Want to Earn $10 in Rally, Sept. 29

 

During the month of September, The Office of Human Resources and HCA hospital will provide a seminar via Zoom on Coping with back and neck pain. You can earn $10 per session with the passing of a quiz of an 80% or higher.  Spouses and/or domestic partners can register for the session to receive credit as well.  

 

September 29, 2020 at 12:00 p.m.

Coping with Back and Neck Pain, presented by: Dr. Yoav Ritter

https://nova.zoom.us/j/99322486250?pwd=NEMydFNLd1R2NEtCTUZRRHFPVXQwZz09

NSU University School Preschool Students Engage in Hands-On Learning Experiences

 

NSU University School’s smallest Sharks are back in the classroom and have been busy with many different hands-on learning activities. As part of a sensory activity, PK2 students were given a bin with sand and a paintbrush to explore. Teachers then placed a letter card in each of their bins to further provoke their inquiring minds. Some students used the brush to trace the letter on the card while others began making lines and circles in the sand. The final part of the activity involved students using a small cup and spoon to practice scooping, filling, and pouring the sand – all important skills to enhance their fine motor strength. PK4 students have been learning about the impact of soap on germs and why healthy habits like proper hand-washing are so important to help prevent the spread of harmful germs. They read the story “Germs, Yuk!” by Sky Davis and then used pepper, water and dish soap to make predictions and test their theories on how the germs (the pepper) would react to the soap. Keep up the great work Sharks!

NSU University School’s Preschool is currently enrolling new students. For more information about this program and the COVID precautions and recommendations being followed, please call 954-262-4506.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2020: Sonia Sotomayor

Nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history.

Sonia Sotomayor became a U.S. District Court Judge in 1992 and was elevated to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998. In 2009, she was confirmed as the first Latina Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.

In June 2015, Sotomayor was among the majority in two landmark Supreme Court rulings: On June 25, she was one of the six justices to uphold a critical component of the 2010 Affordable Care Act—often referred to as Obamacare—in King v. Burwell. The decision allows the federal government to continue providing subsidies to Americans who purchase health care through “exchanges,” regardless of whether they are state or federally operated. Sotomayor is credited as a key force in the ruling, having presented cautionary arguments against the potential dismantling of the law.

On June 26, the Supreme Court handed down its second historic decision in as many days, with a 5–4 majority ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that made same sex marriage legal in all 50 states. Sotomayor joined Justices Ruth Bader GinsburgAnthony KennedyStephen Breyer and Elena Kagan in the majority, with Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas dissenting.

Click here to read more.

Source: Biography.com

Kappa Delta Pi Omega Theta Chapter Recipient of Education Excellence Award

NSU’s Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice Kappa Delta Pi (KDP) Omega Theta Chapter is one of the recipients of the 2019-2020 Professional Development Chapter Program Award presented by Kappa Delta Pi, International Honor Society in Education. The Awards for Education Excellence honor those individuals and chapters for their significant contributions to the Society and the education world.

 

Over the past year, KDP Omega Theta organized five professional development presentations involving participants from the USA, St. Vincent, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, as well as other countries. The presentations included:

  • Covid-19 ‘New Normal’: Reshaping the teaching/learning platform
  • Economic, Entrepreneurial and Educational Perspectives in the Pandemic Era Conference
  • Professional development for teachers on the management and use of different platforms for virtual classrooms at the time of a pandemic
  • Special Education Forum
  • Beyond the book cover – 1 hour of reading

KDP, founded in 1911, fosters excellence in education and promotes fellowship among those dedicated to teaching. The Omega Theta chapter, established April 14, 1999, continues to demonstrate excellence in education, amassing awards in Literacy, Membership/Online Program, and outstanding regional Counselor. The chapter’s leader is Dr. Sandra Trotman.

For more information on KDP and Chapter Awards featured on KDP’s website, please click here.

Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine Student Creates Mask Initiative for Overtown Community

With Miami, Florida being a hot spot for COVID-19, areas with large populations of BIPOC in the city lack the funds to keep up with sanitation and protective equipment for its residents. This was witnessed by second-year student Yara Khalifa as she assessed the historic Overtown community while working on a project in her NSU Master of Public Health degree program.

“What I found was that the government, on all levels, conspired to destroy this vibrant community,” Khalifa explained. “Due to prevailing racism, the government systematically persecuted and ruined Overtown by running a bunch of highways through it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had purposely done that to African American homes and businesses in an attempt to disenfranchise and resegregate.”

As Khalifa learned more about the community along with her grocery drive volunteering at the Masjid Al-Ansar’s mosque—a pillar in the African American Muslim community in Overtown—she learned about the mask shortage and wanted to help. Resistance was met with many of the South Florida mosques due to colorism, which led Khalifa to follow her own life mantra of, “Well, I’m just going to do it myself.”

Through raising awareness in various channels, Khalifa surpassed her initial goal of 1,000 masks, and the mosque’s request of 200, by purchasing around 1,200 masks through monetary and shipped efforts. The masks are to be distributed on the second and fourth Saturday of each month at Masjid Al-Ansar’s grocery food drive in Overtown, with a second mask initiative to follow when the community runs out.

