The Kal and Lucille Rudman Institute for Entertainment Industry Studies and the Pennoni Honors College sponsored an exhibition of the Joe Bonham Project, a series of artworks that depict veterans recovering from injuries suffered during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The art will be on display in the Hahnemann New College Building library until Nov. 11 and features 40 pieces from 10 different artists.

The project was started in early 2011 by U.S. Marine Corps veteran and combat artist Mike Fay. He had previously spent almost 20 years capturing combat through painting.

Rudman Institute Executive Director Karen Curry was asked to be the faculty fellow for the 2013-14 Great Works Symposium, which is sponsored by the Pennoni Honors College every year.

Curry chose “Imaging War” as part of this year’s symposium topic: “Media: Past, Present and Future.” The symposium is a yearlong look at the evolution of media over the centuries.

“I Googled combat art, American, and one of the first people to come up was Mike Fay,” Curry said.

This event has been part of a series of features presented in conjunction with the Imaging War course being offered at Drexel.

Fay and one of his partners in the project, illustrator Victor Juhasz, came to the exhibit’s opening reception Oct. 29 to give a talk.

“In 2007 I went up on every second and fourth Tuesday of every month to Walter Reed, the occupational therapy unit,” Fay said, speaking of the now-closed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., “and saw if anyone wanted to learn to sketch or draw. I spent a lot of time with the wounded, both Army and Marines.”

“After I retired in the summer of 2010, I started a master’s program (there’s where I met Victor), and also The New York Times did an article on myself in the arts and leisure section, and that really opened up a lot of stuff and we got all these contacts. One of those people that contacted us was the Smithsonian [Institution], and so we went and met up with them. In the discussion, the idea came up that we would start documenting the wounded veterans,” Fay said. “So we thought, ‘Oh, that would be neat for about a hundred years from now, keeping America informed.’ So we went to the VA hospital, the Hunter [Holmes] McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Va. They had marines who were through a certain level of their therapy. It had to do with the neurological problems. Three of the marines there let us sketch them for a while, for about three days.”

He went on to write a three-part piece titled “Still in the Fight,” which gained the attention of other artists. Fay started the Joe Bonham Project soon after that. One of the first two artists to join the project was Juhasz. As of now, there are 18 contributing artists to the Joe Bonham Project from various parts of the country and other parts of the world, such as Australia.

“He called me up saying, ‘I’m starting this thing where we’re drawing veterans coming back from the front lines, and I’d like you to be a part of it because I think that the way you draw would add a lot to the image we’re making, to the documentation.’ And I said, ‘Sure!’ I’m all about drawing anyway. I love drawing and telling stories through drawing. The first time I went with him was to the McGuire Hospital in Richmond, Va.,” Juhasz said.

“I’ve seen people banged up. I did not know, initially, how I would react really seeing someone who was seriously wounded. I said, ‘Mike, I don’t know how I’m supposed to behave.’ He said, ‘No, just relax and be yourself and it’ll work itself out.’ To my surprise, it all seemed really relaxed and normal almost immediately because the Marines that we were drawing at that time were very normal about their situation. They were very stoic,” Juhasz continued.

Both Fay and Juhasz had experience with art overseas. Juhasz had followed a medical unit and drawn images from there and had also work with the Air Force in the past. Fay had been a combat artist for years before he started the project. However, not all of the artists in the project experienced this opportunity. These were the images that were featured in the talk at the opening ceremony.

“All you have to do is ask, ‘So what happened?’ Just three words, and they take it away from there,” Juhasz continued . The artists would follow up on many of the veterans to show their recovery process from their injuries.

“One of our subjects who passed away earlier this March, Derek McConnell , he was a sweet kid. He had about an 18-month recovery, a nice, steady recovery from catastrophic wounds. He was all ready to get married. His honeymoon was all paid off. Him and his fiancee had won some write-in contest to win a honeymoon. They were all set to go. We were actually going to go visit him because we were coming to Walter Reed. We were going to stop by and see Derek, who had been moved to [another building] where they do the outpatient services and they lived there, and the night before we arrived, his fiancee sent us an email that he went back into the hospital with a high heart rate, and so we didn’t see him. The day after we couldn’t see him, he passed away,” Juhasz said.

Juhasz had said earlier in his talk during the opening ceremonies that his late mother was a Holocaust survivor. He had also lost a wife to cancer, stating that he was used to death.

“Sometimes they would tell us things that their families, who have been with them for a year or a year and a half, would look up and say, ‘You never told us that.’ There’s just something special about that kind of attention that’s being paid,” Juhasz said.

“There’s another whole part to this, [which] is the rehabilitation and the reintegration, and we’re hoping that we can do drawings of us following that process. A number of these catastrophically wounded soldiers and Marines have [years of recovery]. I feel terrible that we haven’t had the access to following that process. The rehabilitation wounds. The training. The adjustment. They fit them into these prosthetics. These limbs, but they don’t start off full limbs. You almost look like a cartoon where you start off on these little tiny legs, and as you get your balance they give you longer and longer legs until you were pretty close to the height you were,” he continued.

