May 6, 2010
Peer Portfolio
BOOK DOGS: It’s long been suspected that children become better readers when they read aloud, even to dogs. And now researchers at the University of California, Davis, have made it official. They tracked reading skills of two sets of children — third-graders and home-schoolers — participating in reading-to-dogs programs. The children read regularly to three shelter dogs, Lollipop, Molly and Digory. And sure enough, reading fluency improved 12 percent in the first group and 30 percent in the second. “The dogs don’t care if you read really, really bad so you just keep going,” said one young reader. Read the full story, headlined ‘Reading to Rover,’ here.
WHEY TO GO: The Monty Python troupe famously said “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” and the University of Wisconsin, with its dairy artisan program, would seem to agree. The program sends professional cheese makers to other states and nations to compare notes on the craft. “When the travelers return, they are expected to share what they have learned with fellow Wisconsin dairy artisans,” reported the university’s campus paper, Wisconsin Week. “Cheese makers love to talk to other cheese makers,” said one traveling artisan. Maybe it’s cheese season: The University of Missouri held a three-day cheese-making workshop in April. MizzouWeekly reported the story under the headline ‘Whey Cool.’ Read the Wisconsin story here.
DONE AT LAST: A recent recipient of a doctorate from the University of California, Davis, is a retired member of the faculty. Isao Fujimoto, a senior lecturer emeritus who helped found the school’s Asian American Studies Program and was among those American citizens interned in a camp during World War II, earned his doctorate in February from Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. His thesis was on multiethnic efforts to organize immigrant communities in California’s Central Valley, according to the university’s newspaper, Dateline UCDavis (reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle). Fujimoto said, “The dedication, commitment and focus of the people in organizations I’ve worked with have been a source of energy and inspiration that has kept me going. That’s what led me to not give up on completing my Ph.D. even if it took nearly 50 years.” Read the story here.
NEWS IN BRIEF(S): The University of New Mexico had to postpone its second annual Undie Rock ‘n Run from April 29 to May 6 due to “high winds and low temperatures,” according to the university’s news site, UNM Today. The event is presented by the UNM Collegiate Chapter of the American Marketing Association. The Undie Run, as it’s called, “is an event where participants shed their clothes and run one mile through main campus in their underwear (or comfortable clothes). … The purpose is to promote school spirit and relieve stress before finals while collecting clothes for charity.”
HAND WASH APP: Hand-washing is key to preventing health care-associated infections, and the University of Iowa has an app for that, which became available May 5 at the iTunes store. It’s called iScrub Lite 1.5, and is an iPhone and iPod touch application developed at Iowa and now in pilot deployment at the school’s hospitals and clinics, where a display has been installed “that updates health care professionals with compliance statistics,” according to the UI News Service.
