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Golfer lands nationals for UM-St. Louis

August 23rd, 2010


Shweta Galande swings her club. Shweta placed 27th in the NCAA Championships.

As a freshman, Shweta Galande not only was the first on the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ women’s golf team who qualified for a national tournament, but also did well at the tournament.

The Current: You are from New Dehli, India. How did you find yourself at UM-St. Louis?
Shweta Galande: I had spoken to my agent. He gave me a list of some universities, and I liked UMSL first of all because your weather is what I’m used to playing in. Plus, the psychology [program] they offered me was interesting. They had given me 100 percent scholarship, plus being on the team. I really wanted to play my first year and not just sit on the side and watch others play.

TC: How did you get involved with golf in the first place?
SG: My dad was watching golf on TV one time, and I started ridiculing the game. I was like, “Oh my God, this is such a boring game, just hitting around the golf ball. I mean, it doesn’t make sense. I mean, anyone can hit a golf ball.” So, my dad was like “Ok, do you want to try a hand at it or something?” I said, “Yeah, sure!” So, he took me to the golf course, and I could not hit the ball as many times as I tried. I never even knew there was a game like golf that existed before that. When I first held a golf club, I was thirteen. He asked if I wanted to join golf, and I said sure, just for fun. But as I got … better, I got more into golf.

TC: How did you feel as a freshman qualifying for a national tournament?
SG: Nationals [were] a very big thing for me and for our school because I was the first one to go to nationals. It was a new experience. Everyone at nationals is as good as you. It was a very healthy competition, very different. It made me feel really important. It was a very exhilarating experience, and it was icing on the cake for my first year. I couldn’t believe that I actually made it to nationals. It was a very humbling experience, and I was ecstatic. It’s an experience I’ll always cherish. It’s like a stepping-stone.

TC: Can you tell me a little about your relationship with your coach, James Earle?
SG: We kind of bonded when we went to nationals. The thing that I like about him the most is that he’s not interfering, he doesn’t mess with your game too much. He gives you your space to work with. If I know how to get a particular outcome, he won’t come in and force things on me.

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Possible Part-time nursing option coming

August 23rd, 2010

Beginning in spring of 2011, the College of Nursing has the possibility of presenting a part-time student option within its college. The demand for a part-time option for students has been desired for years at the University of Missouri-St. Louis could finally be coming into play.

In September, the Missouri State Board of Nursing will either deny or approve the additional option. Should it be approved, the option will begin in January and UM-St. Louis will be the only public university in St. Louis to offer a part-time nursing program.

Although it is part-time, the College of Nursing standards remain the same. Student admission requirements, coursework, and outcome are equal to the full-time and full-time accelerated options. The difference is that the average nursing student takes 15 to 18 credit hours in a semester, while the part-time option will generally have students taking nine credit hours in a semester.

“The full-time traditional option [takes] two-and-a-half years after the students’ general education courses are completed whereas the part-time option, the nursing coursework takes three years. It takes longer because they’re going at a part-time pace, obviously. The part-time option, they’re taking about five to nine credit hours a semester and they’re going year round,” Jill Maldeney, admissions advisor for the College of Nursing, said. “With the full-time traditional option, they don’t go in the summer. They take more like 15 to 18 credit hours a semester. That’s the main difference,” Maldeney said.

The other difference is that in the part-time option, labs and clinical courses will be conducted during the evening and on weekends.

Traditionally, nursing programs have been solely full time due to the demands of the courses.

“Primarily it’s been the tradition that college students in nursing typically are full-time students because nursing is so demanding. It’s very difficult to go to school on a part-time basis and carry [the courses],” Sandy Linquist, associate dean for undergraduate program of nursing, said. “It’s very difficult to work part time or full time, and go to school full time. So the tradition has been that students who go in nursing are scheduled to be full-time students.”

However, there are benefits to the part-time program that the college speculates will bring in several more prospective students.