The Joe Bonham Project also focuses on veterans with traumatic brain injuries and other afflictions suffered in combat such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Molly Stayman, a senior film and video major in the Imaging War class, said of the exhibit, “It’s very interesting because they’re images that aren’t pictures. This whole class is on ‘Imaging War,’ and a lot of things we’ve discussed have been photographs.”

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A Drexel student was filmed June 22 on the game show “Let’s Make A Deal.” The game show, featured on CBS every weekday, aired Oct. 29 at 10 a.m., showing sophomore biology major Ashley Alveranga competing to win a prize.

The show, hosted by Wayne Brady of “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” features a studio-audience participation game system. Certain participants are called down based on an application and interviews conducted before the show while audience members wait in line to enter.

When they are called down, the participants play a small game of luck (e.g., choose door No. 1 or door No. 2, or you could give it all up for what’s underneath the big box). Many of the prizes include cash, family trips, household renovations and expensive general items or electronics. On the other hand, all of the contestants have the possibility of getting “zonks,” or joke prizes that aren’t worth anything.

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Alveranga was on a trip with her family to California from their home in Blue Bell, Pa., when she and her mother decided to see the show. Her mother had gotten the tickets earlier in the spring. “We always go [to visit family], but my mom decided to actually be a tourist. So we went to Warner Bros. Studios and did the whole tour thing. I’ve actually never seen an episode of ‘Let’s Make A Deal,’ before she was like, ‘OK, I got us tickets! Do you [want to] go?’ I was like, ‘Why not, let’s do it,’” Alveranga said. Although they were trying to get tickets to other shows that were on hiatus at the time, her mother had seen a couple of episodes of “Let’s Make a Deal” and went with that instead.

To enter the show, according to Alveranga, participants must be at least 18 years old. Audience members are also not allowed to be participants if they have won cash or prizes on “Wheel of Fortune” within the last six months or “Let’s Make A Deal” within the last three years.

“My mom was like, ‘OK, we have to come up with costumes,’ and I had no idea what to do because we didn’t decide that we were actually going to go until we were actually in California, and this was in June, so it’s not like we had a costume shop that we knew of nearby. So I decided to be Thing 1 and she decided to be the Cat in the Hat. I made my costume so I’m in red stockings, a red tutu, a red top, and a blue-colored wig. I bought a sign that said ‘Thing 1.’ I realized that we couldn’t be a trademark character, so I just took the ‘Thing 1’ thing off, and [my mom] was stuck being the Cat in the Hat. We just went, and she was OK with just sitting there,” she continued.

According to Alveranga, she and her mother got in line for the show at 10 a.m. “We were probably one of the last people to arrive, actually. They had us waiting in line for like three hours, in the sun. It was awful. It was so hot, and I was covered in all this clothing, and they kept saying, ‘We’re [going to] pick you based on your energy while you’re waiting in line off of how talkative you are,’ because they have people coming up to you asking you questions, and they’re like, ‘So tell us something interesting about yourself!’ and I was like, ‘I got nothing.’ My mom was yelling at me to be more excited and happy and was saying, ‘You’re not [going to] get picked!’ I’m like, ‘Mom, I’m [going to] get picked.’”

“You ended up bonding with the people around you because you were in line for so long,” she continued. “I made friends with this Latino family in front of us. They were so funny because they barely spoke English, but they kept saying, ‘It’s so hot, awww!’ I just love them, but then you think you’re [going to] sit next to each other, but they assign you seats.”

When Alveranga entered the studio audience, she was placed in pre-assigned seating and was told that the participants for the game portions had been already picked, but before they would be called out to go on, they’d have to continue showing enthusiasm throughout the show. They were warned that they were being observed through a camera to pick out who they want.

“Between commercial breaks, they had music playing. We were all dancing. I’m an awful dancer. It was so bad. I noticed two cameras pulling into my direction, and one of the ladies came out from backstage and [was] looking at me and I was pointing at her while I was dancing at her,” she said.

“When you see the show, you’re [going to] see that no one’s really next to me because I’m next to a wall [in the corner]. I was in the aisle, and there’s an empty seat next to me, and then there was my mom, and then there was an empty seat next to her, so there was no one really next to us. There were people in front and behind us, but you didn’t want to befriend them because now we were competing,” she said.

Brady soon started the show and picked each of the contestants to participate in the games, including Alveranga. “They asked me if I had a boyfriend because that was part of the skit. Wayne Brady was like, ‘Do you have a boyfriend, Ashley?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ He then asked me, ‘Does he do anything special for you?’ and I was like, ‘Oh no, no!’ and kind of laughed,” she said. Alveranga went on to win a new kitchen for her family. According to Alveranga, there were around 10 other people who were picked to participate in the show, including people dressed as a loofah and a nurse.

“I’m not ‘going to] lie, I’ll probably be back on ‘Let’s Make A Deal’ after a couple years, but I can’t now,” Alveranga said.

