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Show ™DAILY UTAH CHRONICLE Wednesday, March 1, 2006 ROTC employee retires after 18-year career Dustin Gardiner Chronicle Writer Karen Wadsworth started working at the U Army ROTC back in 1986 after she realized she would have to go back to work to help her husband support their 13 children. Now, 18 years later, her children have grown up, and Wadsworth is retiring from her position as Human Resource Assistant at the U Army ROTC department. Lt. Colonel Edwin Fredrick of the U Army ROTC awarded Wadsworth the Superior Civilian Service Award on Jan. 27 for her service to the department. Fredrick said Wadsworth's dedication to the U program has greatly helped to improve the program over the years. "Having served under nine professors of military science, (Wadsworth) has been through the ups and downs of the program at the (U)," he said. "Through it all, she has been one of the unsung heroes that make the organization run." Wadsworth said working for the ROTC was difficult at first because she had to leave her children at home and had little experience working for the military. "(My fellow employees) were speaking English, but I didn't understand what they were saying," she said. Through the years, Wadsworth said she grew more accustomed to the work and learned skills that would better suit her for . the job. Fredrick described Wadsworth as an essential part of the ROTC staff and said she is going to be hard to replace. "Simply put, she is an expert in her field and her work reflects the expertise and effort she brings to the table," he said. Wadsworth comes from a family of military servicemen and two of her own children have served in the armed forces. "I love the mission of the army," she said. Wadsworth said she is honored to have served such a long career at the ROTC and is proud of the current high enrollment in the program. "My job is really just crossing the T's and dotting the I*s, but it turned out to be much more than that," she said. Now Wadsworth says she is looking forward to a stress-free retirement and spending lots of time with her grandchildren. "My main title is going to be grandma— maybe general grandma," she said. d.gardiner@chronicle.utah.edu IMPOVERISHED MEXICANS HAVE LOST THEIR POLITICAL VOICE (CIDE) in Mexico, who attended the event. CIDE is a higher-education center that focuses in social sciences and international relations in Toluca, Mexico. "It's good to have the view of common people in Mexico," Rowland said, "because all we continued from Page 1 hear from politicians is that everything is dothat Mexico's institutional reform has closed ing great." As we get closer to Mexico's 2006 presidenoff opportunities in political participation for tial election, it is crucial for people to know the poor by reducing citizens' incentives. "This has made it more difficult and more where Mexico's political parties stand, said costly for the poor to attend political activi- Travis Higgins, U alumnus. "Utah, especially, should have an interest in ties," he said. Mexico's political system can only be de- Mexican politics," he said, "because we are so scribed as a puzzle, said Allison Rowland, a close to it and it affects a lot of our current public administration professor at El Cen- policies." tro de Investigaci6n y Docencia Econ6micas a.breton@chronicle.utah.edu DEER CAUSE DRIVING HAZARD AND NUISANCE ly wander from Mount Olivet over University Boulevard's six lanes of traffic to browse for food on U property. Only one deer crossing sign at the 1580 East intersection warns eastbound drivers along University Boulevard continued from Page 1 of the hazard. There is no sign warning has even made a permanent home at the Mount Olivet westbound drivers, nor along cemetery, located along Uni- Foothill as it nears the U campus. versity Boulevard. "I don't think that more "We've (seen) a few broken legs," Valdez said. "It's rare, signs will help," said Sergeant but we have to call the state Scott White of the Utah Division of Wildlife Manageto put them down." The cemetery deer "have it ment. good," she said. There are no Signs do not always leave a predators within the fenced lasting picture in the drivers' area, and after funeral preces- mind long enough to be effecsions the deer immediately tive, he said. eat the ceremonial flowers. Although traffic around the But the animals occasional- U steadily increases, White TEXTBOOK PUBLISHERS PROVIDING MORE ONLINE SERVICES continued from Page 1 through the semester, Benedict still hasn't been able to get the system to work. Busy grading student papers, he hasn't had time to fuss with it, he said. "Personally, I don't care," said Amanda Rufener, an undecided freshman. The class hasn't been hurt by it, but she did have to buy an expensive textbook at $105 that included the software, she said