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CFA receives grant for Arts in Healthcare
The Center for the Arts has received a $116,675 grant from the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation to continue its Arts in Healthcare program at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI).
The program, now in its third year, features six professional artists in residence who bring their specialized art forms and skills to patients at RPCI. Their arts-based activities assist patients in expressing themselves, creating opportunities for relaxation and distraction from the stresses associated with diagnosis and treatment. Visitors, families, and staff also benefit greatly from the program.
“The University at Buffalo and Center for the Arts are honored to work in partnership with Roswell Park Cancer Institute on this initiative,” says Thomas Burrows, executive director of the Center for the Arts. “From the beginning, Roswell has been supportive and has understood the potential to serve the hospital population in a uniquely positive way. We applaud their dedication to the quality of life of patients and families,” he says.
Cindy A. Eller, executive director of the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, adds that the foundation’s support for the program “is a direct result of our community’s tremendous generosity to helping cancer patients.” The funds for the grant came from donations and gifts to fundraisers like the Ride For Roswell, the Paint Box Project, Goin’ Bald for Bucks and other activities, Eller says.
The Arts in Healthcare initiative was established by the Center for the Arts in 2008 to bring the performing and visual arts into health care settings at Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The first comprehensive program of its kind in Western New York, it is made possible by the John R. Oishei Foundation, Seymour H. Knox Foundation and Bank of America Foundation. Support for the program at RPCI comes from donations made to the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation.
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Disability studies scholar to speak
Michael A. Rembis, the inaugural visiting scholar in the Center for Disability Studies and the Department of History, will discuss “Athlete First”: A Note on Passing, Disability and Sport” at 4 p.m. Dec. 3 in 280 Park Hall, North Campus.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
In his talk, Rembis will use modern sport to take a fresh look at the ways in which disabled people have learned to “pass” in the non-disabled world. He argues that passing need not always involve the act of physically concealing one’s impairment, but rather depends upon how well one can fit in with the gendered, white, heterosexual, non-disabled norm and meet societal expectations for conduct, competition, appearance and performance.
Rembis’ work has appeared in the journals Disability and Society, Disability Studies Quarterly, Sexuality and Disability, Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, and History of Psychology, winning several awards, among them the 2008 Irving K. Zola Award, given annually by the Society for Disability Studies to emerging scholars.
His first book, “Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960,” is forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press.
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UUP food drive a success
A recent food donation program organized by the Buffalo Center Chapter of United University Professions, the union representing UB faculty and professional staff, collected a van full of food items, plus $904 in cash donations, for the Food Bank of Western New York.
The drive, coordinated by UUP membership officer Tim Tryjankowski, director of the Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities, was held during the UB Bulls football game on Nov. 20. Collection points were set up at the entrances to UB Stadium.
The donations were dropped off later with DJ Jickster at the 97 Rock “Rock Out Hunger” collection point for the Food Bank.
Feldman to read from work
SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus Irving Feldman will read from his work on Dec. 9 as part of the Gray Hair Reading Series presented by Just Buffalo Literary Center, Earth’s Daughters Magazine and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center.
The reading, “An Evening with Irving Feldman,” will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Hallwalls Cinema, Babeville, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo.
A UB faculty member for 40 years, Feldman is the recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. He also has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and twice was a finalist for the National Book Award.
UB to offer DNP degree
The School of Nursing has received approval from the New York State Education Department to offer a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree (DNP) program.
UB will begin offering the DNP program in the summer of 2011 for students with a BS in nursing. In the fall of 2011, the program will be offered to advanced practice nurses who have a master’s degree. The program will be offered on campus and through distance learning.
The DNP program will replace all current master’s degree programs within the School of Nursing.
The DNP is generally considered the wave of the future in nursing. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has proposed that preparation for advanced practice nurses be at the doctoral level by the year 2015. According to the AACN, the knowledge required to provide leadership in the discipline of nursing practice is so complex and rapidly changing that additional or doctoral-level education is needed.
In developing a non-research clinical doctorate, nursing moves in the direction of other health professions, such as medicine (MD), dentistry (DDS), pharmacy (PharmD), psychology (PsyD), physical therapy (DPT) and audiology (AudD).
Graduates of DNP programs are finding employment primarily in three major areas: as faculty, as advanced practice nurses and as leaders in clinical agencies.
“The approval of the UB DNP program is the culmination of three years of work by the graduate nursing faculty,” says nursing school Dean Jean Brown. “The result is an extremely innovative program because it combines DNP and PhD students in the first year of courses. We believe this will promote enhanced collaboration between these roles to improve the quality of nursing care in the future.”
For more information about the program, click here.
Rosenfeld to deliver Dave lecture
Michael G. Rosenfeld, Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of California-San Diego and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, will deliver the Dave Memorial Lecture at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
The lecture, titled “Global Strategies Integrating Transcriptional Regulatory Programs in Development, Homeostasis and Disease,” will take place at 11:30 a.m. Dec. 10 in the David C. Hohn Lecture Hall in the Research Studies Center at RPCI.
It is presented by the graduate students in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Therapeutics at RPCI.
Rosenfeld’s specialty areas include gene regulation, genomic biology, signaling networks and transcriptional regulation. His lab at UC-San Diego is investigating the integrative nuclear strategies responsible for orchestrating programs of genome-wide transcriptional responses to diverse signaling systems, including the new endocrine system that is critical for physiological and behavioral processes in all vertebrates.
Rosenfeld is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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