Filed under: Uncategorized
Ithaca College works towards greater sustainability
By Tori McClurg
With people like Mark Darling, the coordinator of resource and environmental management at Ithaca College, and Marian Brown, special assistant to the provost, the sustainability initiative at Ithaca College continues to grow.
The two of them are like, “one brain working together towards a similar goal,” said Darling.
He jokes that he is the, “better half of the brain,” but the camaraderie between these coworkers is almost tangible.
The two of them have been with the college for over twenty years and both are passionate about making sustainability a more prominent issue to every individual at Ithaca.
Ithaca College received a 98 out of a possible 99 points for a green rating score from the Princeton Review survey of environmental friendliness. The college will soon be the only college or university in the world with two platinum buildings on its campus. “Platinum” is a status that is chosen by the leadership in energy and environmental design or “LEED.” “Platinum” is a difficult status to obtain, in order to do so the building needs to demonstrate standards for environmentally sustainable construction.
The athletics and events center is going to continue to work towards increasing sustainability by being,
“Passively cooled, the big tower they’re building is more than just for show it actually is an old concept the Italians came up with in the 12th or 13th century, it may even be older than that, but when the sun strikes the building, it warms the air there and because the warm air is rising it tends to build cooler air that will move throughout the building” said Darling.
The sustainability initiative has been in place since 1989 it was first started by students. The students realized that without being institutionalized the program wouldn’t be effective because they needed people who were going to be around for a longer span of time to work harder to implement “green” philosophies.
The rescue and environmental management program recruited different management groups like residence life, facilities and environmental health and safety together to keep the program going. A junior Becky Webster is one of the six-eco representatives on campus. She works with Darling in an effort to spread awareness on campus by doing floor programs on sustainability such as energy jeopardy. Webster also offers a survey regarding students’ energy usage to allow students to measure their carbon footprints against one another.
The college has implemented a program called the sustainability café series. The college sponsors speakers each month to inform people about different aspects of sustainability.
Ithaca is a university that is prestigious for its efforts towards sustainability,
Darling said, “We’re really going to make people aware of the seriousness that is the issue and how important sustainability is, and how much more we can do and need to do.”
His goal is to make sustainability a more important issue to every member of Ithaca College by making it a part of the curriculum.
“Just opening door on what is possible I’d like to see part of what every student at Ithaca College learns be some basic things about sustainability,” said Darling.
Brown has similar goals for the near future,
“And to now see that sweet spot where you get academics and operations together students like it because they get to learn about it and they can see an impact and make a difference on where they live.”
Ithaca College has certainly broken ground on efforts towards being sustainable they are, “seeing a tremendous growth in those opportunities for students,” said Brown.
However, both Brown and Darling confessed that there is a lot more work to be done.
“People have to be told, it has to be made simple, and they have to be constantly reminded,” said Darling in reference to recycling on campus.
Filed under: science
ITHACA, NY
Fatty, Pia, and Jeremy, are creatures that lurk the Cornell Research Pond in Lansing and have got students tracking their every move.
These are the subjects of Ithaca College’s Professor Leann Kanda mammal dispersal research for the past couple of months. They are the names of three of the several muskrats.
“I generally interested in the question of how and what determines how animals move around and use space,” said Professor Leann Kanda. “I am particularly interested in the kind of movement called dispersal. When a juvenile picks up, leaves home, and goes and settle someplace else. That’s where they are going to be themselves, becoming parents. “
Kanda has received a grant of $3,300 from the Ithaca Provost in order to carry out her research, The Movement Ecology in Muskrat: The influence of personalities, social interactions, and predators.
“If we could understand the underlying process better it could really help with conservation efforts. When you have fragmented habitats and your animals can live over here or over here. Than as a conservation planner, with this research, you will be able to connect these habitats so that populations will be able to move back and forth. And this is when it becomes more of a general interest,” said Kanda.
In order to collect data the students and Professor Kanda travel to Lansing where man-made swamps outline the premises. One of her student, Charlie Abbott goes out every Thursday night to collect data.
In order to get their data Kanda has installed radio collars on the necks of each muskrat. With an antenna, a compass, and a radio the student sets off into the fields to record data.
Every several feet there are numbered bird houses that act as the landmarks that indicate where the researcher was when recording their data. With the antenna the students listens for the highest and loudest wavelengths and then takes a reading from his compass from that direction. Afterwards they record in the data-tracking book the time at which they take the reading, the degree measurement, and the bird house number where they were located. Then they move in the direction from which they took the degree reading in a diagonal manner. After moving to a different point on the premises the students will than take another reading. For accurate triangulation you need a minimum of three readings. These measurement than getting plugged into the computer website, Flying Fox Technology.
The computer takes the coordinates of each birdhouse and of each degree measurement and computes a Google that indicated where the readings were recorded.
“Based of how close the measurements are the computer will give you an error reading of how close you are to finding the muskrat in that region,” said Charlie Abbott.
Kanda employs the help many of her biology students to do the research. This is a convenient way for students who are looking to get real-life training on scientific research. Seniors required to do a senior thesis have also developed their own questions using her research as their basis.
“From my research I have come to understand that in a larger context this research is important because as human beings are moving out they are effecting these animals’ habitats. This could be messing with the muskrat’s movements throughout their lifetime and whether or not it’s harmful to be infringing upon their area,” said Abbott.
Through her research Kanda has come to notice a similar pattern in some of the muskrats movements. “There are some animals that will suddenly just get up and go well outside their normal activity range and then there are some that stick to the local habitat patch, said Kanda. “What do these guys do before they get up and go. I think that they are the sticks in the mud, the ones that just hang out at mom and dad’s place and never do this high exploratory movement. It’s kind of intuitive that the higher exploratory ones end up settling closer to home than the ones who don’t ever leave the local place. These muskrats just finally decide, its time for me to go” and they pack and they are gone.”
