May 1, 2003
Peer Portfolio
PENNY PINCHING: The University of Michigan, responding to health care expenditures that have doubled in the last five years, will force employees to pay a share of the costs beginning in January 2004. Currently 70 percent of employees and retirees pay no co-premium.
SENIOR-ITIS: Marguerite Shotwell is about to make history at the University of Florida’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. At 82 years old, the senior senior is about to become the oldest graduate in the history of the college. “When people get older they have regrets. This is one regret I could do something about and I’m doing it,” she said recently. Shotwell was a junior at Michigan State University in 1941 when her husband, a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, was sent to Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas. A mother of three children, she never found the time to complete a bachelor’s degree — until now.
HIPSTERS: The University of Kentucky began a campus-wide health campaign during the spring of 2002 that is starting to bear fruit. The Behavioral Health Improvement Plan (BeHIP) encourages better health habits for faculty and staff. Three interventions are offered. Exercise for Health is a personalized program that helps sedentary people adopt an exercise program. Start to Stop is a smoking cessation program. Living with Diabetes is a prevention program for people who might be at risk of developing the disease. The campus community has responded positively to the programs with at least 149 participants since the interventions were first offered.
EXTENDING TO SPANISH: The extension service at the University of Minnesota is now providing a popular phone service to Spanish speaking clients. The INFO-U program is a pre-recorded 24 hours a day free phone service. Callers can get information on everything from gardening to nutrition and housing. The Spanish version of the service has answered more than 3,000 calls since it was adopted about two years ago.
SAVE MONEY IN YOUR SLEEP: The University of Pittsburgh is embarking on a campaign to save money and energy by ridding computers of screen savers. While the flying messages and toasters and exotic underwater scenes can be fun to look at when computers aren’t in use, they also cost money. Pitt is offering free energy-saving software to its employees that will send the computer into the low-energy sleep mode when it’s not in use.
FLYING THE FLAG: Pedestrians at the University of Virginia can grab a red flag out of barrels on either side of a dangerous cross walk to alert motorists that they are entering the street. The city of Charlottesville initiated the program after a UVa faculty member was hit by a passing car last fall. Similar programs are in place in Utah and Maryland.
JUDGING PROFS: Some University of Utah Health Sciences Center professors took on extra teaching duties recently, and their students included six federal judges from around the nation. The March 26–30 symposium on Issues in Biotechnology and Genetics was held at the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics and was sponsored by the Montana-based Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment. Part of the symposium included a lecture on biotechnology.
Peer Portfolio is a look at what’s news on the campuses of some of UW’s peer institutions.