People frequently ask when it will be working, but no one complains, said Stuart Moffat, a freshman in disaster management. Concern has been raised over whether students who buy the texts used or from Amazon.com will have equal access to the system. The expensive "bundles" offered by the bookstore include access codes. Without them, students can't take the tests or quizzes. Benedict said Prentice Hall has made it possible to purchase an access code for about $16, but Rufener said some of her classmates were upset when they learned of the catch. Shane Girton, associate director of the U Bookstore, said he thinks this may be a strategy to deter students from buying cheaper copies of the text. "I imagine Prentice Hall is using that as an incentive to have books bought new from the bookstore rather than used books from the bookstore or via online," he said. "They want to minimize books sold between students." McGraw-Hill has a similar system, but failed to return messages. Alison Regan of the Technology Assisted Curriculum Center said that while her office trains and supports faculty using WebCT, it probably can't provide the same level of support as the private companies. But WebCT is better suited for students, she said. "None of the systems has as much functionality as WebCT," she said. "The real drawback is that, although a student might use a system tied to a textbook for a single class, he or she wouldn't use them for all (his or her) classes," David Hakensen, spokesman for Pearson Education, Inc., the company that owns Prentice Hall, said he sympathizes with students who pay the extra money but don't get the benefits. . When the system is used properly by instructors, "students get digitized content that goes above and beyond the textbook," he said. ' For economics, the system has charting, and graphing that is more interactive than a textbook. For the physical sciences, says that driving speeds along roadways such as Foothill Drive are slow enough to be safe—if people stay under the limit. Unfortunately, careful driving won't stop the deer from being a nuisance. Urban herds can travel with five to 20 deer and often cross U property and surrounding streets en masse. They also loiter on U or even residential property in large groups. "One resident I got a call from had 15 to 20 deer in her back yard," said White. "If they are not feeding from somebody's bird feeder, it's usually somebody's petunias or marigolds." a.vaughn@ chronicle.utah.edu there are features such as video clips. In any class, the system offers students opportunities to do exercises and practice tests to prepare for exams. "This stuff is only as good as the instructor makes the students aware of it," he said. As of now, only a handful of instructors use the privatized Web services on campus, Hakensen said. Girton said he wouldn't be surprised if the number increases because the services do reduce the workload for professors. a.kirk@ chronicle.utah.edu INITIATIVE FUNDS U NURSING PROGRAM needs. There's never a floor that couldn't use an extra nurse. The patient loads are getting heavier," Lawrence said. The U's College of Nursing plays a unique role in the state's nursing education syscontinued from Page 1 tem. "The University of Utah is sociation. Thanks to the lobbying ef- the flagship. We have a full forts of Gessel and others range of programs. Nobody involved in health-care and else offers a Ph.D.," Keefe nursing education over the said. past four years, $1.3 million The doctorate is a critical was secured as ongoing fund- element in solving the issue ing in the state budget. because the shortage of nursThis year's request for an es is facilitated by a shortage additional $700,000, if funded, of faculty to train them. Students who obtain docwould bring the ongoing appropriations up to speed with torates often move on to the academic field and would inthe original request. However, recent decisions crease program sizes. In the past year, the number made by the Executive Appropriations Committee, in of undergraduate students in allocating less money than ex- the U nursing program has inpected for higher education, creased from about 175 to 200. have made full funding less Still, the program only has space to admit about one out likely. The Nursing Initiative seeks of three applicants. Keefe said she hopes the to mitigate the impact of the nationwide nursing shortage Nursing Initiative will continue so the U can keep expandin Utah. Ivy Lawrence, a senior in ing its program and help adthe College of Nursing, said dress the nursing shortage. that while working at Univer"If we're able to sustain sity Hospital she has person- the initiative for the next five ally seen the impact of the years, we should have, on top shortage. of the nurses that we've al"There's always staffing ready prepared, an additional SPEAKER ADVOCATES HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE continued from Page 1 fat people. People have a genetically predisposed weight that can only be slightly altered by exercise and diet, Wann said. A person could be fat and still be perfectly healthy, she said. "I really believe in the pleasure principle rather than the punishment principle in terms of food and exercise," Wann said. "The punishment mentality is discouraging." Wann has a self-diagnosed "allergy" to words such as obese and overweight because she says they make the improbable assumption that there is a normal weight. Medical professionals and scientists who claim that obesity is responsible for health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes are misguided, Wann said. "Data is analyzed to justify our prejudices...our scientists perpetuate what is going on," she said. "When you look at medical data, correlation doesn't prove causation." Wann also said that the weight-loss industry is behind a lot of the misconceptions about obesity being a cause for poor health. "The (American) Heart Association is definitely in the pay of the weight-loss industry," she said. "There is a lot of money to be made selling weight loss." Timothy Smith, a psychology professor studying obesity, says there is little or no evidence to back up Wann's claims. "The AHA is motivated mostly to promote research Marilyn Wann asks the audience what comes to mind when they hear the words "thin" or "fat." Wann, a fat activist, promotes acceptance of body diversity through her book, magazine, Web site and speeches. and education," he said. "I don't know that there is any evidence linking them to the weight-loss industry." Wann said she does believe in exercising and eating healthily, but believes the focus should be on health, not weight. "Take out weight as a goal and just eat healthy and exercise...I believe in the notion of health at every size." She advocates people disregarding weight and just focusing on doing exercises they enjoy and eating the healthy types of food they like. "Your body knows more than anyone else when, what and how much you should eat," she said. Kristy Bartley, a counseling coordinator in the Women's Resource Center, said that historically, most cultures have viewed larger women as beautiful and that the current We give instant SSS for life-saving donations. American view of beauty is unhealthy. "Why is it that the current female image of beauty as seen by heterosexual males looks like a 15-year-old boy?" Bartley said. Wann began her crusade to end discrimination against fat people in 1993 after what she calls her "really bad day." Two things happened that day that forever changed Wann's outlook on her weight. First, the guy she was dating told her he was embarrassed to introduce her to his friends because she was fat. Second, she received a letter in the mail informing her that she couldn't receive health-care insurance because she was classified as morbidly obese. "I woke up, my silence didn't protect me...I decided to come out as a fat person," she said. a\gardiner@ chronicle.utah.edii L—' r^\A/f [\IL'" " I New higher pay for new donors. * i ZLB Plasma Services J Good for You. Great for Life. • ^Ib 2978 South Stale Si. S. Sail Laku City. UT 81115 801-485-5085 Putting out a student publication? Need cash? Students Make Extra Money Donate Plasma at Biomat USA. Earn $60 your first week with U of U ID. Earn up to $220 plus bonuses per month. Get funding for the 2006-2007 academic year. Pick up funding requests from Adam Ward in Union Room 236. Return requests to the Chronicle Office, Union #236 by 4 p.m., March 10, 2006 t p i r for consideration by *\V^ the Publications jXs Akfj Council. 500 to 600 more. That'll really help us move toward our goal of 1,000 new nurses. It's been a wonderful partnership and a good initiative," she said. Because the U's nursing program is instrumental in training faculty to expand statewide programs, it is a special focus of the Nursing Initiative. "The U gets a little more money because they're actually hiring the Ph.D.s that willteach the master's level nurses at the university, who then can go out and teach at the community colleges or Weber State or wherever, and we add new students that way," Gessel said. Keefe said that Nursing Initiative funding is mainly used to hire and retain faculty. "The great limiting factor on expanding your enrollment is how many faculty you have. We have classroom space, and we have clinical placements around the valley, but we don't have enough faculty. The fact that there's a nursing faculty shortage is actually driving and making worse the nursing shortage," she said. s.gerhke@ chronicle.utah.edu j.l.rogers@ chronicle.utah.edu /TV +\ ^Ss Hours: M,W,F: 7-4 T,H:10-7 Sat 8:30-3 GRIFOLS Biomat USA, Inc. 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