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By Monica Watson
Ron Schassburger, a professor at Ithaca College in the School of Health Science and Human Performance, sat in his office and remebered his wife Elizabeth O’Brien-Schassburger, known as Bunny to everyone.
“It was Friday October 13th, 2006 when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” he said. “She was a nurse practitioner, so with her experience with medicine she knew the diagnosis was pretty bad.”
O’Brien passed away in 2008 from pancreatic cancer after a 15-month battle. In honor of his late wife, Schassburger hopes to start a symposium that will help others in the medical field and students learning about the field embody the caring spirit his late wife had for her patients.
Steve Siconolfi, Dean of the School of Health Science and Human Performance at Ithaca College, said that O’Brien did more than just provide health care to her patients.
“She was an extraordinary professional who went out of her way to assist her patients who were in a chronic disease state,” he said “Not only did she provide good health care, she provided improvement of quality of life.”
The symposium will be available for students, professionals and the public. Siconolfi said that the symposium will help instill O’Brien’s natural gift of bedside manner into more health care professionals.
“They don’t teach bedside manner,” he said. “The idea is that these people who don’t get the bedside manner training will learn from this symposium and then go on to improve the quality of healthcare in rural America.”
Alana Koehler, a pre-medical exercise science major at Ithaca College, said that because there are no classes that teach bedside manners and that through the symposium people could become inspired to develop those skills.
“That’s something that really can’t be taught,” Koehler said. “There’s a humanistic element to it. You either have the passion for health and healing and improving people’s quality of life or you don’t. I think it would be a good way to try to develop that passion, especially if you had that community of people who have a compassion for healing and would be a great atmosphere to learn in.”
Schassburger said the symposium will help integrate the medical professionals with the average person or patient to learn and discuss with.
“The practitioners who are caring for people with various diseases can come together and discuss new developments in their field, Schassburger said. “The families and patients themselves will also have an opportunity to interact and find out what’s going on in that area of medicine and how they can best take care of themselves. I wanted to integrate both the medical community and the lay community with this.”
Schassburger said that the topic of the symposium will change from year to year depending on what the community and the practitioners are most concerned with.
“While the first year would be living with kidney disease, and that because that was the field she worked in. It would change year to year,” he said. “The topic might be living with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or any number of topics, whatever is of major concern to the people in the area.”
He said that the next steps are to fundraise and then establish a date for next year to hold Bunny’s first Symposium on the Art and Science of Healing.
Filed under: Uncategorized
By Casey Musarra
With the most recent break out of the H1N1 virus — more commonly known as swine flu — Ithaca College and Cornell University have both been taking precautionary measures that include advising students to use hand sanitizer on a regular basis.
Ithaca College in particular has distributed more bottles of hand sanitizer throughout campus in an attempt to limit the number of swine flu victims.
Though hand sanitizer can be beneficial in protecting students against harmful germs, bio-medicine.org says there can be negative side effects. The Web site states that alcohol in most hand sanitizers can cause cracks in skin that open a pathway directly to the bloodstream.
While the site argues that hand sanitizers can be damaging to skin, Dr. Lewis Drusin, a Cornell University professor of clinical medicine, said H1N1 is contracted through the air, so using hand sanitizer doesn’t necessarily prevent the contraction of the virus.
“Flu is transmitted through the nasal route and the respiratory tract” he said. “We’re really stressing to people the importance of using Purell, or alcohol skin preparations, in order to protect themselves from transmitting flu.”
Drusin said that products such as Purell have emoluments built in to help prevent skin from cracking, which then further prevents the contraction of illnesses. Despite that, Drusin said it is not a good idea to use hand sanitizer too often.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to overuse [hand sanitizer],” Drusin said. “For example, I live in New York and when I’m in the subway, sometimes I see people who won’t touch the poll in a subway without Purelling their hands afterwards, and that’s kind of ridiculous. If you use it normally, it won’t alter your normal [germs], so it won’t make you likely to get an infection.”
Ithaca High School senior Sara Spagnoletti contracted the H1N1 virus in June when there was an outbreak at the school.
Before contracting it, she said she took precautionary measure such as washing her hands and using hand sanitizer.
“I was just being careful,” Spagnoletti said. “Anyone who said they weren’t feeling well, I’d try to stay away from. It’s just so contagious that really anything you do, sometimes you just can’t help it. It’s airborne — it’s not like it’s on my hands.”
Drusin said that one of the best ways to prevent the flu is to simply avoid contact with people who have contracted it.
“When you sneeze or cough, the virus is on the droplets that you spit out. And they only travel between three and six feet. So if you’re between three and six feet away from a patient who has the flu, you stand less of a chance of getting it.”
Spagnoletti said after having the flu for three days in June and not being allowed to leave the house for 10 days, she is no longer as careful about avoiding illness.
“I’m a little bit less careful about it just because last year, I worked so hard not to get it, but I got it anyway,” she said. “Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do. At this point, I’ve already had it, so I probably have an immunity. I haven’t gotten sick yet this year, and I haven’t been as careful.”
Ithaca College junior Ashley Brinkerhoff said she uses hand sanitizer on a regular basis and keeps several bottles of it in her room, purse and backpack.
“I first became obsessed once swine flu started around,” she said. “My family sent me packages or when I went home they would give me little bottles of Purell. I just can’t get sick, because if you get sick at school, you’re screwed.”
