As a petty officer second class in the Navy, it was Adam Connell's job to successfully board ships being used for arms smuggling, drug trafficking, and other nefarious activities in South America and the Persian Gulf.

To get from his frigate to a 200,000-ton supertanker commandeered by pirates and other bad guys took telescopic hook ladders, precision timing, and lots of nerve, especially since the ships were sometimes traveling abreast at speeds of 25 knots.

But the distance Connell had to travel from ship to ship pales in comparison to the cultural gap he's had to bridge transitioning from almost five years of military life to campus life as a nursing student at the University of Iowa.

Fortunately, Connell, a sophomore working on his Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree, found a range of services the UI offers to make the transition to college for veterans a bit easier financially, academically, and even socially.

Connell enrolled in the first-ever meeting of the College of Education class "Life After War: Post-Deployment Issues," designed exclusively to help veterans examine their military experiences, while honing study skills. He got a work-study position in the UI Veterans Service Office, which offers veterans access to computers and tutoring, through a collaborative program between the UI and the VA Hospital in Iowa City. And he met other veterans through the UI Veterans Association.

QUOTE/UNQUOTE

Adam Connell: "The support offered through the UI Veterans Association really helped me out a lot. I was able to hang out with people who speak the same language as I do. And it was just good having camaraderie again, something I took for granted when I was on active duty."

DID YOU KNOW?

Iowa and Texas are the first two states being used as test beds for a pilot Hero to Hired program that connects veterans with employers eager to hire them, using a website and mobile app. The UI is helping direct veterans to the service, which will add four additional states in 2013, and is working to get listed on the H2H website as an institution seeking veteran job applicants.

FYI

Learn more about some of the many ways the UI is helping veterans succeed at http://now.uiowa.edu/2012/04/giving-veterans-helping-hand

What does it take to build a LEED-certified testing facility?  The State Hygienic Laboratory recently earned gold certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design because it was built and operates in an eco-friendly manner.

Located on the UI Research Park campus, the Hygienic Lab incorporates the rigorous design and safety requirements of a laboratory facility along with LEED elements in five categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environment. It all combines for a sustainable yet very welcoming place to work.

That means that many of the construction materials were manufactured within the region to reduce the environmental burden associated with hauling materials to the Coralville site. The heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems were selected to minimize or eliminate the emission of compounds that contribute to ozone depletion.  Lockers and break-room chairs were constructed with 100 percent post-consumer recycled materials.

QUOTE/UNQUOTE

UI President Sally Mason: "This is a lot more than just a laboratory facility.  It represents a promise we've made to the people of Iowa for over 100 years, and that's to protect them and help ensure that we live in the healthiest state possible."

DID YOU KNOW?
The Hygienic Laboratory monitors Iowa waterways and the air for contaminants, screens all babies for congenital disorders, and conducts surveillance for infectious diseases.  That amounts to nearly 600,000 public health tests for Iowans each year.

Over the next several months the Hawkeye Caucus will profile "A day in the life" of a typical student on campus.

Last Tuesday, I woke up and got my day started at 8:00 am. I grabbed my laptop and checked emails from the night before for about 30 minutes, as I do every morning.  I then got ready for the day and ate some breakfast.

After breakfast, I read for my Health Economics class for about an hour or so to prepare for my class later that night. At noon, I went to the College of Public Health building for my Human Resources for Healthcare Organizations' class, which lasted until 2:00 pm.

After class, I walked over to the Iowa Memorial Union to eat lunch and held the first part of my weekly office hours for Dance Marathon. During these few hours, I caught up on more emails and then worked on improving one of our development areas for Dance Marathon. This included doing some data analysis and comparing it to previous years to see how we could improve for this year.

At 4:30, I started my Health Economics which goes until 7:30 pm. Following my class, I ate dinner and then read for my Maternal/Child/Family Health class, which occurs on Wednesday. After reading, I prepared for what I needed to do for the rest of the week and prioritized what needed to get done first.

Afterward, I checked emails for one last time and then talked with my girlfriend before falling asleep around 12:30 am.

