From The Director . . .

     Although the weather was dismal, the smiles on the faces of the 89 graduates from the Class of 2003 Child and Adolescent Development Program succeeded in warming up our outdoor celebration on Saturday morning, May 24. Proudly watched by family and friends, many graduates received honors. All the faculty and staff of the Marian Wright Edelman Institute join in wishing these graduates lasting personal and professional success for the future. I would specifically like to thank Dr. Rene Dahl, Coordinator of the CAD Program, Dr. Carol Stevenson, and the many lecturers and faculty from the interdisciplinary programs across the campus who have supported these students and the CAD Program to make this another outstanding year.

     There are several other events that have not gone unnoticed; Dr. Gail Weinstein of project SHINE was recently visited by the program officer from the San Francisco Foundation and received news that their $20,000 grant proposal had been approved. This is big news because it is their first local grant and also will help to keep them alive this next year while they decide on new directions and possibilities for the project.

     The Valencia Health Center providers and staff recently completed training on a new management information system (MIS) and just went “live” last week. The effort may sound simple but it occurred simultaneously as they continued to see patients during both the trainings and the “go live” process. The MIS and much of the equipment were purchased with assistance from the Tides Foundation and this new system will assist us in monitoring, patients’ diagnoses, interventions and outcomes. The office systems, which include a new electronic billing system will support sustainability and provide financial data for funding agencies and most importantly our state reports.
     We are looking forward to a quiet, but productive summer at the Institute and we wish our colleagues the same.

~ Charlotte Ferretti

Selnow assists with nation-building efforts in Iraq

Dr. Gary Selnow, as Executive Director of WiRED International, an Edelman Institute/SFSU partner, traveled to Iraq with the Global Technology Corps (GTC) at the U.S. Department of State in late May to assist in evaluating the information needs of the Iraqi people in the aftermath of war.  Specifically, the evaluation team (consisting of Selnow; GTC’s Jim Mollen; and Boeing Corporation’s Tom Becherer) examined conditions related to education, health care and democracy building and explored how information technology can benefit Iraqis by adapting programs of the kind WiRED has put in place in Central Europe, Africa and Central America.  The project will be developed and implemented by GTC partners, maintained by Iraqi citizens, and will demonstrate the State Department's Public Diplomacy office’s ability to move quickly to impact developing issues.

Selnow’s particular concern and interest during this exploratory mission was in examining Iraq’s educational and medical systems as possible bases for humanitarian programs, seeking ties to universities and hospitals.  As he approaches this work in Iraq, Selnow brings to the table his experiences from earlier conflicts, from his subsequent work throughout the Balkans and from the Community Health Information Centers in Kenya and Nicaragua. During this two-week visit, when conditions allow, Selnow will send reports about the team’s findings and discuss other issues and conditions that he sees during the evaluation. The Edelman Institute will post his reports on its website (http://edelman.sfsu.edu/programs.htm). 

Notes from the field:

Sunday, May 25, 2003
The team drove eight hours from Kuwait City to Baghdad in an armed, three vehicle convoy and arrived at the largest of Saddam Hussein’s palaces where the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) has established its headquarters. In addition to housing the transition team’s administrative offices, the palace (untouched by the war) also billets troops, coalition officials and contractors.
Observations:

The Palace: Saddam’s palace is a gilded, marbled, frescoed, crystal chandeliered display of a tyrant’s self-indulgence. Other despots have venerated themselves with monuments of such extravagance, but few have built their tributes in the midst of such utter poverty and at such a great cost to their people. With the money spent on this palace, Saddam could have constructed a well-equipped town for a few thousand Iraqis or revamped the country’s educational system, its health care programs or its communication system. Large as a museum, garish as a Vegas hotel, secure as a fortress, this palace perched on the Tigris River makes for an odd headquarters and encampment. We may never know how Saddam used this place, but today the palace is as busy as a bus station and a bit noisier. A few thousand collation soldiers and civilian workers tread on Saddam’s polished floors, sit on Saddam’s stuffed chairs, dine in Saddam’s banquet hall, bathe in Saddam’s marble bathrooms. Workers are repairing a filtering system, and soon the troops will swim in Saddam’s pool. What a splendid irony that this shameless tribute to a tyrant now houses the tyrant’s evictors. The new occupants are taking good care of the place, and in time they will turn it over to the Iraqi people.

