From the Director...

Welcome back to what promises to be another exciting and productive semester. We wish to issue a special welcome to students at the College of Marin, Indian Valley Campus, who are taking our CAD 300 and to our cohort of students at Cañada College in Redwood City.

For many of us who were here over the summer, our work resulted in three very significant grants that will support successful ongoing Institute programs. The Mission Science Workshop was awarded $115,000 from the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families. Thanks to the persistent work of Janet Egiziano and Kelly Walsh, this Mission-based program will continue to provide outstanding and critical educational enrichment in math and science for underserved youth.

The California Wellness Foundation awarded $210,000 over three years to our Minority Nurse Research to PhD program to support 12 minority nurses in the masters program to enter PhD programs. Hilary Pritchard has taken a lead role in making this program a great success by coordinating the activities between our nursing faculty, Grace Hardie and Skip Davis, the students and our colleagues at Mt. Zion Comprehensive Cancer Center and UCSF School of Nursing. A significant goal of this program is to develop more leaders in the health professions who will focus their research, clinical practice and teaching on reducing health disparities.

An additional award of over $2 million from the First Five Commission, Department of Human Services, and the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Families will support our ongoing evaluation research of 350 childcare centers and family childcare homes in San Francisco to improve the quality of child care. We welcome Linda Leong on board as Administrative Assistant for what will be a very challenging and exciting effort. David Fleishman, the Coordinator of this project, has enhanced the success of our first year of this project through his collaborative work with city-wide agencies and his outreach to the childcare community.

These specific efforts are all directly related to the mission of the Institute and, through the successful outcomes of these activities, we will continue to strive to direct our energy, expertise and commitment to improving the lives of individuals in our communities. A very sincere thanks to all who have contributed to these efforts and all the projects in the Marin Wright Edelman Institute.

-Dr. Charlotte Ferretti


CAD Connections

By Carol Stevenson
Acting Program Director
Child and Adolescent Development

Welcome to the fall semester. There are 445 CAD students enrolled this semester, and the major continues to grow. A record number of sixty-one CAD students have started their internships and are working in sites throughout the Bay Area this fall. You can find CAD students in elementary school classrooms, early care and education programs, youth development programs, county offices of education, and the offices of elected officials. Thank you to all of the community based sites, the San Francisco School Volunteers, classroom teachers, and other intern supervisors for your part in making these experiences meaningful for our students. We are always looking for exciting internship opportunities for our students who are required to work for 120 hours at a site during their last semester in the program. Contact Carol Stevenson at carols@sfsu.edu if you know of great programs where students can gain rich experiences working with or on behalf of children, youth and families.

New faculty member
The CAD program is thrilled to announce that Laurie Meschke, Ph.D. will be joining the CAD program as an assistant professor in January 2005. Laurie received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 1997. She was an assistant professor or Human Development and Family Science at Ohio State University and the first Director of Community Outreach for the Maternal and Child Health Program at the University of Minnesota. Laurie currently lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she is president of a successful consulting firm, Good Reason Consulting. She has worked extensively with the Hmong community in Minneapolis on issues relating to adolescent health and teen pregnancy. We look forward to her arrival and to the community experience and expertise in adolescent development and youth programs that she will add to the program.

College of Marin
After a year of planning, the CAD program is offering its first SFSU course at the Indian Valley campus of the College of Marin this semester. Thirteen students are enrolled in CAD 300, Professional Roles and Careers in Child and Adolescent Development, the introductory course to the major. Current plans are to offer two additional courses from the CAD core curriculum in the spring 2005 semester. If you are interested in the College of Marin program, please contact Janet Egiziano at jmlziano@sfsu.edu for further information.
 


  

Renewed Funding for WiRED’s HIV/AIDS Prevention Programs in Kenya
WiRED International’s Community Health Information Center (CHIC) project in Kenya has received renewed funding from the Office of AIDS Research (OAR), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. With this funding, WIRED will continue its research and information programs at 17 Centers throughout Kenya and the main Medical Information Center at the University of Nairobi School of Public Health.