Nic Rusher is a Master of Health Administration Candidate and is the Executive Director of the University of Iowa Dance Marathon.

DID YOU KNOW?

The University of Iowa Dance Marathon is the largest student-run philanthropic organization west of the Mississippi River.

Most Iowans take for granted their abilities to hear and speak clearly. But for those with hearing and speech disorders, negotiating our busy world can be challenging.

The Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders?part of the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts & Sciences?offers them a place to turn.

The department is one of the nation's premier centers offering treatment, conducting research, and teaching professionals in speech and hearing sciences. Its graduate programs in Speech-Language Pathology and in Audiology are ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, by U.S. News & World Report.

The department's Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Clinic has served Iowans?adults and children?for more than 60 years. In 2011, almost 800 Iowans received care in the Department's clinics.

FYI

In addition to its clinics on the UI campus, the Department serves Iowans through innovative outreach programs, including summer camps for kids who stutter and a summer preschool program to promote spoken language skills in children with hearing loss.

DID YOU KNOW?

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences is the UI's largest college, with almost 50 departments and programs in the performing and fine arts, humanities, social sciences, and mathematical and natural sciences. Almost all UI undergraduates are first admitted to the College to develop the fundamental skills and knowledge that will prepare them for courses in their major, and more than 70 percent of all UI undergraduates go on to earn a degree in one of the college's nearly 60 majors.  This academic year, the college is teaching almost 15,000 undergraduate students (about 75 percent of the UI's total), including more than 8,600 from across Iowa, and will award more than 3,000 undergraduate degrees.

What's the good word?

Today's aspiring journalists must be more than just good news writers?they must be innovative strategic communicators, able to work across many technological platforms for diverse employers.

In Iowa, the demand for such skills is higher than ever, as news outlets, companies, and nonprofit organizations seek well-educated communicators to help them navigate the media landscape and be heard.

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication - a unit of the UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - is preparing Iowans of all ages to meet those demands and develop skills as communicators. For example:

* Elementary: The school offers free summer Iowa Journalism Academies to students from Des Moines and Davenport. More than 1,000 students have participated during the program's 13 years.

* High school: The school hosts the Iowa chapter of Quill and Scroll, the national high-school honor society for journalism; helping teachers in more than 300 Iowa high schools incorporate journalism instruction into the curriculum.

* College: Half of the school's undergraduate students are from Iowa.  During the 2010-2011 academic year, the school gave more than $87,000 in scholarships to students from Iowa. Its students regularly meet with, intern at, and work for hundreds of Iowa-based companies and organizations in cities and towns throughout Iowa.

* Continuing Education: The school offers graduate-level courses at Des Moines's John and Mary Pappajohn Education Center and online.  It hopes to offer an online master's program in strategic communications for working professionals.

DID YOU KNOW?

For the 2010-2011 school year, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences had a 92 percent placement rate in jobs or graduate schools for graduating seniors.  Fifty-six percent of those who accepted job offers did so in Iowa.  There are more than 48,000 alumni of the college living in Iowa, bringing their education, knowledge, and leadership into communities and professions across the state.

Leaders of University of Iowa Heart and Vascular Center have reported that their heart valve team has treated half a dozen patients with a new, cutting-edge treatment for seriously ill patients affected by severe heart valve problems.

The new technology uses a catheter inserted through a small incision in a patient's thigh that travels through blood vessels and can be used to replace a person's failing heart valve in the aortic artery.

The technology is reserved for patients with severe aortic stenosis who are considered too high risk for traditional forms of heart valve replacement surgery, or were previously considered inoperable.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the treatment, called the SAPIEN percutaneous heart valve replacement, manufactured by Edwards LifeSciences.

DID YOU KNOW?
In October 2011, the UI Heart and Vascular Center became the first program in the nation to receive certification for its cardiac valve program from The Joint Commission, the accreditation agency for health care organizations in the United States.

FYI
In addition to the new transcatheter procedure, the center's heart valve clinic, established more than three years ago, offers minimally invasive surgery for heart valve repair and replacement. For more information, call 319-384-6245 or visit online at www.uihealthcare.org/heart.