     WiRED began as a small effort by Dr. Gary Selnow, SFSU Professor of Business Communcations, while he was serving as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Zagreb in Croatia. During that time he witnessed the devastation the war inflicted on the region's children, who were both without educational supplies and cut off from the experience of observing people work together in harmony. Their fascination with the technology he was using gave him the idea that the Internet could help end their isolation, enhance their education, teach them about cooperation, and diffuse ethnic tensions in their communities. With funding from USAID, his first effort provided Internet access to Vukovar, a devastated town along the Danube River in eastern Croatia.

Project SHINE Receives San Francisco Foundation Grant

Community Science Workshop to Open in Puerto Rico

     The Community Science Workshops (CSW) national dissemination project has always been one that gets people’s attention, but never have things been quite so exciting.  In addition to the grand openings that have been celebrated in the last few months in Houston and Miami, we will soon celebrate a project opening in Puerto Rico.      The site in Puerto Rico in particular presents many future opportunities for CSW dissemination. As the first site to be established outside of the contiguous US States, it will be a first step towards promotion and dissemination of the CSW project throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.  CSW National Project Coordinator, LeAnn Adam, spent two weeks in May and June working in the Centro de Vinculación Comunitaria (Center for Community Linkages) at Sagrado Corazón University, the CSW project partner in Puerto Rico, to conduct outreach and facilitate project collaboration between community-based organizations and the future CSW project. The primary community-based CSW partner will be the Aurora Ruiz Community Library in Villa Palmeras, which has long served as an educational resource to local members of the community and has an ideal vacant space on the second floor that will host the future CSW. The anticipated opening date of the San Juan CSW will be in Fall 2003. 
     While in Puerto Rico, Ms. Adam will travel to Havana, Cuba, to make a presentation on CSW at the 4^th annual Congreso Iberoamericano de Educación Ambiental (Latin American Environmental Education Conference) June 2-6.  A full report on Cuba will follow in the next edition of the Edelman Institute newsletter, as will progress reports on new CSW site opening in Boston and Newark. 
     In other news, the new CSW National Website will go live the week of May 26.  Go to www.scienceworkshops.org for news, information and photographs of our diverse network of CSW sites.

CAD Connections
Congratulations 2003 CAD Graduates!