The Community Health Information Centers are developed in cooperation with local Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and integrate health information programs into the daily activities of each community. Each Center houses four or more networked computers and an extensive medical CD-ROM collection. Five trained staff members at each Center help visitors access information about HIV/AIDS and other health care topics. They also educate visitors about basic computer operations so the visitors can independently search for information on topics of interest.

In addition to the daily operation at the Centers, the CHIC staff continues to explore innovative new ways to reach people with the HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention message. In response to the needs of their communities, they have developed a number of innovations including these:

Disabled program - This unique program delivers information about HIV/AIDS/STDs to disabled people and to their caregivers. In addition, this program sponsors discussion groups that examine the special needs of people with disabilities and look at ways to integrate them into existing health education programs.

Outreach program - Although many thousands of visitors find their way to the Centers each month, there are many more eager to benefit from the services. To address this huge demand, the Centers sponsor outreach programs that dispatch staffers to hospitals, schools, and rehabilitation centers where they present information about HIV/AIDS. They also inform the institutions and their clients about the health care information services available at the Centers.

Pack ’N Go program - The Pack ’N Go program was developed to bring the AIDS treatment and HIV prevention information to people who cannot make the journey into the Center. Sturdy boxes specially designed to hold a computer have been built to fit into the trunks of cars and onto the carrier rack of bicycles. Health educators then venture from the Centers to deliver life-saving information to out-lying communities.

CD-ROM development - The CHIC staff, in coordination with medical professionals, community groups and traditional healers, is developing a five-part series about HIV/AIDS titled From the Kenya Perspective. Tailored to meet the unique needs of residents throughout Kenya, the information will be delivered in English and Kiswahili.

To date, the WiRED CHIC program, through the sponsorship of the Office of AIDS Research at NIH, has reached many hundreds of thousands of Kenyans with information about HIV/AIDS and other health-related topics. The OAR provided funding for the installation of WiRED’s first five Centers in 2002 and has continued to support WiRED’s vital HIV/AIDS education services and research to date.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Office of Aids Research is responsible for the development of an annual comprehensive plan and budget for all NIH AIDS research. The OAR promotes collaborative research activities in both domestic and international settings.

Jumpstart San Francisco Expansion

Jumpstart SFSU joined forces with San Francisco City College this year in a collaborative program which will nearly double the number of preschool children served in San Francisco this year. The two institutions will work together in providing over 120 children with one-on-one mentorship for the 2004-05 academic year.

With over 120 college students, Jumpstart has hit the ground running this semester. Before the mentoring can begin, all Jumpstart Corps Members are required to enroll in CAD 697. This course trains college students in Jumpstart’s approach to Early Childhood Education. It enables Corps Members to build a community of growth and learning within the Jumpstart network, while earning them ECE units. The course, taught by Lygia Stebbing, focuses on helping children build their literacy, language, and social skills.

Jumpstart’s success on campus will also be fueled by new full time staff members. Cindy Cervantes, a recent Graduate from San Francisco State, has been hired on as the Associate Site Manager for San Francisco State University. An alumnus of the Jumpstart program, Cervantes is happy to continue working in the communities that Jumpstart serves.

Another new addition to the Jumpstart family is Noelani Mussman, Site Manager for Jumpstart at San Francisco City College. Mussman began her career in education teaching High School English in Baltimore through Teach for America, an Americorps program that places teachers in low income communities nationwide. After moving to San Francisco over a year ago, Mussman was searching for a job that would allow her to work with children throughout the city, and found a perfect match in Jumpstart.

Lygia Stebbing stays on as the Director of the San Francisco Program, settling into her third year with the program. She encourages everyone to stop by the Jumpstart office to welcome the new additions to San Francisco State University’s community.