Helping Iowa entrepreneurs get a leg up

Lots of people come up with ideas for new businesses.  Finding the money to get them off the ground is the tough part.

To help those would-be Iowa entrepreneurs, the University of Iowa's John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (JPEC) offers workshops and contests to assist students, faculty and staff hone their elevator pitch and business plan writing skills. These abilities are vital in successfully securing start-up money from financiers and venture capitalists.

Each year, JPEC sponsors or co-sponsors six competitions that provide training and practice. They could obtain seed money, too, as competition winners can receive anywhere from $500 to $25,000 in start-up capital.

For more information on JPEC's contests, visit: http://www.iowajpec.org/business/competitions.cfm

DID YOU KNOW?
JPEC's Bedell Entrepreneurship Learning Laboratory is an on-campus incubator for new businesses that provides office space and learning opportunities for 29 start-ups owned by University of Iowa students.

Iowa Flood Center expands stream sensor network in Iowa

 

The Iowa Flood Center, based at the University of Iowa, has taken advantage of the state's unusually mild start to winter by continuing to install a second batch of 50 electronic stream stage sensors across Iowa. Now fully installed, the new instruments bring to 100 the number of affordable stream sensors purchased by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and installed on the downstream side of bridges by the Iowa Flood Center.

 

Developed in part by students at the center, the sensors use sonar to measure the distance to the water's surface and send reports every 15 minutes to a database at the center's UI headquarters so that Iowans have access to real-time monitoring of water levels in Iowa's rivers and streams. A river and stream-level map of the data is available on the center's website (http://ut.iihr.uiowa.edu/ifis/#).

 

Flood center researchers say that Iowa, with its thousands of bridges, could benefit from an even wider network of information if more sensors were put into wider use. Such a system would enhance safety in the state by improving the ability to monitor stream levels and predict flooding, and by improving public preparedness.

 

FYI
In addition to developing a system of flood sensors and maps, the Iowa Flood Center plans to build a network to detect and record soil moisture content -- another factor involved in flooding.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

Looking to the future, staff from the nearly three-year-old Iowa Flood Center are preparing a new proposal to the National Science Foundation to establish a $25 million National Flood Center. The UI's experience with the Iowa Flood Center will make the proposal especially competitive. If funded, this new center will help establish Iowa as a national leader in flood-related research and education.

 

Newborn screening is the healthy first step for Iowa babies

 

A few drops of blood collected shortly after birth can mean the difference between a healthy future and a lifelong battle with chronic, debilitating conditions.  The State Hygienic Laboratory at the University of Iowa helps to make that difference for the approximately 40,000 babies born each year in the state.

 

Each year, 40 or more Iowa babies are identified with a congenital condition that, if left undetected and untreated, could result in irreversible neurological delays, coma or death.  Instead, they have the healthiest start possible in life.  How does this happen?

Shortly after the birth, six tiny drops of blood are collected from the baby's heel.  From those few drops, the Hygienic Laboratory identifies more than 30 different conditions, including PKU and cystic fibrosis.

 

It's all part of the Iowa Neonatal and Metabolic Screen Program that helps give babies the best possible start in life.

 

FYI
Like most things with newborns, time is of the essence.  The tiny drops of blood collected at birth must reach the Hygienic Lab's Ankeny facility within 24 hours of to ensure the highest degree of accuracy.  A statewide courier system picks up the samples and delivers them to the laboratory, which conducts testing around the clock.

You have probably heard about Doctors Without Borders but did you know that there is an Engineers Without Borders, too?  This national organization does exactly what its name suggests: reaches out to help lift up communities that cannot do it themselves. It is through this national organization that the University of Iowa Chapter of Engineers Without Borders has made a long-lasting, positive impact halfway across the globe.

 

Over the past few years UI engineering students have been working in Ghana, a country in Western Africa, to provide clean drinking water and sanitation. The students also provide the communities they serve with the knowledge they need to manage and maintain these systems for years to come.

 

In order to find out more information click here http://www.uiewb.org/.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

There are more than 3,500 University of Iowa College of Engineering alumni living in 91 of Iowa's 99 counties.

Pages