Avoiding Athletic Injury: Tips for Athletes and Dancers

By Cecil Harris

Injuries such as concussions or torn ligaments can be detrimental to young athletes and dancers. These tips from Adelphi alumni provide guidance for athletes, dancers, and their parents on how to avoid these injuries. 

For Athletes and Their Parents 

from Chris Armas ’94 and Mike Gavagan, M.S. ’03

Prepare properly. Eat right and sleep.

Set aside time to rest and recover. Many teens play three or four sports and their bodies break down before they get to college.

Don’t overdo it. Athletes are more susceptible to injury when they practice or play too long.

Listen to your body. If your body tells you that you’re tired, rest.

Get proper footwear. Foot injuries can be prevented this way. Some kids play so much that they burn through the footwear they have and are running on nothing.

For Dancers and Their Parents 

from Linda Hamilton, Ph.D. ’89

More is not necessarily better. Many injuries occur after the fourth class or fourth hour of dancing in a day.

Be careful of the teacher. Don’t work with a teacher who is demeaning or harshly critical of dancers. Dance should be fun. (Dr. Hamilton danced for the legendary George Balanchine in the New York City Ballet. Instead of calling out a dancer by name for making a mistake, he used pop culture references to make his point. When Dr. Hamilton erred during one rehearsal, he said, “More Parks sausages, Mom. Please!”)

Rest. It’s important to get eight hours of sleep each day.

Let kids be kids. There’s hardly any downtime for dancers. Kids need time to do other fun things.

Be sensitive to your perfectionism. Accept it. That’s an essential part of why you became a dancer.


Excerpted from the spring 2015 issue of AU VU.

Starbucks Conversations?

By Ronald Gross

Founder

Conversations New York

A barista at the Spring Street Starbucks  in lower Manhattan yesterday afternoon  slapped a sticker on my cup that read: RACE TOGETHER. 

He was following the suggestion of Starbucks president Howard Shultz, who had announced the nation-wide campaign earlier in the week.  Starbucks  wants staff and customers at its  7,000 shops across to U.S. to invite in-store conversations about "issues of race, prejudice, and lack of economic opportunity."

As I settled into a corner sofa, I asked the woman next to me: "What do you think about talking about these issues in Starbucks?" 

"Not my cup of tea, frankly," she replied with lower Manhattan coolness.   "I come here to calm down, or to take out.   Wrong time, wrong place."

But the couple who sat down on the other side of me was interested.  "It's naive, sure -- but it's a start," said Larry, a software developer.   And his co-worker, Russell, added: "We've talked about this at our shop, but it's actually easier with people with whom you don't have a lot of baggage.  We've had some good talks with other customers, and with one of the baristas."

The three of  us talked  for 15 minutes.  It was the longest conversation I'd had with African Americans in over a month.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening stopping into 7 more Starbucks stores  in a variety of neighborhoods in Manhattan, getting as far uptown as the one on 168th Street and Broadway.   (That's 6 more stores than were visited by Times reporter Sydney Ember for the  article  on 3/19, p. B1.)

Total results: 6 illuminating conversations, 2 brush-offs.   At two of the stores, the people involved were talking seriously about continuing the discussion beyond this encounter.

This Starbucks campaign is taking its lumps in the blogosphere, where it's being accused of everything from grandiosity and condescension, to manipulation and hypocrisy; some of the points -- about Starbucks sourcing, corporate staffing, and HR policies -- are telling. 

But from my totally unscientific sampling of 0.1 percent of Starbucks stores nationwide,  I'm giving two cheers for this experiment in civic discourse.   Time was when coffee houses were hotbeds of citizen-to-citizen conversations about issues that mattered -- such as in 18th century Britain and America, where they made governments quake.   It's heartening  to get even this slight  whiff of that amidst the white foam.

Bringing Innovation to Nursing Education

by Clementine Tousey

As the place where the College of Nursing and Public Health faculty’s decades of experience combine with state-of-the-art facilities to train the nursing leaders of tomorrow, the Nexus Building and Welcome Center will bring innovation to nursing education.

Starting in Fall 2015, when the new building will be open, the ultramodern simulation labs and exam room will feature closed-circuit TV so professors can observe student performance. These facilities will increase the quality of Adelphi nursing students’ education and give  them better preparation as they enter the workforce, according to three faculty members who are among the most frequent users of the current sim labs—Maryann Forbes, Ph.D. ’99, associate professor and chair of the College’s Department of Adult Health; Deborah Ambrosio-Mawhirter ’81, M.S. ’95, Ed.D., assistant professor and chair of the Department of Nursing Foundations; and Terry Mascitti, clinical assistant professor and faculty member teaching nurse practitioner students.