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Drexel University has been looking into different properties to facilitate the expansion of Samuel Powel Elementary School at 36th Street and Powelton Avenue, one property of which is University City High School at 36th and Filbert streets.

University City High School was one of the 23 public schools that were shut down after a vote in early March by the Philadelphia School Reform Commission to help reduce school district budget deficits. Powel Elementary currently educates up to 250 children in grades K-4 and has already absorbed students from Charles R. Drew Elementary, which is located at 37th and Warren streets and has been closed.

Last year, the Philadelphia School Partnership gave a grant $215,000 to Powel Elementary and planning for that grant involved Drexel University. The grant was to help the elementary school expand and Drexel’s interest in the University High School property seems to be a extension of that mission.

“The cornerstone of Drexel’s community revitalization effort is education and a commitment to improving public school options for families in the neighborhood,” said Lucy Kerman, vice provost for University and Community Partnerships, in a Sept. 2012 press release. “We look forward to working with our key partners on a more comprehensive approach to school improvement and the development of high-performing public schools.”

According to Kristen Forbriger, PSP’s manager of communications and public affairs, PSP and Drexel began talks in the spring of 2012 and applied jointly for funding in August 2012. The grant was announced in September 2012.

“PSP invests in the creation and expansion of high-quality schools. Since our inception in 2010, we have met with numerous partners to discuss opportunities to create more high-quality school options for students in Philadelphia. We learned about Powel — and the opportunity for expansion — through Drexel, which has worked with both Powel and McMichael for years. Like all of PSP’s grants, the collaboration among Drexel, Powel and Science Leadership Academy was selected following a thorough due diligence process,” Forbriger said.

According to her, PSP has given $29 million in grants to help with the expansion of more than two dozen schools. The Science Leadership Academy at 22nd and Market streets is an adoptive high school of the Franklin Institute, working with Powel and Drexel in the expansion.

The property, however, is not up for sale yet. Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration has set up a plan in order to keep some schools afloat in the coming school year by giving $50 million to The School District of Philadelphia in exchange for the unused properties in order to resell them. The legislation is currently going through the City Council for debate. According to a PlanPhilly article published Sept. 11, there is an alternative plan that the money would first go to the Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development, which would then buy the property from the school district.

PAID would then sell the properties to equal the original $50 million or more. Any profits would also be given to the school district. The properties would then be returned to the school district, which would have the option of taking any unsold property at any point or leaving it with PAID to continue selling.

According to a Sept. 25 article from PlanPhilly, the Office of Property Assessment gave an estimated value of $23 million on the University City High School property. All of the properties, according to City Council, are thought to cost $106 million. This legislation, immediately putting a transfer of money to the school district according to the article, is currently in standstill in the Council.

According to Mark Gleason, the director of Blackwell and PSP, in a Sept. 25 article from PlanPhilly, Drexel’s proposal is most likely going to add a fifth grade to Powel, adding 200-250 more students to the total student enrollment. There is also a suggestion of adding a middle school for grades 6-8, adding 300-400 more students. The middle school will follow the Science Leadership Academy model of schooling.

The director of media relations for Drexel University, Nikki Gianakaris, released a statement on behalf of the University: “Drexel is strongly committed to public K-12 education in Philadelphia and particularly in Powelton Village and Mantua. The University is sincerely interested in the future of the University City High School site and will continue to be involved in discussions about the development of the site.”

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The Campus Activities Board hosted its first scavenger hunt for the undergraduate student body in Old City Oct. 4.

The scavenger hunt was held during the monthly First Friday event when art galleries, fashion shops and many other vendors in Old City stay open late to feature their products. There are also many street vendors selling their wares as crowds of Philadelphians walk the streets. This was the first off-campus scavenger hunt that CAB has hosted in almost three years.

“When I became the lectures and diversity director, I really wanted to get students to be more involved with getting to know the city, and I heard about how they used to do the scavenger hunt [around the time] when I was a senior in high school, and I thought it’d be a great idea to start it again,” CAB member Nicole Ferraro said.

Registration for the event began Sept. 23.

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According to Ferraro, the scavenger hunt originally lost popularity because of its low registration numbers. However, this year there were over 60 participants. Most, she said, were freshmen. There were originally 13 different teams registered as participants, all with various numbers of members, but not all of the teams. attended the event.

“When I was little, I always wanted to be an investigator,” Greta Jusyte, a sophomore majoring in international area studies, said. “I felt like this was my chance to try it out; it was fun.”

All of the teams met members of CAB at the 34th Street SEPTA station between 6:45 and 7 p.m., where they were each given tokens for a round-trip subway ride to Old City. Some teams got off and began their search at the 5th Street stop on the Market-Frankford Line, and some continued down to the 2nd Street stop. Once teams got off the subway, they huddled together to determine the 20 different locations on the scavenger hunt. They had to come back to the meeting place at 5th and Market streets before 9 p.m. to submit their findings, or they would be automatically disqualified from winning the prize.

