UNews - Idaho

Researchers Advocate for Positive Approach to Rural, Community Health

trevor.kenney — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:08:20 +0000

A noted expert in rural nursing and community health issues will deliver a province wide teleconference and in-person seminar about rural and community health issues on Monday, July 25.

Alberta Health Services, Community & Rural Department and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, Faculty of Health Sciences are jointly presenting a talk by Dr. Jeri L. Bigbee, who is currently serving as the Faculty of Health Sciences first visiting Fulbright Scholar at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

Bigbee is a leader in rural nursing whose research focuses on public health nursing in rural and frontier communities in the United States. Bigbee's talk takes place on Monday, July 25, beginning at 10 a.m. in County Hall at Chinook Regional Hospital. It will also be broadcast to healthcare workers province-wide via the Telehealth network.

"We are extremely lucky to have Dr. Bigbee here in Alberta. Her expertise in rural health is a wonderful resource for Alberta Health Services and our partner organizations," said Rosalie Case, AHS Executive Director, Rural & Suburban Hospital Services & Supports.

"Her knowledge and research will help us better understand the unique needs in rural health and how to plan services according to those needs."

Case added that Dr. Bigbee's in depth understanding and emphasis on population health needs is in-line with the current direction of rural health planning in Alberta.

A Nurse Practitioner and Jody DeMeyer Endowed Chair at Boise State ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in Boise, Idaho, Bigbee earned her doctorate from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Texas in Austin and has been a nurse educator since 1980 in Wyoming, Nevada and California.

"One of the goals for Dr. Bigbee's visit is to forge collaborative research relationships with individuals here who are involved in rural nursing," said Dr. Judith Kulig, a U of L Health Sciences rural nursing expert.

"Jointly-conducted research would provide an opportunity to determine the differences and similarities between our countries in terms of the number of rural nurses providing care and the impacts they have on population health."

Kulig said that while Bigbee is in the community, she will meet with faculty and graduate students to share her expertise in rural nursing and in nursing education in general. "We are really hopeful that Jeri's visit will lead to future collaborations including visits by our faculty to Boise State ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ."

Event details:

Date: Monday, July 25, 2011
Time: 10:00 - 11:30 a.m.
Location: Chinook Regional Hospital County Hall (Telehealth available)
RSVP: Romina Senneker (403-388-6013 or romina.senneker@albertahealthservices.ca)

Recreating a glorious past

trevor.kenney — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:39:57 +0000

One dimensional, black and white photographs represent much of the aboriginal history we know. While serving adequately as depictions of an era, they hardly tell a story or set a scene.

Dr. Linda Many Guns of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Native American Studies (NAS) department is trying to fill in those gaps, reconstructing a rich history one bead at a time. By crafting traditional aboriginal clothing such as dresses, war shirts and moccasins using actual trade cloth and intricate glass beads of a bygone time, she is using colour to recreate history and help it leap off the page.

"For me it's a source of pride," says Many Guns, who is in her second semester of teaching at the U of L. "I don't want to see just black and white pictures of our people keeping the memory alive. By creating these items, you see the incredible colour and beauty of that time, and it's awesome. You get a sense of how dynamic and incredible meeting our people must have been."

Linda Many Guns assembles a display of historical Aboriginal bead work in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library.

Born in southern Alberta into the Blackfoot tribe, she was registered at the Tsuu T'ina Reserve, later transferred to Siksika Nation. Now an educator completing a doctorate degree, Many Guns has worked in a variety of fields, from being a chef to a high-steel construction worker.

What has always resonated with her is the history of her people.

"I've always been proud of my culture and my heritage and like so many of the students I teach here, have spent a good part of my lifetime reconstructing what I know since so much of that was fragmented growing up," she says. "I've never seen myself as assimilated, I see myself as indigenous and am very proud of that."

While working as a chef in the Banff Springs Hotel, Many Guns often visited local museums and was intrigued by the visual history of aboriginal people. She recognized that the clothes they crafted spoke volumes about the lives they lived.

"These pieces could not have been produced by a society that had no structure or no intellectual capital," she says. "Beauty comes from its environment and you must have a peaceful environment and some sense of identity. It spurred these questions in me about my background."

In her quest for knowledge, Many Guns encountered all manner of persons that helped her reconstruct the past. From 90-year-old women with stashes of highly prized, trade-route beads to a society of mountain men who literally experienced life of a bygone era, she unearthed the tales and symbols of her ancestors.

As she learned to create clothing in the traditional way, she gained an understanding of the trade route system, the value of the beads in aboriginal society and the symbols of the past.

"Aboriginal people were no different than any other people, they were always looking for ways to demonstrate status in a community. Having trade cloth was a demonstration of status, as were the beads," she says. "It was truly a sign of wealth to have any number of those beads."

She worked with an experienced group of beaders to craft her first dress, before tackling the challenge of a second by herself. She created the dress she wore when she received her doctorate at Trent ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in the spring of 2010.

The current display at the front entrance to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library depicts beads and pieces created over various eras of aboriginal history. The breathtaking colours and intricate craftsmanship create a whole new representation of history. It's that dynamic cultural past she strives to rekindle and introduce to her students.

