Finding Peace of Mind

peace finding of mind

The clinic space of Ruskin’s North Building has become a hub of an uncommon inter-disciplinary research initiative designed to enhance quality of life among older populations.

On cue, an elderly patient vocalizes a series of prolonged sounds, zzzzz, sssss, as speech-language pathology student Cecelia Enman carefully notes the duration of each on a chart to assess if the patient has healthy vocal functions. In the next room over, another elderly patient performs a series of physical exercises. With his arms crossed over his chest, he stands up from his chair and then sits back down again. He repeats this movement for 30 seconds. Detria Smith, a sport and exercise science student, carefully monitors the patient’s functional fitness. Afterward, Diana Julbe-Delgado, professor of speech-language pathology, Albert Villaneuva-Reyes, Ed.D., program director and professor of speech-language pathology, and Tania Flink, professor of sport and exercise science, work with students to compare the results of these and other assessments. They’re not just looking for signs of healthy speech and physical fitness, but for any factors that may influence cognitive change in older adults. It’s the key focus of the two programs’ research collaboration. “It started as a conversation in the hallway,” Flink said. “Diana does a lot of research around cognition and how the brain changes when we get older. I do a lot more physiology-based work, but my area of expertise is also in movement control, similar to speechlanguage pathology.” Flink said this uncommon collaboration just makes sense.

“The human body doesn’t work in isolation,” she said. “(Clinicians) often only look at patients from one perspective,” Julbe-Delgado said. “For example, I might look at a patient’s speech or swallowing function. Meanwhile, there are huge issues in terms of physical fitness. We know that older adults often lose balance and coordination, and this is exacerbated if they do not maintain holistic health. Our brain is fed by both sensory and motor function.” “Here, we’re providing older adults with education in two areas of expertise: speech-language and exercise science,” she said. The study blends both disciplines by examining the relationship between speech-language processing and physical fitness levels and how they can predict mild cognitive impairment in older members of the community. On testing day, students perform a battery of assessments designed to capture different aspects of speech-language production, voice production, hearing, cognition and physical fitness measures. The results from these tests are then compared with other cognitive measures to determine whether any or all measures can best predict cognitive changes in older adults. At the end of the session, participants will receive tips on keeping the brain healthy through brain activities, exercise, nutrition and sleep and be invited back six months later to re-test on the assessments.

Julbe-Delgado said they hope to build on their data throughout the next year to distribute to health professionals and other community members as educational tools. “We don’t want adults to lose their autonomy, their independence. One of the biggest things that adults will suffer as they get older is their ability to drive,” Julbe-Delgado said. “When you think about speech-language pathology and exercise science, we are targeting skills that are “This experience has necessary for driving, such as cognition, executive prepared me for how to functioning, decisionwork interdisciplinary to making, motor balance.” create an equitable and Enman is one reliable study that has a of four graduate students in the two positive impact.” programs who were - Cecelia Enman cross-trained in the use of each test to assist faculty. “I have always had an interest in working with voice patients since I joined the speech program, and this research has given me the opportunity to expand my skills and knowledge pertaining to voice measures, a normal versus abnormal voice, and perceptual differences,” she said. “Overall, this experience has prepared me for how to work interdisciplinary to create an equitable and reliable study that has a positive impact.” Flink emphasized the importance of their ongoing research. “Imagine having the choice of having memory, cognition, communication, or you get an extra year of your life to preserve those skills. That’s huge. That means more time with your family and friends and loved ones. That’s more outings, walks with your loved ones, and other activities you can do. That’s why we do what we do,” she said. By Brianna Mariotti, content marketing strategist (Top) Students perform a hearing assessment with Tania Flink, professor of sport and exercise science. (Middle) Students evaluate blood pressure readings with Albert Villaneuva-Reyes, Ed.D., program director and professor of speech-language pathology. (Bottom) Diana Julbe-Delgado, professor of speech-language pathology, and a student complete speech-language testing.

Perspectives Borderfrom the

Nothing breaks the ice with preschoolers quite like reading Dr. Seuss. Friendships emerged quickly from the chaos of breakfast and playtime as Julia Wonsettler read “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” to a group of students in a classroom at Catholic Community Services’ Pio Decimo Center in Tucson, Ariz.

Wonsettler, a freshman in the physician assistant program at Gannon University, had journeyed a long way to share this moment in late February. She and seven other students from Gannon’s Erie campus spent eight days in southern Arizona as part of an Alternative Break Service Trip, or ABST, to explore immigration at the U.S./Mexico border.

This trip was one of six ABSTs that sent 45 students out into the world during spring break. Two groups traveled to Arizona while others served in Kentucky, Guatemala, Mexico and Ecuador. These were the first international trips since the pandemic began in early 2020. ABSTs are weeklong service experiences designed to broaden students’ worldviews and to foster global citizenship through work and relationshipbuilding in unfamiliar settings. For Wonsettler and her ABST companions, that work started in a classroom for an organization that was founded to minister to the poor and hungry in Tucson’s Barrio Santa Rosa community, which has a significant population of recently settled immigrants to the U.S. The shared reading of Dr. Seuss preceded a week of hands-on service work.

The walls of the John Valenzuela Youth Center in South Tucson hadn’t been painted in 27 years. And you could tell.