Each location was assigned different point values, with the lowest ones being two points and the highest ones being four points. There was also a bonus for being able to take a picture with Mayor Michael Nutter. Teams were instructed either to take pictures at the location or to take something from the location. Each clue was located on different streets, and the locations were not ordered, so it was up to each team to determine how to approach the hunt. However, each team received the same list for the scavenger hunt.

Hints included phrases like, “Take a picture of a ‘busybody’ at Elfreth’s Alley,” “Take a picture of the location at which the quote is: ‘Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness,’” and “This place was demolished in 1854 and then rebuilt after a fire. Rumor has it that a young bride who burned in the fire haunts this restaurant that you need to take a picture of.”Among the participating groups, only one had a complaint about the scavenger hunt. Some of the students wished they had more of an opportunity to eat at and try out some of the stores and restaurants that were being offered at First Friday. Overall, most of the attendees described it as a tiring but fulfilling experience.

The winners and the prize have yet to be announced. CAB is working on tallying the points and determining what the prize will be. The date for the announcement is Oct. 11.

The scavenger hunt locations were created by Samantha Lardi, a pre-junior business and engineering major as well as a CAB member of the lectures and diversity committee. Lardi is a frequent visitor to Philadelphia and was excited to show the incoming students her city. When asked about what CAB would do next, Lardi suggested that they do another scavenger hunt in the spring. “Maybe we could do one in Center City,” Lardi said.

“We could also do a scavenger hunt at the Philadelphia Zoo,” Ferraro said.

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The LeBow College of Business is weeks away from selecting a new Dean, a position that has not had a full time occupant for almost a year, University leadership has said.

The search for a new dean began last October when Dean George P. Tsetsekos decided not to continue in the position and a search committee was assembled to select a new dean in time for the opening of Gerri C. LeBow Hall.

During the spring of this year, the committee presented a final list of candidates to the provost and the president, according to Roger Dennis, the dean of the Earle Mack School of Law and chair of the committee. Drexel University was prepared to offer the position to a candidate, G. Anandalingam, but he rejected the offer.

“He decided to go to Imperial College, London, which is a very, very distinguished, highly ranked business school. It was between Imperial College and Drexel, and that’s like playing in the big leagues, so we didn’t get picked that time. I’m not embarrassed by that. In fact, I like that we’re playing in the big leagues,” Provost Mark Greenberg said.

When asked about why they didn’t decide then to look among the other finalists, as opposed to starting a whole new pool, Lori Doyle, senior vice president of University Communications, wrote in an email: “We interviewed three finalists for the position, as selected by the search committee. During campus interviews, two of the three finalists did not receive strong support from various constituencies. Thus, we were down to a final candidate. He was offered the position and chose another job at a distinguished international university in London. Hence, a re-commenced search.”

According to Dennis, the search began soon after the previous one ended, drawing from a pool of up to 70 candidates. The committee met Sept. 19 and narrowed the candidates down to nine.

“They’re going to bring those nine in for interviews and hopefully bring those down to four candidates who will come down to meet me and the president,” Greenberg said.

The position has also been open to applications, but the committee was chosen by President John A. Fry specifically to help search for and approach possible candidates for the position.

“We are expecting the new dean of LeBow College to come with a proven track record of leadership, achievement in building enterprises and managing people, successful fundraising, deep insight into the changing business climate, and a knowledge of the dynamic landscape of business education globally and how best to position Drexel within it,” Fry wrote in an email.

“This person should bring a stellar reputation as thought leader, one who acts with integrity and transparency, and one who brings imaginative approaches to business education in all its modes: in person, online, hybrid. We seek a collaborative colleague and someone who appreciates that at Drexel we operate as one University,” he continued.

The committee also worked with a search firm that reached out to people at other universities who were interested in or deemed qualified for the position. The firm presented to the committee those who responded to advertisements and those to whom they reached out. The committee reviewed the credentials of all the presented candidates and decided who would be brought in for interviews.

“I work with the search consultants to find and bring in candidates for what we euphemistically called ‘airport interviews.’ They’re not really at the airport. It’s at the Four Seasons; it’s nicer than the airport,” Dennis said. “We would do about one-hour or so screening interviews, and then the committee gets back together and decides on candidates we’d like to bring back on to campus, and then the president and the provost control the process after that.”

According to Greenberg, the committee will ask the candidates about their background and the qualities for which Drexel is looking.

After the committee picks four candidates from the current nine, the provost and the president will decide to offer the position to one of them. “The interview is just as much about how the candidate answers the question as it is about the answer,” Greenberg said.

The identities of the candidates, Dennis said, are left confidential in order to protect their current employment.

Greenberg predicted that the final four candidates will be chosen within the next two to three weeks and that a new dean will be appointed before Thanksgiving. Until then, Vice Dean Frank Linnehan will continue as the interim dean.

“He’s a longtime faculty member. He’s very admired. He’s well respected among many, many people across Drexel. I just got some messages from him today about some grants to do some work internationally to develop the new school of economics that’s being launched. The college is hardly sitting still; it’s really moving ahead,” Greenberg said.