     This is such an exciting time of year, as we celebrate the CAD graduates who have successfully completed their undergraduate educational journey.  For some graduates, the journey has been long and filled with much personal and family sacrifice, on the one hand, but with great commitment, focus, and courage on the other hand.  Whatever your journey has been like, we salute you on your important accomplishment and wish you all the best in your future endeavors.  
     Several of our graduates received special recognition for their outstanding academic record.  Three of them were in the top 8% of graduates in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences for total college achievement: Linda Platas, Maren Larsen, and Gitangali Jayewardene.  Of that group, Linda Platas (Research and Public Policy concentration) was selected as the CAD Program Honoree. For academic achievement at SFSU, Sheila Marx (Young Child and Family concentration) received the Dr. Shannon Perry Achievement Award, which is given to a student in the CAD Program for academic excellence.  Congratulations to all of our honor graduates on your impressive accomplishment!
     Listed below are the names of the 89 CAD graduates from summer 2002, fall 2002, and spring 2003.  We are proud that you have chosen to commit yourselves to improving the lives of children, youth, and their families.  CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Patricia Aguilar, Hanna Alemayehu, Kristina Avila, Melissa Bautista, Brenda Bluntzer, Karie Bowen, Melissa Brinkhoff, Erika Broadwin, Glenda Burr, Beth Carsrud, Golda Casidsid, Eva Xin-Hua Cen, Tieng Chanthavee, Lisa Xinyi Chen, Sharon Choy, Kiyomi Colegrove, Catherine Elizabeth Conway, Erin Daniel, Annette Kay Daniels, Margarita De Jesus, Kerry Dickson, Barbara Fetterly, Julia Beth Finkelstein, Nisa Frank, Katika Helen Fulgham, Cheri Garamendi,  Jerrilyn Garcia, Paula Gazzano, Darlene Gray, Yasmeen Hamza,  Karin Hill, Christine Hsia, Amy Huang, Anna Isler, Dorothy James, Gitanjali Jayewardene, Emilia Jones, Janette Jweinat, Sara King, Jessica Klokow, Taynesha Knox, Tebarcha Lambert, Maren Larsen, Penny Kar Hoen Lee, Agnes Leung, Stacey Low-Yock, Linda Mai, Lola Mamadzhanova, Gladys Marquez, Claudia Marroquin, Sheila Marx, Megan McGoldrick, Jeanette Medina, Vanessa Mendoza, Andrew Montesano, Roberta Morrow, Keiko Nagata, Ashley Nantell, Yumi Naruse, Ivy S.W Ng, Huy Ngoc Nguyen, Esther Park, Linda Michele Platas, Clover Porche, Nicole S. Rende, Shelly Rodrigues, Adrienne Isadora Scher, Tonya Shepherd, Renee Simms, Christina Sosa, Rachael Stanley, Tanyel Tolbert, Remy Totah, Lindsey Towata, Kelly Tran, Nadia Tran, Monica Tuanqui, Buntawan Vamnutjinda,  Rosa Yesenia Vega, Charissa Villanueva, Melinda Villegas, Billy Vongsa, Michelle Weiler,  Jocelynda Wi, Nicole Wilburn, Christina Wilson, Michelle Wong, Su Mei Wu, Shuzhen Zhao

Earthwatch Grant will make dinosaurs, evolution come alive at Mission Science Workshop         

      “Wow! Is that a dinosaur?” Whether they’re students or teachers, this is often the first question that visitors ask as they cross the threshold into the Mission Science Workshop.  Their fascination with dinosaurs means the Workshop’s fully assembled cow skeleton, standing just inside the front entrance, often suffers from mistaken identity.
     The cow skeleton is just one of a wondrous and large collection of vertebrate bones from various animals — shoulder blades, upper thigh bones, skulls and vertebrae — that the teaching staff at Mission Science employs to help students understand vertebrate evolution.   Examining similarities in bone structure between shoulder blades from 14 different vertebrates, for example, students discover that animals seemingly as diverse as cows, mice and seals all evolved from a common ancestor.   This sort of “Ah ha!” moment will soon be on the increase, thanks to a generous grant awarded to Workshop staff teacher Beth Copanas through the Earthwatch Institute’s Education Awards Program.
     Copanas was selected to spend two weeks this summer with a research team prospecting for and extracting early vertebrate fossils, including dinosaurs, crocodiles and mammals, in Argentina’s Ischigualasto Basin.  The Basin is also known as Triassic Park since the abundance of vertebrate fossils found there date back 228 million years to what geologists refer to as the Triassic Period.  The rare abundance of continental fossils from the Triassic Period makes this particular site critical for understanding the origin and evolution of vertebrate life on land.  In 2000, UNESCO designated this site a World Heritage Site, one of 730 cultural and natural sites around the world protected to ensure their preservation for future generations.  
     Copanas’ Triassic Park experience will enrich the staff’s understanding of vertebrate evolution and enhance their teaching skills.   Tapping into students’ natural curiosity and fascination with dinosaur fossils, the expedition into Triassic Park will bring students’ understanding of evolution beyond the Workshop threshold to a place where cows aren’t mistaken for dinosaurs.