2-5-2023 EDU - Flipbook - Page 1
The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, February 5, 2023
EDUCATION
A SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF BALTIMORE SUN MEDIA • SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2023
Harford Community College students help clean up marine debris in the Florida Keys as an alternative to spring break.
INSIDE:
2 New academic
initiatives
Diversity & affordability
2 Advancing the
ecosystem
Environmental justice
3 Opportunities for
tomorrow
Salisbury University
4 Help in many forms
Support services
4 Healthy communities
Degree programs and
wellness initiatives
5 Cybersecurity leaders
University of Maryland
Global Campus
6 Today’s workforce
New programs prepare
students
Education publishes four times a year
The importance of experiential learning
advertise@baltsun.com
© 2023 Baltimore Sun Media
From removing marine debris to tackling racial disparities in
health care, students are involved
By Gregory J. Alexander, Contributing Writer
H
arford Community College student
Jessica Delos Santos’s idea of spring
break may differ than many other college students. Yes, Santos is heading
to the Florida Keys for spring break,
but instead of sipping frozen drinks and working on her tan, she will be volunteering with the
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary helping
remove marine debris along with other Harford
Community College students.
Santos says that originally, she did not believe
that she would be able to make the trip due to the
cost, despite it being already subsidized by the college, but then a student leadership position became
available, reducing her cost and allowing her to go.
The first-generation student says that the opportunity to travel was a big draw. “My family is from the
Philippines and last summer, I was able to see my
family for the first time in many years. The trip to
the Keys is another opportunity to travel,” she says.
Santos says that she knows that she will be
working long hours helping clean up debris from
hurricanes. “We may be able to also work on restoring the coral reefs, which would be really cool,” says
the biology and pre-nursing major. “If I hadn’t been
able to do this volunteer work, I would have picked
up more hours at CVS where I work as a pharmacy
technician, but this trip makes more sense.”
Caitlin White, Harford’s student leadership and
programming specialist in the office of student life,
says that this will be the school’s third trip to the
Florida Keys; previous trips include New Orleans
and Houston, among others. “Our students have a
desire to serve, are conservation focused and look
for ways to give back,” White says. “For many of
them, it’s the first time they traveled without their
family, and it’s an affordable way to travel due to
HCC’s subsidization of the cost.
“In the past, our students have removed everything from mailboxes to refrigerators, plastic debris,
rope and fishing lines out of the water or on the
coastline. Also, after a storm, lobster pots can get
disconnected from their buoys, so we clean those
up, too.” She says students stay at the Brinton
Environmental Center on Summerland Key where
they will also work on coral reef restoration.
Students at University of Maryland, Baltimore
County also partake in an alternative spring break,
but for those who do so through the center for
democracy and civic life don’t need to head to an
airport. Instead, students spent six days exploring
the systemic and human dimensions of complex
social issues in Baltimore and identify pathways
to long-term community engagement, according
to UMBC.
David Hoffman, J.D., Ph.D., director, center for
democracy and civic life at UMBC, explains that
students get to know Baltimore on a human and
Experiential learning,
continued on page 7
Health and wellness initiatives create
strong sense of community on campus
Programs address mental health and food insecurity
Adobe Stock
By Alex Keown, Contributing Writer
T
hree wellness initiatives at Maryland
colleges are addressing unmet needs
in mental health, racism, food scarcity and other concerns in the student
population.
At Harford Community College, school leaders initiated the Student Wellness Ambassador
Program (SWAP) in the spring of 2022 to offer
undergraduates instructions in health and wellness. SWAP is a one-year program that offers participants instruction in health and wellness that
will allow them to become advocates across campus. SWAP participants take part in workshops,
seminars and independent research throughout
the one-year period.
Caitlin White, student leadership and program specialist in the office of student life at
Harford, says SWAP allows those students with
an interest in wellness to “drill down” into the
fundamentals of wellness and gain important
health-related skills that can benefit the entire
student body.