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President John A. Fry announced Sept. 9 a new college to be opened in fall 2014. The College of Computing and Informatics will be a combination of several different departments at Drexel University in order to provide a focus on computing.

CCI will combine the computer science and cybersecurity and technology departments with the existing College of Information Science and Technology, also known as the iSchool.

“Basically what we’re doing is taking two departments, CST from [the Goodwin College of Professional Studies] and CS from [the College of] Engineering, and we’re adding to what was the old iSchool,” Provost Mark Greenberg said.

As of right now, students who are currently enrolled in programs that comprise the new college will not have a change in their plan of study. However, the computing students in the freshman class of 2014 will have a new common computing year in order to help them learn about all the various computing options offered at Drexel.

Brenda Sheridan, the marketing director of CCI, explained that the college’s undergraduate degree offerings will include computer science, informatics, information systems, information technology, software engineering, and computing and security technology. The college’s graduate programs will include library and information science, computer science, health informatics, information systems and software engineering.

She added, “The college also offers two doctoral programs (in computer science and information studies) as well as multiple professional development programs and certificates.”

Registration for classes will not be affected until fall 2014.

“There were a couple of things that came together that made us want to investigate the possibility of doing this, and the first was that, for many years, I have been aware of many students that were looking to study some form of computing at Drexel that had many options spread across four or five different colleges,” Greenberg said. “For a young person who may not be aware of the difference between software engineering, computer engineering, computer science and cyber security, it would be hard for them to make a decision.”

“Faculty were coming to me and academic leaders were coming to me, saying that we really need to rethink on how we want to instruct on computing at Drexel,” Greenberg continued.

Greenberg approached Senior Vice Provost Debbie Crawford, who was in charge of computing at the National Science Foundation before coming to Drexel, to research different options to eliminate the problem. A task force was put together, which was made up of campus experts in computing, at the request of the Program Alignment and Review Committee.

This task force had over 30 members including faculty, students and other administrators. Their conclusion was to go forward with the idea of creating a new college for computing. The task force also recommended that this new college be strongly associated with the other parts of the college that already had subjects related to computing. “It would be a central flower with deep ties with the other parts of Drexel that also had to do with computing,” Greenberg said.

Provost Greenberg met with all of the departments associated with the new college, and they all strongly supported the ideas of the task force. Fry gave full approval for the development of the new college.

For now, the different departments will remain at their current locations. Greenberg and David Fenske, dean of the former iSchool and now founding dean of the CCI, predict that with the development of Drexel’s Innovation Neighborhood project, they will build a central location for all the departments to come together.

“I’m sitting in the exact same office, I’ll tell you that,” Fenske said. “I have exactly the same staff outside of my office. The scope has changed quite a bit, but honestly, the iSchool has been rolled into a new college. It doesn’t exist anymore than the computer science department exists. We are a new college. We are starting anew.”

According to the email sent by Fry, approximately 80 faculty members will join the CCI staff. “Slightly more than half of the student body will be undergraduates,” Fry wrote, “with the number of undergraduates projected to grow by 15 percent annually to help meet the persistent gap between the number of computing degree graduates and the needs of a diverse range of employers.”

The number of students currently enrolled in the new college stands at 2,200, including undergraduates and graduates from the iSchool, CS and CST, according to Greenberg.

“I feel like it is more of an organizational and aesthetic decision on their end, but I haven’t really read much about it, and I am just hoping it doesn’t screw me over in any way,” Benny Feldman, a sophomore computer science major, said.

Drexel also held a small forum for students to share their concerns in the summer. “No student will be moved from their colleges until 2014, and that allows us to have some student forums during the year, I think the first of which will be scheduled in October,” Fenske said.

Faculty at the CCI will also be involved in research in areas such as library science, software engineering, computer science, human-centered computing, cybersecurity and learning science. It will also allow for some professional development opportunities for students in archival studies, competitive intelligence and knowledge management, digital libraries, youth services, cyber law and policy, cybersecurity, and homeland security management.

“Probably the biggest change will be the fact that we are no longer ‘engineers,’” Feldman continued. “So I won’t be able to pretend I am one anymore.”

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The College of Nursing and Health Professions announced that Drexel University Online will be opening two new certificate programs in the fall. The two new programs, one in pediatric rehabilitation and the other for integrated nursing care of autism spectrum disorders, are add-ons to existing graduate programs.

The pediatric rehabilitation certificate program is one of three advanced certificate programs offered at CNHP and is only offered to practicing physical therapists, according to the director of postprofessional clinical programs, Jane Fedorczyk. It is a 12-credit curriculum that includes five graduate-level courses. Although the program has been available for three years, Fedorczyk said the program is now being offered online in order to help marketing.

“The learning experiences are offered through distance learning materials, mediated by computer and the Internet. These materials will be a mixture of information and learning tasks such as didactic presentation of information through PowerPoints, videos, case studies, reputable Web-based resources, discussion boards, independent study, reflection, simultaneous virtual classroom sessions (audio chats), literature review and analysis, consultation with colleagues and community agencies, and application of material to participants’ practice setting and case load,” Lisa Chiarello, a professor who helped develop and teach the program, said.

