There were around 20.4 million U.S. veterans in 2016, according to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, representing less than 10% of the total U.S. adult population. Hundreds of thousands of veterans are battling post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. Suicide in the veteran community remains at an epidemic level, 20 per day. Many spouses feel helpless and aren’t sure how to support their loved one. And children are growing up wondering why their mother or father has changed. Trauma-focused psychotherapies and psychotropic medications may offer symptom relief, but do they address the core issues of disconnection, societal withdrawal, and living without a sense of mission and purpose?
The January 2017 edition of JAMA Psychiatry stated that “… we have probably come about as far as we can
with current dominant clinical approaches. Other strategies are urgently needed
to effectively address remaining research and clinical gaps concerning the
health care needs of combat veterans”. Traditional mental health programs
focus primarily on symptom reduction and a lot of times miss the opportunity to
identify and facilitate personal growth as a result of veterans’ struggles. A
new, research-based approach to trauma that has been studied by psychologists
for the past three decades called Posttraumatic Growth, or PTG for short, explores how people who endure psychological
struggle following adversity can often achieve positive growth afterwards.
This growth can occur in one or more
domains: a greater appreciation of life, increased personal strength, openness
to new possibilities, improved relationships, and enhanced spiritual or
existential awareness. At the core of PTG is restoring a purposeful and
meaningful life, learning to respond rather than react, and the construction of
new beliefs about the world, one’s self, and the future. The CVMA,
comprised of motorcycle-riding veterans from all branches of the United States
Armed Forces, feels it their duty to extend PTG to their fellow vet brothers
and sisters, and decided that aiding education would do the trick. With members
from all 50 states, their mission is to support and defend veterans who served
their country and fought for our freedoms.
The CVMA 6-4 Veteran Scholarship will award $500 to a student once per semester to
recipients who were an honorably discharged combat veteran and who is at least
a sophomore full-time student with a minimum 2.5 GPA. The scholarship is named
for the CVMA South Louisiana Chapter.
“We just want to be able to give back
to our veteran community and make sure the guys returning home from combat
theater who are trying to make something of themselves are afforded every
opportunity possible,” CMVA member and Navy veteran John Bruner said. “Coming
back to school can be a make or break opportunity. A lot of guys coming back
home have seen things and may have some issues that if compounded by financial
burden can lead them down a darker path. We want to do anything we can to
divert that in a positive direction.”
Nicholls State University recently let the cat out of the bag, or is it the crawfish out of the trap? One of their Astacologists has been appointed to a prestigious Astacology Board. You may have eaten hundreds of pounds of crawfish in your day, but you still can’t call yourself an Astacologist- someone who studies crawfish, also called crayfish. Turns out, there is a large group of people all over the world who dedicate their lives to the study of crawfish. Crawfish have not received much-focused attention from the broader scientific community, until just recently. Only now are scientists beginning to focus on discovering aspects of their biology, geographic distributions, and life histories in order to gather data to address the conservation issues that this diverse charismatic fauna face in the wake of current and future human-mediated environmental change. Conservationists at the state and federal levels have been tasked with thwarting and reducing crayfish decline, but they need information on crayfish life histories, natural history, ecology, and even taxonomy in order to generate conservation strategies and to implement recovery plans. Often, this information is not available, thus further delaying actions that could help stem the tide of crayfish imperilment, ultimately limiting conservation planning for crayfish faunas at the local, regional, national or even global level. Fortunately, this situation is starting to change for the better as more and more scientists and their students become interested in astacology and begin to address this information shortfall.
The International
Association of Astacology, founded in
Hinterthal, Austria in 1972 has an important mission: to encourage the
scientific study, conservation and wise utilization of freshwater crayfish.
They are attempting to provide for the dissemination of research findings
relating to crayfish and to develop an international forum for the free
discussion of problems relevant to crayfish. Obviously, crawfish are a
huge part of Louisiana tourism and economy, and historically the IAA has been
paramount in maintaining the crawfish industry despite unpredictable climate,
terrible environmental disasters such as oil spills, and coastal erosion that
may change natural habitats.
