness in extreme or austere environments. The sections work includes attention to the greater policy issues of environmental change in health, and it is committed toward advancing the conversation based upon the best scientific evidence to improve discourse and understanding. For more information, go to http://www.coloradowm.org.

About the University of Colorado The University of Colorado is a premier public research university with four campuses: the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. With nearly 59,700 students, over 4,900 full-time instructional faculty members and an additional 1,200 research faculty members across the four campuses, CU is the largest institution of higher education in the state of Colorado. CU researchers attracted more than $861M in sponsored research funding in fiscal year 2013-14. Academic prestige is marked by the universitys five Nobel laureates, eight MacArthur Genius Fellows, 18 alumni astronauts and 19 Rhodes Scholars. For more information about the entire CU system, and to access campus resources, go to http://www.cu.edu.

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CU School of Medicine offers first-of-its-kind Foundations for Global Health Responders open online MOOC course in ...

Parents gathered at the Arthur W. Christopher Community Center Tuesday to discuss the future of Burke High School. Amanda Kerr/STAFF

A meeting of more than 50 downtown Charleston parents, residents and community leaders Tuesday night made one thing clear something needs to change at Burke High School.

The question is what and how that change occurs. And thats why a group of downtown parents organized the meeting at the Arthur W. Christopher Community Center on Fishburne Street to find out.

Parent Elena Tuerk, who led the meeting, urged the diverse, and sometimes divided community, to focus on finding common goals for parents to rally around.

This is a really great starting point for us to remember that we have shared visions for our families and shared values, Tuerk said.

Tuerk tasked the group with identifying what a good community school looks like and how that could translate into whats needed at Burke. Suggestions included adding trades and bio-technology programs, identifying ways to attract more students to the school, implementing a rigorous college prep curriculum, partnering with area colleges such as the Medical University of South Carolina to provide targeted academic tracks and potentially bringing in an outside group to run the school.

But discussions about the future of Burke carried an undercurrent of racial tension over changes to the historically black school.

Many alumni spoke passionately about their alma mater, blaming the schools decline in part on the fact that the once strong trades program at Burke was taken out in the 1990s. Some alumni feared the school has been ignored because it is predominantly black

Burke should look like any other school and have the trades as well as academics, said Jerome Smalls, a 1969 graduate of Burke. We want everything any other children would have.

Read more from the original source:
Downtown Charleston parents weigh how to shape the future of Burke High

Commitment recognizes school's growing recognition and its impact on technology entrepreneurship and economic development

With a $30 million lead gift in 2004, Evelyn and Ernest Rady and the Rady Family Foundation helped establish UC San Diego's world-class, entrepreneurial business school--the Rady School of Management. They also contributed $5 million toward the expansion of the business school's campus, and gave other significant gifts to ensure excellence at the school. Today UC San Diego announced that the Rady Family Foundation has made a $100 million commitment to help recruit and retain faculty and fund strategic priorities at the Rady School of Management.

"What a magnificent first 10 years--and the school is just getting started," said Ernest Rady. "Dean Sullivan and other leaders within the community held a vision of a business school in a symbiotic relationship with the innovative culture of our region. The school is already exceeding expectations and there is so much more to come."

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla said, "The Rady School is an integral part of UC San Diego and a vital, entrepreneurial component to San Diego's science and technology communities. The generous commitment from Evelyn and Ernest Rady and the Rady Family Foundation allows the school to continue its tradition of success and impact."

For Ernest Rady, one of San Diego's most prominent philanthropists and business leaders, this recent commitment to the Rady School is driven by his "Return on Life (ROL)" philosophy. "We want the resources that we've been fortunate enough to accumulate to go to help other people," he explained. That help could be for a student who receives a fellowship to attend the region's top business school. Or success for a startup whose founders learned how to turn ideas into opportunities. Or saving a child through technology and science developed by a Rady graduate.