"I believe that this is just one small example of what the NAS department offers, not just to aboriginal students but to all people," Many Guns says. "We're bringing an awareness and understanding to aboriginal people's lives and their culture, how rich and beautiful it was, to validate the complexity of the nations. We're here, we're still here, still creating these items, and we don't want the culture to die."

GET THE FACTS

· Many Guns has a BA from St. Thomas ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Fredericton, N.B.), a master's degree from Carleton ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Ottawa, Ont.), a law degree from ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Ottawa and a doctorate from Trent ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Peterborough, Ont.).

· A mother of two, she is also a grandmother of three.

· Many Guns credits Dr. Leroy Little Bear for the support he's shown in allowing her to "open new doors of discovery" in the NAS department.

· The beads featured in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library display date all the way back to the 1800s. Examples of their value include the largest blue beads that could fetch up to 10 buffalo hides per bead in trade.

· One of Many Guns' greatest sources of beads is a woman in Blackfoot, Idaho who has rows upon rows of cases of beads that she'll sell in large quantities.

· Each dress that Many Guns makes takes over a year to construct. "One of the things you learn is the meaning of patience because sometimes you can't get enough product (leather, hides, beads) to put it all together, but I think that is very similar to the way it was back then."

Programming Team Earns Second Place Finish At Rocky Mountain Regional

trevor.kenney — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:55:22 +0000

A 12-person group is split into four groups of three, and has to solve nine complex computer programming problems in a very short time. All the while, they are competing against more than 50 other teams from across North America as part of the Rocky Mountain region of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest.

How did the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge group fare? Very well. Of the four teams in the competition from the U of L, one group took second place and three other teams landed in the middle third of the results – 23rd, 25th, and 29th place overall.

"Students have to apply what they learn in different courses, and some problems require knowledge of techniques or algorithms that are not taught in any course," says team advisor
Dr. Howard Cheng (mathematics and computer science). "These are taught during our regular practice sessions, where the teams spend several hours per week training for this contest."

The competition draws students from large and small colleges and universities throughout Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Eastern Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Mexico. The group received funding from the Faculty of Arts and Science as well as Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures to support the costs for participation.

Cheng says the contest requires logical thinking skills and precise implementation of their ideas.

"If their solution is incorrect for even one test case, it is considered wrong," he says.

The groups had limited time to complete a series of nine problems, which ranged from supposedly simple, to very complex.

"We had to figure out how to write code based on where the letter 't' appeared in a series of words," says Keilan Scholten, a third year mathematics and computer science student. "It seems simple, but we wound up using more than an hour and a half of our time allotment. The first six of our problems were done in just over two hours."

Among the problems, the group successfully created a ranking of teams for a soccer league, figured out the maximum number of climbers a piece of climbing rope can support and worked out a way to determine if packages of certain dimensions were the right size to be mailed.

Team group members included: (Team A) Darcy Best, Keilan Scholten, Hugh Ramp; (Team B) Jeremy Andrijancic, Johnny Boldt, Kim Wikkerink; (Team C) Mark Fischer, Mark Hunter, Fern Leavens; (Team D) Falcon Momot, Jason Racine and Fei Wang. Best (fourth year), Ramp (second year) and Scholten (third year) also finished third in the Alberta Collegiate Programming Contest, held in mid-October as a warm-up to the regional contest.

For a look at the full issue of the November Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Recreating a glorious past

trevor.kenney — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:07:04 +0000

One dimensional, black and white photographs represent much of the aboriginal history we know. While serving adequately as depictions of an era, they hardly tell a story or set a scene.

Linda Many Guns of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Native American Studies (NAS) department is trying to fill in those gaps, reconstructing a rich history one bead at a time. By crafting traditional aboriginal clothing such as dresses, war shirts and moccasins using actual trade cloth and intricate glass beads of a bygone time, she is using colour to recreate history and help it leap off the page.

What has always resonated with her is the history of her people.

As she learned to create clothing in the traditional way, she gained an understanding of the trade route system, the value of the beads in aboriginal society and the symbols of the past.

She worked with an experienced group of beaders to craft her first dress, before tackling the challenge of a second by herself. Currently, she's creating the dress she'll wear when she receives her doctorate at Trent ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in the spring.

GET THE FACTS

• Many Guns has a BA from St. Thomas ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Fredericton, N.B.), a master's degree from Carleton ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Ottawa, Ont.), a law degree from ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Ottawa and will complete her doctorate from Trent ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Peterborough, Ont.) this spring.

• A mother of two, she is also a grandmother of three.

• Many Guns credits Dr. Leroy Little Bear for the support he's shown in allowing her to "open new doors of discovery" in the NAS department.

• The beads featured in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library display date all the way back to the 1800s. Examples of their value include the largest blue beads that could fetch up to 10 buffalo hides per bead in trade.

• One of Many Guns' greatest sources of beads is a woman in Blackfoot, Idaho who has rows upon rows of cases of beads that she'll sell in large quantities.

• Each dress that Many Guns makes takes over a year to construct. "One of the things you learn is the meaning of patience because sometimes you can't get enough product (leather, hides, beads) to put it all together, but I think that is very similar to the way it was back then."

UNews - Idaho

Researchers Advocate for Positive Approach to Rural, Community Health

Related Topics

Recreating a glorious past

Related Topics

Programming Team Earns Second Place Finish At Rocky Mountain Regional

Related Topics

Recreating a glorious past

Related Topics