Recently, Louisiana’s own Nicholls State University biology professor Dr. Chris Bonvillain has been
appointed to the executive board for the International Association of
Astacology which is made up of people who represent the crawfish farming
industry, academia and state and government organizations from more than 40
countries. The board’s aim is to encourage the scientific study,
conservation and wise use of crawfish. They also work to maintain the
organization objectives and provide expert comments and opinions on matters
pertaining to crawfish worldwide.
“I am honored to serve on the IAA Executive Board and represent the United
States and Southern U.S. crawfish,” said Dr. Bonvillain, who is one of only two
appointed board members from the U.S.
“This shows that Nicholls biology faculty are involved in research that is
important to our state,” said Dr. Quenton Fontenot, Nicholls biological
sciences department head. “The fact that Chris is recognized by this
international appointment confirms that Nicholls is recognized as a leader in
crawfish research.”
The board meets every two years at the International
Association of Astacology Symposium, with this year’s meeting having been in Pittsburgh. The next
meeting will be in the Czech Republic in 2020. Any person or institution
interested in furthering the study of Astacology is eligible for membership.
Services to members include a quarterly newsletter (Crayfish News),
membership directory, biennial international symposium and publication of the
journal Freshwater Crayfish.
The “Oh Là Là” theater series will behosted by Nicholls this school yearthanks to private donor and philanthropist Arlen Benny Cenac, Jr. Cenachas always been a major proponent for the arts and education and jumped at theopportunity to help make that a reality for his community.
The donations went toward several funds
and projects necessary to make the show a reality, including renovations on the Mary and Al Danos Theater totaling upwards of $9.6 Million. According to Dr.
Bruce Murphy, Nicholls President, the name Oh Là Là is an homage to Al Danos,
who enjoyed conversing in French. The Danos family, whose parents donated $1
million toward the theater’s renovation, released a statement in support of
Nicholls’ upcoming series. “Mom and Dad would have loved this and
attended every show,” The Danos family said. “Oh Là Là is exactly what Dad had
in mind when he started raising money for the theater.”
In August the university hosted donors, lifetime alumni members and Nicholls Foundation board members at the newly renovated theater for a special
preview and an opportunity to purchase season tickets, and spectators were
blown away by its beauty, functionality and charm. Monique Crochet, Nicholls’
acting director of advancement, said the upgrades to the Danos Theater were the
cornerstone and missing piece that made the theater series possible. Crochet
said the improved theater allows Nicholls to bring high-quality, high-demand
shows to Thibodaux, enriching the community by increasing exposure to the arts.
“We noticed other universities were doing it. We thought it would be a
great idea to bring this to our local area,” Crochet said. She said revenues
from sponsorships and ticket sales will go toward maintenance of the theater
and the purchasing of future shows.
The first show featured at “Oh Là Là” was back in September. Touring for over
seven years and featuring six vocalists and dancers, the Frankie Valli tribute show “Let’s Hang On!” entails a live band that performs all the hits from Frankie
Valli and the Four Seasons including “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk
Like a Man,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,”
“December,” “Who Loves You” and “My Eyes Adored You,” among others.
In November, a Christmas show by the Dutton Experience, a 15-member family band that has been playing together since
1991, made its debut bringing a variety of genres from bluegrass to classical
music to the Danos Theater. The next act to be featured will be the New Orleans-based
Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra on Feb. 15. Formed the very same year as the Dutton Experience,
the LPO is the oldest full-time musician-governed and collaboratively-operated
professional symphony in the nation. After that in March, the acrobat troupe The Golden Dragon Acrobats will bring their aerial excellence to Thibodaux. This 50
year old Chinese act is recognized as the premier Chinese acrobatic company in
the United States, according to Nicholls’ press release announcing the shows.
“Oh Là Là” finishes by featuring the timeless songs of the Fab Four. A
Grammy-nominated Beatles tribute band featuring four musicians handpicked by
George Harrison’s sister will feature vintage instruments and iconic costumes
from the Beatles’ collection. Crochet said she thinks the wide range of
music brings a good diversity of performances, and she expects Nicholls to find
different acts in the future. She said the university will start working on its
booking efforts for the 2018-19 season in January when acts start revealing
their schedules. Dr. Murphy attributed “Oh Là Là” as an important step toward
successfully reaching the university’s goals. “Here at Nicholls, our
vision is to be the intellectual, economic and cultural heart of the Bayou
Region. The diversity of world-renowned acts coming to our campus as part of
the Oh Là Là series fits perfectly with what we’re trying to accomplish,”
Murphy said.