"The Rady School has had an impressive first decade as measured by quality of faculty and successes of its entrepreneurial alumni. However, the best and most significant impact is on the horizon," said Dean Robert S. Sullivan. "The transformational support from Evelyn and Ernest Rady is the largest single commitment in history to a business school of Rady's size and youth and will continue to propel the Rady School on its meteoric rise - enabling the recruitment of world-class faculty, attracting the best and brightest students, and pioneering with creative new academic initiatives."

The past decade has held many accomplishments for UC San Diego's Rady School of Management, including the prestigious accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the launch of over 80 sustaining companies and 100 "intrepreneurial" products and services by students and alumni, the construction of the Rady School campus, and the recognition of outstanding faculty research through national and international publications. Recently Bloomberg Businessweek ranked the school as the number one MBA program in the U.S. for Intellectual Capital.

Since its founding a decade ago, the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego has distinguished itself as a pioneer in a new model of business education. The school's concentration in innovation, entrepreneurship and collaboration has led to rapid success--borne out by outstanding achievements of its students, faculty and alumni.

Rady School alumni have had an economic impact on the local and state economy. Over the past decade, Rady students and alumni have created 82 companies that are operational today--hiring employees, launching products that save energy, providing goods and services, and improving and saving lives. Last year, Rady alumni-founded companies contributed an estimated $2 billion to the regional economy.

One such local impact was realized through the work of Ashley Van Zeeland, Ph.D., a 2012 Rady alumna and co-founder and CEO of Cypher Genomics, Inc. This leading genome informatics company helps people like Lilly Grossman, a local 16-year-old, who had experienced a mysterious form of muscle weakness and seizure-like fits since infancy. She and her parents were desperate for a cure. Thanks to genomic sequencing built on technology developed by Van Zeeland and Cypher Genomics, Lilly's medical team identified two suspicious gene mutations. This discovery improved her doctors' understanding of the disease, and is now guiding the treatment protocol. With renewed hope, Lilly is now visiting universities and looking forward to life as a college student.

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Evelyn and Ernest Rady commit $100 million to UC San Diego's Rady School

SAN DIEGO, April 7, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --With a $30 million lead gift in 2004, Evelyn and Ernest Rady and the Rady Family Foundation helped establish UC San Diego's world-class, entrepreneurial business schoolthe Rady School of Management. They also contributed $5 million toward the expansion of the business school's campus, and gave other significant gifts to ensure excellence at the school. Today UC San Diego announced that the Rady Family Foundation has made a $100 million commitment to help recruit and retain faculty and fund strategic priorities at the Rady School of Management.

"What a magnificent first 10 yearsand the school is just getting started," said Ernest Rady. "Dean Sullivan and other leaders within the community held a vision of a business school in a symbiotic relationship with the innovative culture of our region. The school is already exceeding expectations and there is so much more to come."

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla said, "The Rady School is an integral part of UC San Diego and a vital, entrepreneurial component to San Diego's science and technology communities. The generous commitment from Evelyn and Ernest Rady and the Rady Family Foundation allows the school to continue its tradition of success and impact."

For Ernest Rady, one of San Diego's most prominent philanthropists and business leaders, this recent commitment to the Rady School is driven by his "Return on Life (ROL)" philosophy. "We want the resources that we've been fortunate enough to accumulate to go to help other people," he explained. That help could be for a student who receives a fellowship to attend the region's top business school. Or success for a start-up whose founders learned how to turn ideas into opportunities. Or saving a child through technology and science developed by a Rady graduate.

"The Rady School has had an impressive first decade as measured by quality of faculty and successes of its entrepreneurial alumni. However, the best and most significant impact is on the horizon," said Dean Robert S. Sullivan. "The transformational support from Evelyn and Ernest Rady is the largest single commitment in history to a business school of Rady's size and youth and will continue to propel the Rady School on its meteoric rise enabling the recruitment of world-class faculty, attracting the best and brightest students, and pioneering with creative new academic initiatives."