Within the past three years, around 20 students have gone through the program, mostly from the East Coast. Pediatric rehabilitation deals with early intervention and school-based treatments of children between 18 months and 21 years of age. The program is designed to give specialized skills to physical therapists. According to Fedorczyk, the program includes six faculty members; five of them are pediatric specialists, four are researchers, and one is a clinician.

“One woman’s husband’s job transferred him to Croatia, and while she was living there for a year, she had a practice here, and while she was abroad she wanted to do something,” Fedorczyk explained. Although a student can participate in the online programs while abroad now, there is a requirement that the student must be licensed in physical therapy in the United States.

Fedorczyk, who coordinates the marketing and logistics of the program, said that the team focused on getting more students for the winter term. The pediatric rehabilitation program is one of the first in the country, and Fedorczyk views it as “cutting edge.”

“Qualified applicants should know how much they would gain from this program. Our faculty is well known throughout the physical therapy community,” she said.

On the other hand, the nursing care for ASD certificate is open to nursing students. It is a four-course curriculum that begins with NURS 540, Introduction to Autism Spectrum Disorder: Prevalence, Etiology, Screening and Assessment, in the fall 2013 term.

“The CNHP recognized an opportunity to transform health care for people with autism spectrum disorder by preparing nurses to integrate knowledge of ASD with the care they provide for other disorders,” Ellen Giarelli, an associate professor of the doctoral nursing program, wrote in an email. This nursing program is also ranked in the top 15 by U.S. News & World Report.

“Without such integration, patients’ needs might be identified incorrectly, services may not be delivered or will be delayed, and the quality of care and patient satisfaction will suffer. Integrated, comprehensive nursing care is our profession’s response to the fragmented delivery of health and social services that characterize the care of people with ASD,” Giarelli continued.

According to Giarelli, ASD has lifelong symptoms that affect the individuals who have it as well as the people around them. She said that it is most likely that a nurse will encounter someone with ASD within their career.

“These individuals are especially vulnerable due to complicated and ongoing health needs that are multidimensional; they are part medical, physical, psychological and social,” Giarelli said.

While the pediatric rehabilitation certificate is for practicing therapists, the integrated nursing care for ASD certificate is for post-bachelor’s studies.

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Drexel University has hired 66 new high school interns from July 1 to Aug. 9 in 40 departments across campus. This program comes from an affiliation with the Philadelphia Youth Network’s WorkReady summer internship program.

PYN is a nonprofit organization that works to assist Philadelphia youth in school, the workplace and college. WorkReady is open to people between the ages of 14 and 21.

For the last two years, the summer program at Drexel accepted up to 25 interns, but this summer, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter asked Drexel to increase its commitment to 50 interns as a part of his 10,000 Summer Jobs Challenge, which he announced Jan. 28 to increase the opportunities for the youth of Philadelphia.

“This year, [President John A. Fry] met with Mayor Nutter, and Mayor Nutter wanted us to commit to initially 50. We said that we needed some more, and then we ended up committing to 60,” Nadia McCrimmon, executive director of Drexel’s Department of Human Resources, said. Six additional interns joined the program, McCrimmon added.

WorkReady takes applications, high school transcripts and job interests into account when offering internships. Drexel then conducts a separate interview process to determine whether to accept the intern and where to place each accepted intern.

“We may have someone in, say, [Information Resources & Technology]. They would have to have interests in a certain area, and they let us know that up front. If they are interested in IRT, things with computers, and things like that, or study that at school, then they’d be an intern at IRT, McCrimmon said. “It could be anything from working at the help desk, it could be during the day helping someone with the day-to-day process such as their different type of meetings or where they want to go at which organizations.”

“A job varies from IRT such as human resources, special projects to research. … We try to give them some work experience. We also try to give them administrative duties, but a lot of things that they do are hands-on, so we try to keep them away from administrative stuff as much as possible,” McCrimmon said.

During the interview process, potential interns are set in front of several different supervisors, allowing them the option to speak with and answer questions from several different departments in order to see which department best suits their interests and skills. The supervisors then send their recommendations of who they want working for them.

“They ask you to bring [a] resume, and they ask about different jobs we had. ‘What did you do at this job?’ ‘How did you like this job?’ And I tell them about skills in Microsoft, in Excel, in Photoshop, in Adobe and everything,” Alice Naiko, an intern working in human resources, said.

Shira Smillie is another high school intern assigned to work in the HR department, She has been participating in WorkReady since she was 15, and she is now a senior in high school. Smillie was also a youth ambassador for PYN.

“I scan files, copying, send emails to whoever my boss needs me to. There’s a big event that I’m coordinating for the staff. I’ve been going around taking down posters for the President’s Award ceremony because the nominees were already announced. Also, my boss is responsible for tuition remission and processing those forms, so I’ve been processing those forms,” Smillie said.

Orientation for the interns took place July 3, where they learned about Drexel and its mission, and were given temporary identification cards. A welcome breakfast for the interns was held July 16. Fry was in attendance at the breakfast, where he also spoke to the interns.