Halmos College Researcher and Alumni Work to Create Probiotic for Diseased Corals

In early September, researchers at the Smithsonian Marine Station (SMS) partnered with Halmos College Research Scientist Brian Walker, Ph.D. and his GIS and Spatial Ecology laboratory to test two new probiotic application treatments for wild corals infected with stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD).  These treatments, a bag for covering whole colonies and a paste for individual disease lesions, were developed by researchers at SMS, including Halmos College MS alumna Kelly Pitts.

The bag method entailed covering whole Montastraea cavernosa coral colonies with a weighted enclosure, injecting probiotics inside, and waiting two hours before removing the enclosure to allow colonization of the coral with probiotic bacteria. Video of this method can be seen here: https://youtu.be/MnJaA7-SVYA

Additionally, scientists experimented with a probiotic-loaded paste, developed by SMS, to apply treatments directly to individual disease lesions. The paste hardens on contact with seawater to prevent it from floating away, and adheres to the coral tissue, which allows probiotics to colonize the coral.

The research team will revisit treated colonies regularly to assess the probiotics treatment success and retreat the corals if necessary. These two innovative strategies have enabled the first coral probiotic treatments of SCTLD diseased corals on the reef.

Declining Enrollment is Impacting Higher Ed Nationwide, but Not at NSU Florida

NSU has seen its undergraduate population increase at unprecedented rates for the past five years.

NSU is bucking the national trend of declining undergraduate enrollment and just welcomed its largest incoming class in its history—during COVID-19!

Over the past few years higher education enrollment stats across the nation looked bleak. Add COVID-19 to the mix and it was projected that universities would suffer further negative impacts on the number of students returning to campus this fall. But unlike its counterparts locally and nationally, NSU has seen its undergraduate population increase at unprecedented rates for the past five years with 2,001 new undergraduate students beginning classes just a few weeks ago.

“NSU is on the path to being recognized as a preeminent university and as part of that trajectory we have accomplished our goal of doubling the traditional undergraduate enrollment in just six years. We have done so by leveraging our accelerated degrees and our prestigious graduate and professional programs.” said Brad Williams, Ed.D., vice president of Student Affairs and dean of the College of Undergraduate Studies. “By focusing on these key areas, we have attracted high-achieving students who elevate the campus culture. We believe we will build on this trend for years to come.”

Using a multi-pronged approach to recruit and retain students, NSU saw its freshman enrollment rate increase:

  • 27% in fall 2018
  • 22% in fall 2019
  • 11% in fall 2020

In addition to its enrollment rate rising, the retention rate rose to 80% from 74% in 2014, signifying that students are increasingly involved on campus and feel that their experience at NSU is giving them the edge they need to succeed.

As NSU’s undergraduate population increased, so did the quality of the students arriving on campus. Incoming students carry a 4.04 GPA average and have extensive club leadership experience, athletics participation and are actively engaged in their communities.

Students have indicated that NSU is offering high value and highly desirable programs that make them a force of nature when they leave our classrooms and set their sights on boardrooms. And, when you couple that with new policies and procedures implemented to aid in the safe return of students, faculty and staff to campus in the time of COVID-19, you can see why the university is seeing enrollment go up, when other schools are seeing it go down.

“When COVID hit our nation, I challenged our team to think outside the box to come up with solutions to enable our students to continue their studies, and faculty and staff to work safely, all while allowing for maximum choice. NSU invested more than $20 million to upgrade classrooms and common areas to provide flexible learning models in a novel way,” said Dr. George Hanbury, NSU’s president and CEO. “Innovative thinking led to our “BlendFlex” learning model, which allows students to choose to take their classes face to face with masks and physical distancing, or remotely, taught by the same professor at the same time. I cannot say enough about our faculty and staff who adapted quickly to the new normal—they are the reason our students came back, and I am proud of them.”

Halmos Biology Faculty Appointed as Academic Editor for Medicine Journal

Santanu De, M.Sc., Ph.D.

This fall, Halmos College faculty member Santanu De, M.Sc., Ph.D. was selected as an Academic Editor for articles submitted for publication in the journal, Medicine®. Dr. De was selected for this position based on his record of original research accomplishments in his field.

Medicine® is a fully open access journal, providing authors with a distinctive new service offering continuous publication of original research across a broad spectrum of medical scientific disciplines and sub-specialties.

As an open access title, Medicine® will continue to provide authors with an established, trusted ​platform for the publication of their work. To ensure the ongoing quality of Medicine®’s content, the peer-review process will only accept content that is scientifically, technically and ethically sound, and in compliance with standard reporting guidelines.

Halmos College Faculty Discusses A Bee’s View on Food      

This fall, Halmos College faculty member Lauren Nadler, Ph.D. published a new popular science article in the Outside JEB section of the Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB), entitled, “Making a bee-line for food with octopamine”. In this article, Dr. Nadler describes a recent scientific study in the journal Biology Letters (by Tianfei Peng and two of his colleagues from the University of Mainz in Germany) that examined how bees find food and perceive its value. The researchers found that the brain compound octopamine (equivalent to the fight or flight hormone noradrenaline in vertebrates like humans) was involved, with bees increasing foraging by almost 75% following an octopamine-laced treat. This publication highlights the important role of the brain in driving the behavior of animals both big and small.

The Outside JEB section reports on the most exciting developments in experimental biology. The articles are written by a team of active research scientists highlighting the papers that JEB readers can’t afford to miss. Dr. Nadler has been contributing to Outside JEB since October 2018.

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