The past decade has held many accomplishments for UC San Diego's Rady School of Management, including the prestigious accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the launch of over 80 sustaining companies and 100 "intrepreneurial" products and services by students and alumni, the construction of the Rady School campus, and the recognition of outstanding faculty research through national and international publications. Recently Bloomberg Businessweek ranked the school as the number one MBA program in the U.S. for Intellectual Capital.

Since its founding a decade ago, the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego has distinguished itself as a pioneer in a new model of business education. The school's concentration in innovation, entrepreneurship and collaboration has led to rapid successborne out by outstanding achievements of its students, faculty and alumni.

Rady School alumni have had an economic impact on the local and state economy. Over the past decade, Rady students and alumni have created 82 companies that are operational todayhiring employees, launching products that save energy, providing goods and services, and improving and saving lives. Last year, Rady alumni-founded companies contributed an estimated $2 billion to the regional economy.

One such local impact was realized through the work of Ashley Van Zeeland, Ph.D., a 2012 Rady alumna and co-founder and CEO of Cypher Genomics, Inc. This leading genome informatics company helps people like Lilly Grossman, a local 16-year-old, who had experienced a mysterious form of muscle weakness and seizure-like fits since infancy. She and her parents were desperate for a cure. Thanks to genomic sequencing built on technology developed by Van Zeeland and Cypher Genomics, Lilly's medical team identified two suspicious gene mutations. This discovery improved her doctors' understanding of the disease, and is now guiding the treatment protocol. With renewed hope, Lilly is now visiting universities and looking forward to life as a college student.

"My UC San Diego Rady experience was instrumental in providing me the knowledge, tools and network to translate science into a meaningful business," commented Van Zeeland. "The experience has enabled me to define our value proposition and secure partnerships that have catapulted our growth and potential to impact many lives."

Read the original post:
Philanthropists Evelyn and Ernest Rady Commit $100 Million to Benefit the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego

Commitment recognizes school's growing recognition and its impact on technology entrepreneurship and economic development

With a $30 million lead gift in 2004, Evelyn and Ernest Rady and the Rady Family Foundation helped establish UC San Diego's world-class, entrepreneurial business school--the Rady School of Management. They also contributed $5 million toward the expansion of the business school's campus, and gave other significant gifts to ensure excellence at the school. Today UC San Diego announced that the Rady Family Foundation has made a $100 million commitment to help recruit and retain faculty and fund strategic priorities at the Rady School of Management.

"What a magnificent first 10 years--and the school is just getting started," said Ernest Rady. "Dean Sullivan and other leaders within the community held a vision of a business school in a symbiotic relationship with the innovative culture of our region. The school is already exceeding expectations and there is so much more to come."

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla said, "The Rady School is an integral part of UC San Diego and a vital, entrepreneurial component to San Diego's science and technology communities. The generous commitment from Evelyn and Ernest Rady and the Rady Family Foundation allows the school to continue its tradition of success and impact."

For Ernest Rady, one of San Diego's most prominent philanthropists and business leaders, this recent commitment to the Rady School is driven by his "Return on Life (ROL)" philosophy. "We want the resources that we've been fortunate enough to accumulate to go to help other people," he explained. That help could be for a student who receives a fellowship to attend the region's top business school. Or success for a startup whose founders learned how to turn ideas into opportunities. Or saving a child through technology and science developed by a Rady graduate.

"The Rady School has had an impressive first decade as measured by quality of faculty and successes of its entrepreneurial alumni. However, the best and most significant impact is on the horizon," said Dean Robert S. Sullivan. "The transformational support from Evelyn and Ernest Rady is the largest single commitment in history to a business school of Rady's size and youth and will continue to propel the Rady School on its meteoric rise - enabling the recruitment of world-class faculty, attracting the best and brightest students, and pioneering with creative new academic initiatives."

