Vice President of Advancement Eloise Stuhr announced to faculty and staff that the UH Alumni Association, which previously operated as an independent organization, will now be transitioning to a University-affiliated program.

Stuhr, along with President Renu Khator, said she hopes this transition will allow the UHAA to better serve graduates, students and the University.

“Moving forward, this new relationship will enable us to better serve alumni with stronger national networks and meaningful programs, including new volunteer roles and educational opportunities to enhance career placement and admissions,” Stuhr said.

“As our graduates succeed in their careers, many rise to positions that enable them to hire our talented students as interns or as salaried employees. Many other graduates serve as mentors for our students, further enhancing the ties between our current students and alumni.”

Previously, only 21 alumni associations in the country operated as independent organizations, including Texas A&M, Georgia Tech and UH, UHAA President Mike Pede said, but this collaboration will help to streamline communication and combine efficiencies.

The change will give the UHAA access to alumni data, UH offices and resources, which will help the association focus more on alumni relations such as career services, mentoring students, student recruitment and growing the UH alumni network across the U.S. It will specifically be targeting the 15 cities where more than 1,000 alumni live.

“The main goal is that we essentially engage a little over 100,000 graduates every year with our programs, and we’re trying to double that number,” Pede said. “And to do that, you have to be out of the business of just trying to make the bottom line. The long story short is we have spent 70 percent of our time generating 30 percent of our revenue.”

This transition from independent to interdependent is set to begin Sept. 1 at the end of the fiscal year. UHAA will remain a nonprofit corporation with an independent board of directors that oversee its current endowments and advise the University on alumni relations, Stuhr said.

The University will now be responsible for managing the day-to-day activities of all alumni relations programs. The current UHAA staff will become UH employees under Stuhr’s supervision in the Division of University Advancement. This will allow the UHAA to focus more on programming and less on fundraising and securing annual membership from alumni.

“Most alumni associations have a hand in student recruitment and career services and helping their alums find jobs. We don’t spend much time on that because we don’t have the time to spend,” Pede said. “This interdependence will allow us the time to spend on more relevant things to our alumni on a day-to-day basis and engage more alumni on a day-to-day basis.”

The University and the UHAA have formed eight committees that will discuss things like transitions in UHAA membership, budget and operations, constitute programming, non-membership programming and an overall plan for bettering alumni relations, said Pede said. These committees are made up of alumni, UH staff, UHAA staff and UH administrators and will prioritize new and extended programming based on the goals of the University as a whole.

“The importance of University of Houston alumni to our future success cannot be overstated. We must ensure that UH continues to play a valuable role in the lives of its former students,” Khator said. “It will create an expanded alumni base and a stronger affiliation with our former students. Ultimately, the collaboration should produce even greater pride about being a Cougar, which benefits us all.”

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A few students and recent alumni are in the process of turning their almost 1-year-old group, which works to enable and increase access to higher education among minority students who attend Houston-area high schools, into an official nonprofit organization.

Houstonians for Organizing People for Education visit high schools across the city to encourage a college education. | Courtesy of Kim Mai Le

Houstonians Organizing People for Education also provides scholarships, training and other assistance to students through its High School Leadership Development Initiative. HSLDI helps students and parents navigate the college admissions process and succeed throughout their secondary academic career.

Kim Mai Le, a chemical engineering junior and co-chair of the Scholarship and Recruiting Committee, said she can relate to the high school students with whom she currently works.

“The stories that I have heard from these high school students are inspiring. It made me cry thinking about the struggles these students have overcome at such a young age. I could relate to some of the students as I, too, have overcome many obstacles relating to finances and family,” she said.

UH alumna Melissa Hernandez, an accounting graduate student at the University of Texas and co-founder of HOPE, said she was also inspired to help students succeed because she knows how difficult it is to access college education with little help.

“As a first-generation (college) student, I understand the challenges that one must overcome during the college application process as well as the stress of financing a college education,” she said.

Adilene Medino, a civil engineering junior and recruiting leader for HOPE, helps students with the essay portion of college admissions during her “Story of Self” session.

“During this session, the students receive a brief presentation on how important and powerful a personal story can be,” Medino said. “We help the students develop their personal stories in order for them to have a personal statement they can use for scholarship or college applications.”

HOPE has been involved with campuses throughout the Houston area and Alief Independent School District. They also diversify the students they reach by offering advice for college admissions in different languages.

“This year, in addition to our regular sessions, we also provided Spanish sessions for Spanish-speaking students at our Project Grad Houston event,” Hernandez said.