“We just really wanted them to know that we really appreciated them being here. We wanted to give them a welcome to the University so they can know more about what Drexel has to offer,” McCrimmon said.

Smillie spoke at the welcome breakfast to share her past experiences with those new to the program. ]

“Drexel did a really good job at keeping us together and organized. The speakers were fantastic, especially my co-worker Shira. She basically talked about how WorkReady helped [her] throughout [the] years,” Naiko said. She is entering her first year of college and has been working with WorkReady since she was 13.

Apart from providing intern experience for the WorkReady participants, Drexel has organized trips and activities around the city. They will spend time at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, will visit the labs at Drexel’s College of Medicine, and will have the opportunity to rock climb at the Recreation Center.

“We want to get them involved in Drexel University and also give them an opportunity to network with each other. We’re trying to build the relationship that we want them to build here,” McCrimmon said.

“Me and Shira, we went around to the different departments and took pictures of the interns and asked them how it is and what the job policy is. By the end of the internship, they’re going to have a big celebration for us,” Naiko said.

Interns working at Drexel this summer also have the opportunity to win prizes through a program called HotSpot. Interns will be nominated based on how well they represent core values, such as customer service and dependability. The nominees will be eligible to win one of the 10 netbook computers that Drexel is giving away.

The interns are paid $8 per hour, with an $834 cap for each intern. WorkReady allows for interns to work 20 hours per week, Monday through Thursday. On Fridays the interns go to WorkReady for professional development seminars to help further train them for the work environment.

McCrimmon said that the University hopes to continue expanding the program and employ even more WorkReady interns in the future.

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Drexel University’s Sacramento campus will admit its first class of undergraduate students into its newest program this fall for a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Officially announced Nov. 9, 2012, the undergraduate program is being offered to students who have already completed their first two years of college education. It’s a transfer program that will accept transfer students from either a two-year community college or a four-year traditional college.

“I know you have a lot of community colleges back east, but here our community college culture is very strong. We have 110 community colleges in California alone. The model of going to a community college for your first two years and transferring to a four-year school is very common here,” Olivia Stelte, the assistant director of admissions, said.

Students transferring from another university are required to complete their accounting, economics and statistics courses with 90 transferable credits. They also are required to have a minimum 2.5 GPA.

Drexel’s Sacramento campus opened in January 2009 and was at first only open to graduate students with programs in business, human resources development, higher education and public health. Since then, 210 students have graduated from the school. The school offers seven master’s programs along with one doctoral program and one post-baccalaureate program. The board of advisers and input about the demographics from Sacramento were the two main influences in starting this program.

“We have a very large population of college [students] who have really very few choices for higher education. They have the California State University, Sacramento campus to choose from and the University of California, Davis campus to choose from, just 20 miles away from us,” Sandra Kirschenmann, associate vice provost of Drexel University Sacramento, said. “A very important and very successful community college population is the Los Rios Community College [District], which represents 100,000 students. Another community college that’s not affiliated with Los Rios [is] called Sierra College, which has registered another 20,000-25,000 students.”

“These institutions for higher education have been hammered by the recession in the last five years because [the] California state budget hasn’t been able to afford improvements in state revenue. For example, the result has been that for a student who goes to California State Sacramento and wants to go into a post-baccalaureate program, the graduation rate is 8 percent,” she continued.

The budget cuts have left a smaller number of available classes for students to choose from, leaving them without options of taking courses to complete their major requirements.

The undergraduate program is a co-op program in which students complete one co-op in their two years of attending.

“California worries a lot about students who go to schools and incur, what I call, a boatload of debt and when they try to get a job, they can’t find one. That’s a scary thing to the students and the student families. Another thing that Drexel does is demonstrate our expertise, in fact our DNA, in co-op. In my mind, I believe co-op is how you earn your baccalaureate degree and get a job,” Kirschenmann said.

The co-op program will be a six-month commitment like the programs offered on the main campus. She also said that there are some co-op opportunities “in pocket” for the incoming class of students to be offered.

The tuition at the Drexel Sacramento undergraduate program will be the same as the one offered at Drexel’s other transfer program in Burlington County Community College in New Jersey, which is $27,000. This is twice the tuition of the average California school. However, as Kirschenmann said, the tuition at the average program could be extended some years because of the overcrowding, causing the tuition to pile up with the extra years.

Currently, there are 20 spots being offered in the program. There have been about 20 applications sent in. “The students who start this program here will all go through the program together. They’re all going to take the same classes. We intend to expand from there. It’s going to be a smaller class-size model, so we’re trying to keep class sizes under 30,” Stelte said.

Drexel Sacramento is still in the process of accepting applications, including transfer students from the main campus. It is a rolling admissions process that will continue to accept applications until Aug. 15.

“We have a lot of meetings with community colleges. We talk to a lot of community college advisers. One thing unique that we did was that we sent out mugs to all the business faculty members to the local community colleges, and it was wrapped in a really neat advertising thing. [It said,] ‘Help a Student Learn About What’s Unique About Drexel.’ I also talked to them about letting me come into their classrooms to talk about Drexel, and I was actually able to get into nine different classrooms,” Stelte said.