Season tickets are now available to purchase. To purchase tickets or become a
sponsor, call Tammy Toups at (985) 448-4134 or email tammy.toups@nicholls.edu.
Nicholls degree was ranked No. 5 by SR Education Group, who considered the tuition rates of every accredited college offering fully online degrees to determine and rank the most affordable options. The results were published on onlineu.org. The 2019 rankings looked at 861 schools across the nation to find schools committed to providing the most economical options for students. Nicholls was the only school in Louisiana to be ranked in the top 25.
“I think this new ranking indicates that we have an outstanding academic program that is also affordable,” said Dr. Ellen Barker, department of language and literature chair. “We have remained in the top seven, often in first and second place, for affordability in the last few years, so it is rewarding to maintain that ranking in this category.”
Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Washington, SR Education Group provides online resources to help prospective college students find the education that best suits their budget and career aspirations. The group provides over $250,000 annually in scholarships.
Online courses have expanded rapidly and have the potential to extend further the educational opportunities of many students, particularly those least well-served by traditional educational institutions. However, in their current design, online courses are difficult, especially for the students who are least prepared. These students’ learning and persistence outcomes are worse when they take online courses than they would have been had these same students taken in-person courses. Continued improvement of online curricula and instruction can strengthen the quality of these courses and hence the educational opportunities for the most in-need populations.
Online courses offer the promise of access regardless of where students live or what time they can participate, potentially redefining educational opportunities for those least well-served in traditional classrooms. Moreover, online platforms offer the promise, through artificial intelligence, of providing the optimal course pacing and content to fit each student’s needs and thereby improve educational quality and learning. The latest “intelligent” tutoring systems, for example, not only assess students’ current weaknesses, but also diagnose why students make the specific errors. These systems then adjust instructional materials to meet students’ needs.
Yet today these promises are far from fully realized. The vast majority of online courses mirror face-to-face classrooms with professors rather using technology to better differentiate instruction across students. As one new study shows, online courses can improve access, yet they also are challenging, especially for the least well-prepared students. These students consistently perform worse in an online setting than they do in face-to-face classrooms; taking online courses increases their likelihood of dropping out and otherwise impedes progress through college.
Online college courses are rapidly growing. One out of three college students now takes at least one course online during their college career, and that share has increased threefold over the past decade. The potential for cost savings and the ease of scaling fuels ongoing investments in online education by both public and private institutions. Online courses have grown in the K-12 sector as well. Florida, for example, requires each high school student to take at least one online course before graduation and the Florida Virtual School offers over 150 classes to students across the state. An estimated 1.5 million K-12 students participated in some online learning in 2010, and online learning enrollments are projected to grow in future years.
Non-selective and for-profit higher education institutions have expanded online course offerings particularly quickly. These institutions serve a majority of college-aged students, and these students typically have weaker academic preparation and fewer economic resources than students at other more selective colleges and universities. As such, their ability to provide useful course work, engage students, and build the skills necessary for economic success is particularly important. Their use of online coursework is promising to the extent that it can reach the most students in need and serve them well.
While online course-taking is both prevalent and growing, especially in non-selective higher education institutions, relatively little evidence has examined how taking a course online instead of in person affects student success in college. A new study is the first of which to provide evidence on the effects of online courses at-scale at non-selective four-year colleges. It is also the first to assess the effects of online course taking at for-profit institutions. Nearly 2.4 million undergraduate students (full-time equivalent) enrolled at for-profit institutions during the 2011-12 academic year, and the sector granted approximately 18 percent of all associate degrees.
A new study uses data from DeVry University, a large for-profit college with an undergraduate enrollment of more than 100,000 students, 80 percent of whom are seeking a bachelor’s degree. The average DeVry student takes two-thirds of her courses online. The remaining one-third of courses meet in conventional in-person classes held at one of DeVry’s 102 physical campuses. The data include over 230,000 students enrolled in 168,000 sections of more than 750 different courses.