A few days of work, however, transformed it. “I can’t believe what a difference this makes,” said Jessica Alderete, the activities director at the center. The more significant contribution came during the students’ breaks and at the end of the school day, when students would work or play with the children. One sunny afternoon, the Gannon students taught the children some of the fundamentals of volleyball and soccer. The children were still practicing what they had learned the next day and week. “You can’t imagine the effect attention like this has on our children,” Alderete said. “Thank you so very much.” Anthony Nunez, a freshman at Gannon University, paints a fence at the John Valenzuela Youth Center in South Tucson, Ariz.

Earlier in the week, she had explained some of the ways COVID-19 had disrupted families, education and the economy of southern Arizona. Two years into the pandemic, she said enrollment in her center is still down overall, and many children continue to struggle with attendance due to isolation or exposure. Still, she said that’s not the worst of it. “When the economy shut down, many lost jobs and had no way to support themselves. That brought on so much stress that many families just fell apart. Now, many of these kids are in foster care. Fortunately, many are fostered by someone in their family, but that’s not the same,” she said.

The U.S./Mexico border is also not the same. The recently built border wall has redefined the region, and it remains a point of contention in Arizona.

“It’s not what you think, or what you see on the news,” Raul Rodriguez said at lunch one afternoon. Rodriguez was newly retired from the U.S. Border Patrol and had agreed to discuss his experiences with the ABST group. He had spent 23 years working along the U.S./Mexico border – much of it between Yuma and Nogales in Arizona. From his perspective, “the people coming over aren’t families, but usually 16- to 40-year-old men from all over the world. Many are criminals or sexual predators escaping their own countries. There are not a lot of families, like you’d think.” There are also not a lot of drugs being trafficked across the border these days, he said. “Legalized marijuana in several states has hurt that trade.” Instead, human trafficking is the real business along the border. As for the border wall, he said he is a fan. It slows border crossers down enough for them to be apprehended, and it concentrates them to the areas where the wall ends and the old “Normandy fencing” resumes. The Rev. Peter Neeley, associate director of education for the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, Ariz., detests the border wall. His organization is a migrant ministry that works on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, assisting people moving in both directions across the border and generally promoting safety and dignity. He considers the wall an abomination and an insult to everyone working at the border. He works in Nogales, a major border crossing. The wall was built through the center of town. Late in the trip he walked the Gannon students down to the wall, discussing the challenges of human trafficking and the history of immigration as he stepped along. This is such a waste, he said, standing at the wall. “Imagine using just some of the money spent on this wall to actually help people,” he said. Before this, there was a simpler and lower fence, and a bustling economy on both sides of the border. The traffic was light on this day as it has been for some time – in part because of immigration policy but also because of COVIDera rules that limit commerce and visits to curtail spread of the disease. He told the students the wall is a daily reminder that we need to live up to Matthew 25:35: “For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in.”

The Rev. Peter Neeley works on both sides of the border wall near Nogales, Ariz. He met with students during their Alternative Break Service Trip to offer some context about what the border and the new wall have meant to Nogales and to immigration in the region.

Each night brought powerful conversations as students reflected on their experiences.

“I think it’s so easy to have an opinion about immigration from Erie, but I never truly even began to grasp it until I was standing under the border wall in Nogales, Ariz.,” said Chloe Adiutori, one of the student leaders of the trip and a junior pre-pharmacy major. “Talking with Raul, seeing the work that places like Pío Décimo and JVYC are doing, and even talking to Father Neeley have made a previously overwhelming and unapproachable topic for me easier to begin to grasp. “Meeting and seeing people who physically work at the border, have crossed the border, have lived this experience make the idea of immigration a tangible thing. It’s not an abstract concept anymore, but rather, I see specific people in my mind,” she said. It is evident that immigration defines many things in southern Arizona – not just the political landscape, but the local economy, the schools, and the demands on social services.

These are the kinds of experiences that tend to build in one’s mind once you’ve lived them. In the weeks after the trip, the Gannon students were still processing what they’d learned. “I think that the quote of the whole trip that really stood out to me was from Father Neeley when he said you are never going to be able to grasp immigration, and specifically illegal immigration, if you have never felt desperation before,” Adiutori said. “He’s right. I don’t know that I will ever truly understand that feeling, but I think that being down there, experiencing the border and surrounding myself with the lived experiences of those communities has allowed me the opportunity to meet them halfway in a way that I never would have been able to before.”

(Above) Zumiyah, a student at the Pio Decimo Center in Tucson, Ariz., made friends with Gannon student Sarah DuBrul. (Left) The ABST group stopped to pose at the border. Pictured from left to right: An Le, Brennen Grabowski, Sarah DuBrul, Anthony Nunez, Harley Johnson, Elizabeth Gural, Chloe Adiutori and Julia Wonsettler.

By Doug Oathout, chief of staff and director of Marketing and Communications

Exploring the Desert Museum

Gannon’s Alternative Break Service Trips immerse students in cultural experiences in part through exploring local attractions. Here’s three things we learned at the ArizonaSonora Desert Museum, which is part natural history museum and part zoo and botanical garden. 11. There are more than 1,700 different varieties of cactus.

2 2. The desert has an abundance of birdlife, including the gila woodpecker, several hummingbirds and the great horned owl.

3 3. The Sonoran Desert is vast and includes southern

Arizona and the Gulf of

California (Sea of Cortez), which is home to 21 species of stingray.

A great horned owl waits for a meal to show itself near the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.