Gerontology Institute to host speaker on hospice care issues
Richard Payne, a neurologist and palliative medicine physician, will be speaking at 7 p.m. Feb. 13 in the Emerson Suites. The event is free and open to the public. Presented by the Gerontology Institute, the discussion is about how the use of palliative care and hospice services improves the quality of life of seriously ill patients and families in cost-effective ways. There is evidence from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association that shows racial and ethnically based disparities in hospice use between black and white Americans in 2013. A little over eight percent of all hospice patients identified as black or African compared to 80.9 percent white or Caucasian.
The lecture will discuss these factors and provide ideas for moving forward in providing African Americans and other communities of color greater access to palliative care. Since 2004, Payne has been on the faculty of Duke University and is the Esther Colliflower Professor of Medicine and Divinity. He also has a part-time appointment at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Missouri.
Accounting students to offer free tax preparation services
Senior accounting students are providing free tax preparation services to the Ithaca College community for the 18th year in a row. Students with an annual income less than $54,000 may take advantage of this free service.
The college Volunteer Income Tax Assistance team comprises senior accounting majors who have completed a senior-level federal income tax course. Each student volunteer has passed the required VITA exam at an advanced level and is certified by the Internal Revenue Service to prepare taxes. The team is supervised by an accounting faculty member who is also the VITA site coordinator and assisted by two accounting students. The main objective of the VITA team is to provide each taxpayer with the highest quality tax return and at the same time provide students with valuable “real world” experience. The service is available by appointment only. Appointment times are 1–4 p.m. on Tuesdays, 5–8 p.m. on Wednesdays and noon–3 p.m. on Thursdays. The on-campus VITA program began Jan. 31 and will end April 13. The office is located in room 208 in the Dorothy D. and Roy H. Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise.
Applications now open for OSEMA summer service opportunities
The Office of Student Engagement and Multicultural Affairs is offering three summer service opportunities from May 13 to May 20. This year’s trips are to Acadia National Park, Maine, which will focus on park preservation with the National Park Service at Acadia; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, focusing on food justice with Growing Power Inc.; and Boulder Creek, California, on the theme of youth mentoring with YMCA Camp Campbell, located in the heart of the redwoods.
Applications received before 5 p.m. Feb. 3 will receive first-priority selection. All applications received after this time will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the trips are full.
Students are encouraged to apply to become participant leaders for each of the three trips.
To learn more about summer service and to apply, go to http://www.ithaca.edu/sacl/osema/service/AB/?item=9092.
Department of Writing to host contest for student writing
The Department of Writing is hosting the 2017 Writing Contest, which is open to all students, registered full time or part time. The categories are first-year essay, feature-magazine, fiction, nonfiction (including argument), poetry, personal essay and graphic narrative or text-image. The deadline is 5 p.m. March 27.
Students may enter as many categories as they like but may only have one entry per category. Manuscripts may be of any length, except for submissions in the poetry category, which must include three poems. Attachments should be a single document in PDF format.
The contest is sponsored and judged by the Department of Writing. Winners will be announced April 17. Winners and runners-up in each category will receive a prize and be honored with a reading at the end of the semester. The winning entries will also be published on Ithaca College’s website.
IC professor to speak on research through CSCRE discussion series
The Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity is hosting a speaker through its discussion series at 6 p.m. Feb. 9 in Klingenstein Lounge. The series, entitled “Youth, Race and Surveillance: Student ‘Success’ in a Punitive School,” will feature Jessica Dunning-Lozano, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, giving a presentation on the extension of punitive policies into the school lives of marginalized black and Latino children. Dunning-Lozano’s research investigates the effects of large-scale social, economic and penal policies on U.S. public schooling, low-income communities and communities of color.
She received her Ph.D. in sociology and a graduate portfolio in Mexican-American Studies from the University of Texas, Austin.