DeVry University’s approach to online education makes it particularly well suited for estimating the effects of taking online courses. Each DeVry course is offered both online and in-person, and each student enrolls in either an online section or an in-person section. Online and in-person sections are identical in most ways: both follow the same syllabus and use the same textbook; class sizes are approximately the same; both use the same assignments, quizzes, tests, and grading rubrics. Many professors teach both online and in-person courses. The contrast between online and in-person sections is primarily the mode of communication. In online sections, all interaction—lecturing, class discussion, group projects—occurs in online discussion boards, and much of the professor’s “lecturing” role is replaced with standardized videos. In online sections, participation is often asynchronous while in-person sections meet on campus at scheduled times. In short, DeVry online classes attempt to replicate traditional in-person classes, except that student-student and student-professor interactions are virtual and asynchronous.
Taking a course online, instead of in person, increases the probability that a student will drop out of school. In the semester after taking an online course, students are about 9 percentage points less likely to remain enrolled. This reduction is relative to an average of 88 percent of students remaining enrolled in the following term. Moreover, taking a course online reduces the number of credits that students who do reenroll take in future semesters. While this setting is quite different, we can compare the effects on online course taking to other estimates of effects of on college persistence. For example, the literature on financial aid often finds that $1000 in financial aid increases persistence rates by about three percentage points and college mentorship increases persistence rates by five percentage points.
The negative effects of online course taking are concentrated in the lowest performing students. As shown in Figure 2, for students with below median prior GPA, the online classes reduce grades by 0.5 points or more, while for students with prior GPA in the top three deciles we estimate the effect as much smaller and, in fact, we cannot tell whether there is negative effect at all for this higher-achieving group. Thus, while online courses may have the potential to differentiate coursework to meet the needs of students with weaker incoming skills, current online courses, in fact, do an even worse job of meeting the needs of these students than do traditional in-person courses.
These analyses provide evidence that students in online courses perform substantially worse than students in traditional in-person courses and that experience in these online courses impact performance in future classes and their likelihood of dropping out of college as well. The negative effects of online course-taking are far stronger for students with lower prior GPA. The results are in line with prior studies of online education in other settings such as community colleges and highly competitive four-year institutions that also show that online courses yield worse average outcomes than in-person courses.
The current negative effect of online course taking relative to in-person course taking should not necessarily lead to the conclusion that online courses should be discouraged. On the contrary, online courses provide access to students who never would have the opportunity or inclination to take classes in-person.[11] As one indication, of the 5.8 million students taking online courses in the fall of 2014, 2.85 million took all of their courses online. Moreover, advances in AI offer hope that future online courses can respond to the needs of students, meeting them where they are in their learning and engaging them in higher education even better than in-person courses are currently able to do. Nonetheless, the tremendous scale and consistently negative effects of current offerings points to the need to improve these courses, particularly for students most at risk of course failure and college dropout.
Did you know that Nicholls State offers the only accredited dietetics program in Southeastern Louisiana and the Greater New Orleans area? “A bachelor’s degree in dietetics from an accredited program is the first step in becoming a registered dietitian” as stated on their school website. So if you are looking for a curriculum that prepares students for post-baccalaureate programs and the workforce with academic, laboratory and clinical education experiences, Nicholls is your go-to University.
To read more about the Dietetics program that is offered at Nicholls State University, click here.
This past August, Nicholls State University was nationally recognized for their Geomatics program. Geomatics is the study of the branch of science that deals with the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data relating to the earth’s surface. The award recognizes programs advancing licensure for surveyors to preserve public health, safety and welfare.
This is the second year in a row Nicholls has been presented with this honor along with being one of only five programs to have been honored both years. According to Nicholls State University, schools are chosen based on their student outcomes, student involvement, outreach and recruitment.
Congratulations to Nicholls State University on this wonderful and prestige achievement! You can find more information on this wonderful accomplishment, as well as the different programs that Nicholls State University offers, here.