The past decade has held many accomplishments for UC San Diego's Rady School of Management, including the prestigious accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the launch of over 80 sustaining companies and 100 "intrepreneurial" products and services by students and alumni, the construction of the Rady School campus, and the recognition of outstanding faculty research through national and international publications. Recently Bloomberg Businessweek ranked the school as the number one MBA program in the U.S. for Intellectual Capital.

Since its founding a decade ago, the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego has distinguished itself as a pioneer in a new model of business education. The school's concentration in innovation, entrepreneurship and collaboration has led to rapid success--borne out by outstanding achievements of its students, faculty and alumni.

Rady School alumni have had an economic impact on the local and state economy. Over the past decade, Rady students and alumni have created 82 companies that are operational today--hiring employees, launching products that save energy, providing goods and services, and improving and saving lives. Last year, Rady alumni-founded companies contributed an estimated $2 billion to the regional economy.

One such local impact was realized through the work of Ashley Van Zeeland, Ph.D., a 2012 Rady alumna and co-founder and CEO of Cypher Genomics, Inc. This leading genome informatics company helps people like Lilly Grossman, a local 16-year-old, who had experienced a mysterious form of muscle weakness and seizure-like fits since infancy. She and her parents were desperate for a cure. Thanks to genomic sequencing built on technology developed by Van Zeeland and Cypher Genomics, Lilly's medical team identified two suspicious gene mutations. This discovery improved her doctors' understanding of the disease, and is now guiding the treatment protocol. With renewed hope, Lilly is now visiting universities and looking forward to life as a college student.

More here:
Evelyn and Ernest Rady commit $100M to UC San Diego's Rady School

As one recent admit to the Yale Physician Associate program scrolled through his Facebook newsfeed on March 10, he was surprised to see headlines stating that Yales program would likely be made available online. Since the announcement, this student has chosen not to enroll at Yale.

The day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Yale had approved a proposal to offer an online Master of Medical Sciences program the Universitys first full-time online degree program an email was sent to all current PA students and select alumni confirming the news. Spearheaded by PA Program Director James Van Rhee and Deputy Dean for Education at the Yale School of Medicine Richard Belitsky, the proposed online degree will allow PA students to view lectures and attend discussion sections from the comfort of their hometowns. Yales PA community has objected to the proposal, and hearing the news from the press before their own professors is only one of their many complaints.

Although the online program will be a joint venture with 2U, a well-established education technology company, PA students and alumni are concerned that the development of the degree did not take into account the views of the students themselves.

We feel as though our input is not valued or welcomed, and that we have been excluded from the planning process despite demonstrating interest and being stakeholders in the outcome, reads a collective statement from the PA classes of 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013.

Van Rhee explained that he thought incoming PA students had been included on the email announcement sent to current students they had not hypothesizing that perhaps their Yale emails had not yet been activated. In addition to apologizing to students, he held small, online town hall meetings with the incoming class to address their concerns and answer their questions. But Van Rhee said he does not share their concerns about the online program.

In fact, he thinks the online expansion will only enhance on-campus students experience.

Described as an expansion in class size, the new online PA program will run alongside the current on-campus program, enabling students who do not live in New Haven to have access to Yales academic resources. Currently, roughly 36 students are admitted to Yales PA program on a rolling basis each year. According to Chandra Goff MED 14, an alumna in the PA program, the University intends to grow that number nearly tenfold to 350 students, answering calls from the medical community to increase the number of primary care clinicians.

A SURPRISING ANNOUNCEMENT

Rumors of the online expansion of the PA degree had begun circulating among current students and alumni as far back as spring 2014, said Goff. But it was only in March of this year that the PA community received confirmation of the program, which includes online coursework, clinical rotations in their hometown and roughly two weeks spent on Yales campus.

A March 10 email sent from the medical school deans office to students and alumni informed recipients that, after six months of thorough study, the school had approved a new pathway for earning the PA degree and was awaiting approval from the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant, the national PA degree accrediting agency.

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Online PA program comes under harsh scrutiny

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents vowed to make the schools human research programs beyond reproach after two recent reports highlighted ethical concerns and faulted the institution for inadequately protecting its human research subjects.