“This is a way of providing them with a different option in terms of how fast they have to complete the clinical nursing major courses. It allows people to work full time or meet their family commitments a little bit better. It’s tough when you’re going to school full time and you have kids, and a full-time job,” Lindquist said. “It’s practically impossible to be successful in a very challenging field like nursing when you have all those activities or commitments going on simultaneously. I think it’ll give them a greater opportunity to be successful in terms of that,” Lindquist said.

The college is currently accepting applications for the spring semester. 32 students have signed up as of yet.

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IWGS to soon be “Gender Studies”

August 16th, 2010

It is expected that by January 2011 the Institute of Women and Gender studies department will be renamed “Gender Studies” to better reflect gender interest.

The idea of changing the department’s name began five years ago, but general feelings of not wanting to deflect the original idea of the program deterred the process from progressing. On a system wide level the department is no longer an institute, so the department chose to make its various changes now.

“We are, in a way, reintroducing the program to the campus community. In a way, calling attention to the fact that despite what people might think, this is not a class only about women. We really look at the implications of gender across the spectrum, and I think that was tending to get lost in the title ‘Women and Gender studies,’” Dr. Kathleen Nigro, assistant teaching professor women and gender studies, said. “We would talk about both genders, we would talk about what it means to be a male or female, or a gender that we don’t even recognize as fitting one of those two boxes. I think [that] is also a focus of gender studies is not everybody fits neatly into those categories. That’s also the new direction, I think” Nigro said.

The department is also planning to focus on different cultures, races, and nationalities within its curriculum.

“We have decided that we want to expand our focus so that it’s not like we’re abandoning women, but we think the gender studies is a more appropriate title because we’re looking at also men and women, masculinity, femininity, plus intersections with race and class” Sally Ebest, director of the institute of women and gender studies, said. “We would like to pull in, or invite people of color to be involved- it has been just an old white woman organization. So, we would like to see a greater representation of the different races and genders on campus,” Ebest said.

Also to be included are new courses and new events. Among the events include a women, gender and politics speaker series featuring a different guest speaker each month, a conference in April entitled “Compromising Positions: Race, Gender, and Sexuality,” and a symposium, “Women in Academia: Leveling the Playing Field.”

Ebest believes that courses in gender studies will be helpful in multiple career choices. “I think there are a lot of things we don’t know about the opposite sex, as well as our own, quite often. I think having that greater knowledge of that makes you more prepared for the marketplace, so that you are able to work better with men and women and transgender people,” Ebest said. “I think it’s important for [people] to take gender studies so that they get a better sense of all the different things that affect people of their own race as well as other races and other genders. I think it leads to better understanding in the workplace. The way a lot of our classes are taught is with a very collaborative environment which is something that you’re going to have to be doing in the workplace as well,” Ebest said.

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Ask, Listen, Refer aids in suicide prevention

August 16th, 2010

Being at a new college can be exciting and stimulating, but it can also be overwhelming and stressful. Not all students can adjust to new environments and situations like others can, which can lead to depression.

At the beginning of first semester last school year, a state-wide program called Ask, Listen, Refer was created for Missouri campuses. The purpose of the program was to further suicide prevention education not only among faculty, but also with an emphasis toward student involvement.

“I think that part of the idea behind the Ask, Listen, Refer program is that about seventy-five percent of the people who attempt suicide give some warning signs before they give an indication they’re feeling suicidal. A lot of people wouldn’t necessarily know how to recognize the warning signs and help people to get help if they’re feeling suicidal. So the idea behind it is to try to let as many people as possible know about what the warning signs are so they are in the position to help people get some help,” Jamie Linsin, counseling psychologist, said.

The program’s Web site launched in August 2009, and began at the University of Missouri St. Louis the following September. It is in place at twenty-five college campuses across the state, designed for college students especially.

