2019 OFFICE OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
TEAM RIVER RUNNERREC THERAPY, EPIC, AND VA PARTNERSHIP
Team River Runner is a national adaptive sports program with more than 60 chapters that provides veterans, their families and the community with the opportunity to learn to kayak and paddle. This is a wonderful program that helps wounded warriors and other veterans reintegrate into the community and use a new skill to get out and have fun. The Inland Northwest chapter of Team River Runner has created an opportunity at Eastern that exemplifies partnership and community service within our community. EPIC, Eastern’s outdoor recreation program, sponsors open paddle nights at the EWU pool every Monday and Wednesday, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. On Wednesday nights, veterans and their families can come to Eastern’s pool to work with Team River Runner instructors, including Eastern’s Phil Kramer, PhD. Volunteer instructors including Emily Messina, PhD (program director, therapeutic recreation) and therapeuticrecreation students help individuals learn how to safely kayak. In addition to therapeutic recreation students, EPIC student workers also work in conjunction with Team River Runner to facilitate the sessions. After spending fall and winter learning and training, team river runner volunteers will take the veterans out on open water.
Office of Community Engagement communityengagement@ewu.edu 509-359-6255 343 Patterson Cheney, WA 99004
ewu.edu/oce
AUDITING PARTNERSHIP
This year, students from Tara Moses’ Auditing 1 class have begun a service-learning partnership with Ana Fortson at Spokane County Courts Guardianship Monitoring Program. When people are deemed incapable of managing their own finances and do not have a plan in place, the courts appoint a financial guardian. People may need financial guardians for many reasons, including health, functioning level, or anything else that may impact their ability to work with finances. Because these individuals are in such a vulnerable position, the courts must ensure that financial guardians do not take advantage of the situation. In order to prevent any abuse of power, a financial audit for all people in the guardianship program is required. For this, the courts depend on volunteers. Volunteers must have a specialized skill set, which makes finding volunteers difficult. Starting fall quarter, students from business and accounting in the Auditing 1 class have stepped in to do the financial audits for the Courts Guardianship Monitoring Program. Since they started, the students have completed 122 audits and helped the program completely erase its 9-week backlog. The students provided 359.75 hours of work, and were able to get real-world experience in how their work can be beneficial to the community. The courts were able to have a significant need met through this program. The partnership between the auditing course and the courts will hopefully continue every quarter to help the guardian monitoring program stay on top of the audits and prevent abuses.
HARVEST FEST AND SPOOKY SCIENCE The Office of Community Engagement held their annual Harvest Fest event, which brings more than 350 children and their families come to campus to trick-or-treat through EWU buildings. More than 100 Eastern students volunteered to lead groups, while university faculty and staff waited in the buildings to hand out candy. As a new part of the annual tradition, this year the OCE partnered with the Department or Biology for Spooky Science. After trick-or-treating, families could go to the Harvest Fest Carnival, which includes fun games and activities sponsored by the Kiwanis club and EWU residential halls, clubs and organizations. At Spooky Science, kids were encouraged to interact with slime, bugs, microscopes and other awesome ways to have fun and learn about the STEM. This is a wonderful tradition that gets the entire campus and surrounding organizations involved in giving back to the community while creating a safe and fun Halloween event for kids.
OFFICE OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT DENTAL HYGIENE: EARLY CHILDHOOD CLINIC Merri Jones from Eastern’s Department of Dental Hygiene has secured an interprofessional grant from the Alliance for a Cavity Free Future to implement an oral health education program. Eastern was one of four recipients of the grant, the focus of which is on improving the oral health of pregnant women and children through age 5. Starting spring quarter, dental hygiene students will begin a rotation at St. Margaret’s Shelter (transitional housing for women and children) to provide oral-health education, fluoride varnish, sealants and to help them establish a dental home. The program will also include students from EWU’s Department of Communication Sciences Disorders, who will provide feeding and speech screenings, and students from WSU’s Department of Speech and Hearing. Look for updates on this awesome program in our spring newsletter!
ADAPTIVE PADDLING AND ENGINEERING PARTNERSHIP In the late fall of 2018, Eastern held an adaptive paddling clinic certified by the American Canoe Association (ACA). The purpose of adaptive paddling is to help people with disabilities or physical impairments access kayaking and other paddling sports. Five people with various disabilities came to the clinic wanting to learn to kayak. One participant was Roy Perkins, Jr., a 10-time Paralympic medalist swimmer and a senior at Stanford University. Perkins was born without hands or feet, so paddling presented a challenge. Phil Kramer, PhD, a certified ACA instructor attended the clinic, and reached out to David Bowman, PhD, the dean of EWU’s College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, to see if the engineering department would be able to help develop adaptive paddling equipment for Perkins. Six senior engineering students, supervised by Robert Gerlick, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Assistant Professor Matt Michaelis, PhD, took on the project of designing and building a 3-D, printed-paddle adaption for their capstone class. The capstone students intend to refine and improve on current commercially available devices. The assistive technology they developed is designed to latch onto a paddle and attach to Roy’s arms so he can successfully hold and move it. The students are now in the process of fitting the paddle and are hoping to finish the project by spring. This project has brought together students, staff and faculty across Eastern.
Please recycle.
REFOREST SPOKANE On October 13, 2018, EWU students joined in The Lands Council’s eighth annual Reforest Spokane Day. The Reforest Spokane event took place at two locations, the Turnbull Wildlife Refuge in Cheney and The Lands Council in Spokane. Volunteers helped build fencing around gardens, pulled weeds in garden beds and planted different trees. There were around four different types of trees planted within the designated area. The volunteers broke into teams of 3 to 5 people to plant them. The process included digging a big hole for the tree, pouring some fertilizer in the hole, placing small fencing around the tree to protect it from deer and moose, then placing rubber around the fencing to help protect the trees. Thousands of trees were planted during the three hour event.
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