Regents responded to the reports and approved resulting steps the University will take at a meeting Friday. Among other changes, the board approved suspending psychiatric drug trials and creating a Community Oversight Board to ensure the schools human research subjects are being properly protected.

The school has postponed 17 current and pending drug trials until an independent review board recommends lifting the suspension. Additionally, other clinical studies that target vulnerable populations will be reviewed to ensure human research subjects protections are adequate.

Obviously, like everyone else, we would have loved to have avoided the issue, Regent Darrin Rosha said Friday. But in this circumstance we have an opportunity to make great strides.

The University will hold a public forum in May to discuss the reports findings. Medical School Dean Brooks Jackson will hold a town hall meeting next month with Academic Health Center faculty and staff to discuss the reports findings.

The school plans to commission a task force, composed primarily of faculty members and experts, to create recommendations for the school on how to follow through with an external reports recommendations by May 15.

A legislative auditors report released earlier this month said the Universitys responses were insular and defensive when ethical concerns were raised after the 2004 death of Dan Markingson, a man who killed himself while enrolled in a University antipsychotic drug study.

The auditors report followed the release of an external review in February, which examined the Universitys human research subject protections program.

The review, managed by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs, analyzed practices from 2011 to 2014 and found flaws, including a lack of employee ethics training and an insufficient institutional review board.

Though school leaders and administrators have approved plans to reform drug trial programs, some faculty members, advocates and state officials say accountability measures should come from outside the institution.

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Board acts on Kalers request

The furor over the forced departure of Dan Jones as Chancellor at the University of Mississippi has reached into almost every corner of the state, including Columbus.

Dr. Chance Laws, a retired ophthalmologist from Columbus who attained his undergraduate degree from Ole Miss and his medical degree from University of Mississippi Medical Center, said he was caught by surprise when the Board of Trustees of the states' Institutions for Higher Learning voted Friday not to renew Jones' contract, which is set to expire in September.

"I had heard some rumors about their being some disagreements, but I never imagined it would come to this," Laws, who served as Ole Miss' national alumni president in 2006-07, said. "I don't have any insight into what exactly happened, but I'm totally supportive of Dan Jones. From what I know, things are going very well at the undergraduate school and the medical school. I think he's done a great job when you consider that the medical school has grown, a new building is under construction -- all the indicators seem to be very positive. According to Dan, they are meeting all of their budgetary targets and the whole medical school seems to be making real strides. I'm sure the people on the IHL board are certainly wise businessmen, but I have to wonder how well informed they are about hospitals."

While Laws says he has no intimate knowledge of the dispute that led to Jones' dismissal, another physician from Columbus has a far clearly view of the dispute.

Dr. James Keeton, a Lee High graduate who succeeded Jones as vice chancellor and dean of UMMC in 2009 and retired March 1, said the IHL Board's criticism of UMMC's handling of financial issues was unfounded.

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Columbus doctors disappointed with Jones' dismissal

OXFORD, MS (WMC) -

The Mississippi College Board voted to let Chancellor Dan Jones go on Friday.

The board lost faith in Jones over contracting and management practices at the University of Mississippi Medical School in Jackson.

Jones does not want to resign.

"The board said there is no pathway to renewal of my contract," said Jones. "I'd love to have the opportunity to continue as chancellor."

Former star quarterback Archie Manning and author John Grisham, a former chancellor himself, are just a few of the superstars supporting Jones.

Ole Miss students also want to keep Jones as their chancellor. The student newspaper even featured an editorial titled "We Believe in Dan."

"He has kept us on a high note and made us prosper. We have bigger enrollments than we ever had," said Lawton student John Cooper. "We have more money than we ever had."

Jones was only back at Ole Miss a week and a half when he got the news. He had been receiving treatment for lymphoma since November.

The entire campus is behind him.

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Students, alumni pour in support for Ole Miss chancellor