“When we wrote the grant we wrote it with the intention of putting this program online because college students are a really hard population to train in person, because they’re often so busy and don’t have the time or things on campus to go to an in person training. The fact that this program is available 24 hours a day, they can come back to it at anytime if they’ve forgotten some information and all they need is an email address. [This setup] really seemed appropriate for the college student population,” Kelly Sheline, suicide prevention graduate assistant, University of Missouri Columbia, said.

The training program takes about twenty to thirty minutes to complete. Once in the Web site, a student or faculty member sets their account up with his or her email. To get an idea of how effective the training program is, a survey of demographics is taken. Afterward, a series of information and videos are shown. Once students and faculty complete a test at the end of the training, a certificate of completion is given.

Since it has begun, over 1,400 people have completed the training statewide. At UM-St. Louis, 110 have completed the program.

“I think it’s a really valuable program, it’s a way of getting the information out there because as a psychologist, if people are in distress, they’ll come to a psychologist sometimes to talk about their distress, but I’m not usually the first person that [hears about it]. Usually a friend, family member or classmate is going to find out first if there’s distress a person is dealing with. I think the reason that programs like Ask, Listen, Refer are important is that they help people to be aware that as a friend, family member, classmate or roommate, that we’re all in the position to be able to help,” Linsin said.

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Over and beyond: Dr. Donna Hart assists with Fulbright

July 21st, 2010


A professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis since 2000, Dr. Donna Hart, has assisted four students to achieve the Fulbright scholarship in just the past four years alone.

A professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis since 2000, Dr. Donna Hart, has assisted four students to achieve the Fulbright scholarship in just the past four years alone.

The Current: How did you get into anthropology?

Donna Hart: I had a first career in wildlife conservation and I realized that, because multilateral wildlife treaties were my specialty, that really all the problems that impinge on wildlife survival are people problems. Anthropology, with its holistic nature, was really a good way to look at how we’ve evolved, [about] our place in the ecosystem, and how we interact with domesticated and wild animals. So, that was the reason I changed direction.

TC:  So, you have trained students for the Fulbright scholarship?

DH: We get highly motivated students and then I mentor them through the process, which takes about a year. So, we don’t actually train them. What we do is guide and advise and then mentor them through this rather complex, long-term process that has culminated into receiving a Fulbright scholarship.

TC: Do you seek students out for this award or do students come to you?

DH: We don’t have a formal process at all. All the faculty actually are on the lookout for exceptional students with high motivation and sometimes they have come to me. Sometimes we have sought them out.

TC: Is there a “secret recipe” for success in earning a Fulbright?

DH: It is a very close relationship because it is as important to me that they get the scholarship as it is to them. I get very invested in their success. If there’s one thing that I think that I’ve learned and that I think is important, is that you cannot in any way have the application rest just on the research. It has to include a nicely tailored and very well thought out approach to how you’re going to fit into this community and what you’re going.

TC: How do you feel that you have helped these students achieve the scholarship?
DH: It’s very satisfying. We became very close friends with all of them, and I think we’ll probably retain a friendship for a long time because we worked on something together. I could not be more thrilled. I’m second only to themselves in the amount of thrill I get from them achieving this.

TC: What is something you love doing that people may not know about?

DH: My husband and I are so committed to environmentalism. I love gardening. I love flowers. I love tending to gardens. I guess that’s a relaxing option.

TC: What is the aspect of teaching you like most?

DH: I like teaching how to do research. That is, in all the classes I’ve taught at the Honors College and here, I’ve tried to have a component of the course include some of the basics on how you do research and how you analyze data after you’ve collected it.

TC:  Do you believe anthropology is misunderstood in certain ways?

DH: I think anthropology is perhaps not appreciated for its practical use. Other than that fear over anthropologists being hired by the army to sort of outtake the Taliban, usually anthropologists are not regarded as advisors. Yet, anthropologists understand other cultures. They see human needs and motivations so I think that the practical nature of anthropology is misunderstood.

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