Community Science Workshops Gather For Annual Conference

With funding from the National Science Foundation, staff from 12 Community Science Workshops (CSW) gathered in Puerto Rico last August for professional development, renewal and planning. Participants shared curriculum development, taught each other hands-on projects to take back to their workshops, and explored fundraising and securing media coverage. The conference was the second such gathering to be held since the inception of the Community Science Workshops project, a national movement of informal science education based on SFSU’s Mission Science Workshop.

Among the more interesting and fun projects shared by participants were mask-making (combining science with art), hydraulic butterflies, camping science, leaf critters, microscale gas chemistry, earth science, and mapping your neighborhood. An excellent book of proceedings provided participants with step-by-step instruction to make even more science and mathematics projects. All projects such as these support the mission of the Science Workshops: to expand knowledge, thinking and imagination with tools of discovery and things to discover. Outside of the pressures of the formal classroom, students are free to explore and discover the wonders of the natural world in their own community.

Funded in 1994 by the National Science Foundation, the Community Science Workshops are an important new concept. Neither school nor science museum, the CSW are an unusual kind of institution. They are part science center, part woodshop, part nature center – all in the heart of urban neighborhoods throughout the country. Located in community centers and schools, CSWs are devoted to providing local youth with opportunities to engage in their own projects and pursue their own firsthand learning.

To learn more about this movement to advance informal science learning, visit http://www.scienceworkshops.org/site/csw/.

CAD Students Tour ITALY !!!

At the end of May, three CAD students along with Dr. Shannon Perry and Dr. Rene F. Dahl, traveled to Italy to learn about schools in Italy, as part of the CAD 680, International Field Study in CAD (3 units). The students, Esther Kim, Theresa Navarro, and Melissa Scheid, traveled with thirteen nursing students, and experienced first hand, the interesting and unique schools and educational system in Italy. Prior to the trip, Esther, Theresa, and Melissa visited Reggio-based and Montessori schools in the Bay Area and completed assigned background reading. While on the trip, they kept a journal of their experiences and impressions, which they turned in at the end of the trip.

Here’s a snapshot of our tremendously interesting and exciting learning experience:

  • Rome: At the Ministry of Education, we met with Dr. Don DeGasperis, head of international education and treaties who is heading up the country’s educational reform plan to bring Italy into compliance with the new European Union teaching and educational standards. We also visited with teachers at the Don G. Morosini School in Gemelli Hospital, whose goal is to create a normal school environment for children while they are hospitalized. The students also had an audience with the Pope in front of St. Peter’s Basilica and had their presence announced over the public address system (San Francisco State University!!!)
  • Florence: We toured the Instituto suore Serve di Maria Addolorata, a private, Catholic elementary school, where we met with students and teachers, and the Mother Superior.
  • Reggio Emilia: At the birthplace of the internationally renowned method of early education, some of us toured one of the oldest Reggio schools and observed the children’s amazing art. We visited ReMida, the amazing creative recycling center which distributes materials for much of the art that children create in the Reggio schools.
  • Bologna: Here we met with faculty from Modena University to discuss their educational training program for preprimary and primary teachers, with a particular focus on multiculturalism. Interestingly, the town of Modena is ethnically and culturally diverse, with families from China, the Middle East, eastern Europe, North Africa, and Sweden. We toured the medieval town of Bologna and had a fascinating look at the medical museum, the Archinginnasio and sat inside the first anatomy theatre, circa 1647, carved entirely from wood.
We squeezed in some sightseeing to towns and cities such as Pisa, Parma, Cortona, Siena, Milan, Cinque Terre, Venice, and Naples. We became expert at catching trains and busses, finding internet cafes, ordering cappucinno and gelato, and visiting museums and cathedrals. The trip was a unique opportunity to gain a glimpse of another country and culture and to learn from their successes and experience.

We will be offering CAD 680 to Italy again in spring 2006. We hope you will join us.