In the fall, Drexel Sacramento will have 15 new faculty members, including two specifically for the undergraduate program. There are also career services being offered and created for undergraduate students, something that was not offered on the campus before.

Kirschenmann said that Drexel Sacramento plans to expand to 25 to 30 students in the next year and to add more majors or more business major concentrations into the program in the upcoming years.

“We are in alignment with President Fry’s expansion and visions for the future. In fact, part of that is looking at what President Fry calls ‘The Drexel Network Initiative.’ What the Network Initiative refers to is the opportunity for Drexel to create additional sites outside of Philadelphia to bring again this unique, co-op related education to communities that don’t have it. The institution is looking for other places to do this, and we are part of that vision,” Kirschenmann said.

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Drexel Emergency Medical Services hosted its first barbecue on the Race Street Lawn May 17 in order to increase student awareness of its services.

“The main goal of this event is to increase our campus image. People need to know more about us on campus because our shifts are primarily at nighttime. We’re definitely aiming to educate people on different problems on campus,” Allison Brophy, chief of Drexel EMS, said.

“We wanted to do something where it was less formal, where we could hang out and talk to everyone and really show everyone what we do. We wanted to spread some awareness about what we do on campus,” Hendrik Bilek, EMS public relations officer and freshman nursing major, said. “Part of my initiative was to get more people involved so we can grow as an organization.”

The event included activities such as “drunk-goggle potato sack races,” which aimed to emulate to students how it feels to be very intoxicated and then challenged them to race around cones in potato sacks. There were also demonstrations done by the Drexel EMS staff, who showed how they would put someone on a backboard to transport them into an ambulance.

Volunteers were asked to help make it clearer how safe they were on the backboard. EMS showed the policy regarding the backboard, including standard questions they ask patients.

“A huge part of talking to a patient is to get an idea of how they’re doing. Emotionally, mentally, are they still with you? If they start fading on you, it can keep them in track,” Stephan Botes, a junior mechanical engineering major and Drexel EMS member, said.

“This was definitely interesting for me, watching all the demos. I had never seen anything like that before,” Amber Beckley, a freshman biology major, said.

“[I was] actually coming back from a run, and [I] saw something was here, and [I] wanted to stop by and see what was going on,” Saagar Jadeja, a senior biology major, said.

The University honored Drexel EMS as the Student Organization of the Year the day before the barbecue.

“It was a long time coming. It was a lot of work that members did that wasn’t being recognized. A lot of people didn’t know that we existed. I don’t think we tried to get any recognition, and we finally decided that we’ve been putting so much effort in, so why not go for it?” Brophy said.

Drexel EMS operates from Thursday to Saturday from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every week. They act in all medical emergencies on campus as well as other situations such as fires and elevator entrapments. They are licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health for quick-response services such as resuscitation and controlling bleeding. If patients need further assistance and need to be transported to a hospital, an ambulance is called.

“We originally required that applicants to Drexel EMS be EMT certified, but recently we re-evaluated our organization as a whole and decided it would be beneficial to also accept applicants who are CPR certified or first-responder certified,” Brophy said.

Most of the members are EMTs who need to recertify every three years. EMTs are capable of basic life support service, while paramedics working in an ambulance can provide advanced life support similar to a doctor in a hospital. Student organizations can also request Drexel EMS to be on standby for medical emergencies during events.

“We are setting up scheduled training in order to keep up with our competency. We’re partnering up with Hahnemann Hospital and Drexel Med Emergency Medicine. They’re going to provide our continuing-education courses, and they’ll start regularly hosting EMT training courses. They offer a discount for Drexel students,” Brophy said.

“I started my EMT training because I wanted to contribute more and be more of a part of a team,” Valerie Alcaraz, a freshman biology major and member of Drexel EMS, said.

Because Drexel EMS is recognized as a service provider of the state, it strictly follows the HIPAA protocol. “Sometimes there’s a fine line between what the University feels that it should know and what we can actually tell them. There have been numerous times where we had to tell them what exactly HIPAA is and how we have to follow it. It’s really us as health care providers that cannot give that information,” Brophy said.

“A majority of the calls that we do get are within the Drexel vicinity. We cover streets going up all the way to Chestnut and Spring Garden and Baring,” Alcaraz said. She looked over to the Panhellenic High Heel Derby, a Greek life charity happening at the same time, and pointed out three people whom she remembered helping earlier that year.

The barbecue ended at 7 p.m. “I want to make this a tradition. I think we definitely had a good turnout of people, but it was a struggle having two events going on, and then there’s the location. I’m glad about the members that came out and gave Drexel EMS a good representation. It was definitely a learning experience for us,” Brophy said.

“I think it was nice and relaxing, and it was nice that it was on a Friday afternoon. People want to get out of class and they want to hang out, and that’s why we’re here,” Sera Chowdhury, a freshman economics major who attended the event, said.

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