In Brief

Arts Innovation Grants available for Homewood faculty,
students
The Arts Innovation Grants Program has announced that
grants are now available for Homewood
faculty and students. The initiative is designed to help
faculty develop undergraduate interdisciplinary
courses — across departments, divisions or
institutions — that create new credit courses in the
arts for
Homewood students, and to help undergraduates create new
co-curricular activities in the arts or
significantly increase the impact of existing ones within
both the university and the greater Baltimore
communities.
The deadline for submitting proposals is Friday, April
3. For more information, go to:
www.library.jhu.edu/about/news/announcements/
artsinnovation grants.html.

Daffodil Days sales to support the fight against
cancer
Flowers and teddy bears will be enlisted in the fight
against cancer on Wednesday and
Thursday, March 18 and 19, when the Office of Faculty, Staff
and Retiree Programs sponsors the
annual Johns Hopkins Daffodil Days sales for the American
Cancer Society.
For a $10 contribution, donors receive a bouquet of
fresh-cut daffodils or potted daffodil
bulbs. Limited quantities of this year's commemorative
Boyds Bear, Carrie N. Hope, and a bunch of
daffodils are available for a $25 donation at various Johns
Hopkins locations to support ACS efforts.
For a listing of sale sites, go to:
hr.jhu.edu/fsrp/daffodil.cfm or contact Sondra Ponzi in
FSRP at
sponzi1@jhu.edu or 410-516-0338.

Simulation education conference set for next month at
Nursing
The School of
Nursing is co-sponsoring, along with the Institute for Johns
Hopkins Nursing, the
School of Medicine and
The Johns
Hopkins Hospital, an upcoming event called "Simulation
as a Cutting-Edge Tool." The workshop, the first to be held
at the School of Nursing, will provide an overview of
the simulation tools available and information on how they
can be most effectively implemented in a
hospital or nursing school setting.
"An interdisciplinary focus is a main component of the
experience," said Shari Lynn, an
instructor in Acute and Chronic Care at the School of
Nursing and a member of the cross-disciplinary
conference faculty. "Collaboration is important because in
real-life situations, you'll have doctors,
nurses and other health care professionals working side by
side."
The workshop will be held at both the school and the
JHH Simulation Center, a state-of-the-art
facility known for its innovations. The center incorporates
the very basic forms of standardized
simulation, such as role-playing, to complex computer
simulation, such as using computer software to
aid in decision making. Various low- and high-fidelity
simulation equipment will be used at the
conference, including skill sets, simulation people and
simulation software.
Kathryn Kushto-Reese, also an instructor in the
program, said that she hopes that the
participants will come away with a new understanding and
appreciation for simulation education. "We
want them to be able to educate others in incorporating
simulation education in the curriculum," she
said.
The cost of the workshop, to be held Friday, April 17,
is $95. For more information, go to
www.ijhn.jhmi.edu.

Report: Twelve states rise above the nationwide dropout
crisis
A dozen states significantly improved their high
school graduation rates between 2002 and
2006, while the rest of the nation lagged behind, according
to a report by researchers at the new
Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins.
Tennessee led the way with an 11 percentage point
increase in its graduation rate, according to
the report, "Progress Toward Increasing National and State
Graduation Rates," available at
www.every1graduates.org. The other states with
increases were Delaware, Kentucky, South Dakota,
Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, New York, Hawaii,
Missouri, Nebraska and New Hampshire.
This progress report comes on the heels of a major
education address by President Barack
Obama in which he cited the work of Johns Hopkins education
researchers in identifying the 2,000
high schools that produce half the nation's dropouts, and
issued a challenge to all Americans to turn
around these low-performing schools.
Robert Balfanz, co-author of the report and
co-director of the Everyone Graduates Center,
said, "In identifying the low-performing high schools, the
president said we have to have solutions.
This report points out where progress has been made and
where we can look for solutions."
The Everyone Graduates Center, located at the Center for Social
Organization of Schools at
Johns Hopkins, offers research on the nation's dropout
crisis and college readiness challenge,
effective models and tools for meeting these needs and
strategies for helping communities and school
districts to adapt the models and remedies to their own
situations.

Clarification
In the March 2 article on HOP-SIP, the new Johns
Hopkins Social Innovations Partnerships
program, Mindi Levin was identified only as director of
volunteer and community services at the
Bloomberg School. Her primary title, however, is director
of SOURCE, Johns Hopkins' Student
Outreach Resource Center, which serves the schools of
Medicine, Nursing and Public Health.
GO TO MARCH 16, 2009
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