“We’re seeing students more interested in
building relationships with their peers and making a place for themselves at Harford,” she says.
Beyond SWAP, there are other wellness initiatives for Harford students. Due to the ongoing
opioid crisis, incoming students are required to
undergo heroin addiction and awareness training. The program, mandated by the General
Assembly in 2017, includes training with Narcan,
a heroin overdose rescue medication. White says
understanding how to use the medication can
save the life of someone in distress from an opioid
overdose.
Other programs at Harford include the
school’s nationally recognized Owls in ACTION
Bystander Intervention Program and QPR Suicide
Prevention Training.
Owls in ACTION focuses on mental health
and intimate partner violence, something White
says impacts a broad swath of the community. The
program empowers people to step in and provide
some help to someone who is having or beginning
to have a mental break or is a victim of violence
committed by an intimate partner.
White says the program teaches participants
they do not have to wait for the warning signs
of intimate partner violence before taking some
kind of action. She says it’s important for people
to know they can provide a safe space for victims of violence and bring in other resources for
assistance. Beyond issues of violence, Owls in
ACTION also teaches students how to step in to
help people who may appear to be in some kind of
mental distress. Recognizing signs of distress can
prevent potential self-harm or suicide, she says.
“We want to remove any stigma of having
conversations about mental health. If you see
someone who doesn’t look like themselves or act
like themselves, be comfortable enough to have a
conversation with them,” White says.
Likewise, the QPR Suicide Prevention
Training program teaches people to recognize
warning signs related to suicidal behavior or
thinking. White says the program removes some
of the stigma associated with suicide, including
language choices that show bias. As an example,
White says the training suggests the phrase “died
by suicide” rather than “committed suicide.”
“We want to have discussions about suicide
without stigma of wrongdoing. The language
around these things has changed. We say intimate
partner violence rather than domestic violence
because of the nuances involved,” White says. “I’m
really excited that our students want to talk about
these issues and talk about the importance of
therapy rather than sweep it under the rug.”
Open conversations are becoming increasingly important when it comes to reducing the
stigma of topics such as mental health. At the
Health and wellness,
continued on page 7
Above: UMBC student Chris Blume works with bats.
See article on page 2.
Ask Margit
By Margit B. Weisgal, Contributing Writer
mbweisgal@gmail.com
The intersection of work
and school
An investment in knowledge pays the
best interest.
— Benjamin Franklin
Rimma K. loved teaching; when she
was hired, she was PQ – professionally
qualified – as opposed to academically qualified (AQ). Thus, when she was
between jobs, she decided to get a master’s
degree. A new accredited program offered
a subsidy along with credit for graduate
classes she’d already completed. During
her second semester, she was offered a
position managing a professional business association. She accepted the job and
started work during her last semester of
the degree program.
“I had one class left. But I was overwhelmed, juggling weekly assignments for
the class while I was managing the organization,” she recalls. “I reached out to
the professor to find out if there was any
flexibility. He told me to drop the class if
I couldn’t keep up. As far as I was concerned, that wasn’t an option. And, since
I’d taught for almost 10 years, I was taken
aback by his response and inflexibility.”
Megan M.’s schooling was a roller
coaster. Due to a variety of circumstances,
she started work at 13 and never completed high school. In her early twenties,
she started taking college classes at a community college, then decided she wanted to
go to a university and successfully passed
the GED (high school equivalency exam)
when she was 25. Learning about the
Innocence Project gave her direction and
motivated her to so something in public
interest.
For the last five years, she’s worked
toward a degree. “I’ve taken classes at three
community colleges and finally landed
at Anne Arundel Community College
because its associate of applied science
legal studies program is approved by the
American Bar Association. I have three
classes left.”
For Megan, there have been lots of
other issues. First, to qualify for federal
loans, she has to take two classes each
semester, but due to her income, she’s not
eligible for Pell Grants.
Ask Margit, continued on page 7
1