Dr. Forbes said that high-fidelity simulations (the ones now utilized in Alumnae Hall) enable a high-tech patient mannequin to model patient-care situations. These have proven to be effective in increasing student confidence, while providing a safe environment for students to practice and improve critical nursing skills, she said. Students, for example, can practice delivering medication, administering IVs, taking blood pressure and inserting catheters on the SimMan, she explained.

In addition to the sim labs, the new facilities will include examination rooms for “standardized patients,” trained actors who will mimic a health condition by portraying a set of symptoms. (The actors are actual people who will come in, possibly from theperforming arts program at Adelphi, but nothing is confirmed yet, Dr. Forbes said.) Thus, Dr. Forbes said, the new labs and exam rooms will give students hands-on practice treating patients and communicating with other healthcare professionals in a realistic patient-care environment.

The Nexus facilities represent a quantum leap from the three simulation labs now available in Alumnae Hall. There will be a whole suite in Nexus, resembling that of a hospital unit. Dr. Ambrosio-Mawhirter said these new facilities will foster active learning, allowing students to bridge theory with practice and gain confidence as novice nurses. The new technology will allow faculty to move beyond the traditional classroom instruction to a state-of-the-art nursing education, she added.

Mascitti agreed that the new facilities will be a tremendous asset to both undergraduates and graduates because students will now have the ability to use more simulation. She maintained that simulation is the wave of the future and that it’s key in the absence of live patients. It allows nursing students to perform various exams and develop treatment plans in a supervised environment. She believes that Nexus signifies Adelphi’s investment in future nurses and nurse practitioners.

It's On Us

Adelphi University joined the national movement to stop sexual assault. 

The Future Looks Bright for Social Work with Older Adults

Taylor Herbert, M.S.W. ’07, with one of her clients at the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center.

by Ela Schwartz

Taylor Herbert, M.S.W. ’07, LMSW, always knew she wanted to help people. She just wasn’t sure what population she wanted to serve as a social worker.

Intrigued by the growing need for social workers to help older adults, Ms. Herbert decided, in her final year of graduate school, to participate in a new program at the Adelphi University School of Social Work: the Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education (HPPAE).

After her field placements, including one at the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center (SJJCC), she knew she’d found her niche. The SJJCC hired her right after graduation, and today she is the director of specialized senior services. Her role is to direct programs for seniors who are frail and/or at various stages of memory impairment, as well as a one-of-a-kind program for clients in their 30s through 50s with young-onset dementia. The SJJCC has also hired two Adelphi graduates straight out of HPPAE. 

Philip Rozario, Ph.D, director of the Adelphi University School of Social Work Ph.D. programand an expert on gerontological social work, pointed out that “There is a serious shortage of trained professionals to deal with a growing aging population. At Adelphi, graduate students can lead the way in this expanding field.”

According to government statistics, employment of healthcare social workers, which includes those working with the geriatric population, is projected to grow 27 percent from 2012 to 2022—much faster than the average for all occupations, due to the aging of the baby boomers. Adults aged 90 and above are the fastest-growing demographic—nearly tripling over the past three decades and projected to more than quadruple over the next 40 years.

Dr. Rozario explained that any social work specialization has an elderly component. Older adults contend with addictions, AIDS and mental illness. They may have custody of a child through the foster care system, or be veterans, as Amanda Cruz ’13, M.S.W. ’14, experienced.

Ms. Cruz originally thought her social work calling was working with children. She decided to participate in HPPAE to “diversify my résumé,” as she put it. Her field placement was in the lock-down unit of a nursing home for veterans ages 60–95 contending with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental illnesses and behavioral problems. She oversaw a caseload of “eight different people—‘different’ being the key word,” as she put it.

And she said she’s thoroughly enjoyed the experience, enough to decide to change her career choice to geriatric social work.

She praises the instruction she received in HPPAE about the aging process, legal matters such as wills, power of attorney and advance directives, and her continuing education classes, admitting, “All my classes were so meaningful and practical in my internship.”

Part of her internship included a needs-assessment project she completed with a fellow intern on conflict resolution among the veteran residents. The result was the formation of a group in which members learn social skills, a group that has continued even after Ms. Cruz’s internship ended.

For the future, “I’m going to stick with the geriatric population,” she said. “I enjoy being there for them, learning their histories, how life was different then from now, what they’ve seen and what they need to put to rest.”

Ms. Herbert has no regrets about her choice to work with older adults. “I can’t believe I get paid to do this,” she said. “I love seeing seniors, who were unhappy when they got off the bus, go home with huge smiles on their faces. HPPAE was a fabulous opportunity. It got me where I am today. I would absolutely—100 times over—do it again.”

In 2013, Amanda Cruz ’13, M.S.W. ’14 (far right), and fellow Adelphi students participated in a Youth Service Opportunities project in Washington, D.C., where they worked with this senior citizen through the Age-in-Place, Seabury Resources for Aging program.