Le said college students who want to get involved can visit thehopecollaborative.org.

“We welcome all students from different majors,” Le said. “This will allow students to be able to talk to current students to find out more about the college life. Currently, we are looking for volunteers as leadership coaches at our next event at Sharpstown High School on April 12.”

By becoming a nonprofit organization, HOPE will be able to help more students.

“By becoming a full nonprofit organization, we would be able to expand our organization, have greater access to funding and be able to better serve our students by providing greater assistance, more programs and scholarships,” Hernandez said.

Medino said she is excited at the prospect of helping more students and that HOPE students have inspired her just as much as she has inspired them.

“I realized I was capable of inspiring high school students to pursue their dreams despite the challenges they have/are facing,” Medino said. “It amazed me to see the numerous challenges many are going through and at the same time, I became extremely thankful for what I have now.”

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A Columbia University professor and acclaimed author faced the UH community Monday to explain his new book, which chronicles the lead poisoning of young families by Johns Hopkins University in the 1990s.

David Rosner investigated the accused researchers of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a child pediatric center in Baltimore, in his new book, “Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children.”

Between 1990 and 1998, Johns Hopkins established a series of homes where they had lead exposed throughout the building in which the children lived in, Rosner said. African-American mothers between the ages of 18 and 22 who had children between the ages of 6 months and 6 years were placed in these homes. Over a period of five years, the children’s blood was taken every three months to in order to measure the effects of different kinds of exposure on their blood levels, he said.

David Rosner’s novel “Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children.” investigated the idea that African-American mothers and their children were placed in lead-based homes for experiments. | Esteban Portillo/The Daily Cougar

“It’s a bizarre experiment in which children were exposed to lead and have their blood measured over five years to know which exposure was best and which one was worst,” Rosner said.

Rosner said these toxins, mainly lead, caused serious side effects to individuals.

“The children encountered in loss of IQ, behavioral problems and attention deficit disorders,” Rosner said.

In 2000, children who had elevated blood levels sued Johns Hopkins because their lawyers argued the children were exposed to a neurotoxin and were damaged because of the experiment.

After numerous court hearings, in 2001, the Court of Appeals of Maryland found the KKI guilty of encouraging families to move into lead-contaminated housing as part of a study on lead levels of children.

“Our book, ‘Lead Wars,’ is an attempt to figure out it had happened,” Rosner said. “If the court had been right, that the researchers were Nazis and evil people, this would be an easy story to tell. We would have had people doing really terrible things to kids and exposing them to horrible neurotoxins that we’ve known for over a century.”

Lead poisoning is not a single event in which a child takes in harmful quantities of lead, gets sick and must be rushed to the hospital, Rosner said; instead, lead poisoning is an insidious, month-by-month accumulation of lead in a child’s body.

Rosner said he used lead poisoning research to explore the numerous dilemmas public health must face today as it tries to develop prevention strategies for emerging illnesses in the low levels of toxic exposure.

Even though lead poisoning among children is still ongoing, it is imperative that it be secured as much as possible, Rosner said.

“There’s still a half million children who are considered to be at risk for lead poisoning in the U.S.,” Rosner said. “There is still a half million ongoing victims of this insidious toxin that we need to keep protected.”

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In a joint effort between UH’s Center for Public History and the UH Digital Library, the UH Memories project has presented its first documentary surrounding the history of the University and its relationship with the greater Houston area entitled “University of Houston, War and Growth, 1939-1950.”

“(The project is a) cross-departmental collaboration at the University of Houston aimed at producing a digital photo documentary that chronicles the history of the University as the people’s university, as it approaches its 85 year anniversary,” said Michele Reilly, head of Digital Service and one of the directors and writers for the UH Memories project.

The free film, available on the UH website, discusses the effect World War II had on the University through photos, voice-overs and interviews with prominent UH alumni such as Judge Shearn Smith and GSL Welcome Group chairman Welcome Wilson Sr., who both attended the University during the WWII era.

The 30-minute-long film documents how UH, a tuition-funded school at the time, adjusted to life during the war and the possibility of losing enrollment.

“It should say something about the spirit of the University of Houston that when it became obvious that we would be short of students during the war, we had an opportunity to serve the country and a variety of schools, and we put on a Navy training program, and we had some aviation work and two or three other programs during the war,” saidCharles Hiller, UH bursar at the time of the war in the film.

According to the video, the war and the part UH played in Houston during the time propelled the school into the future.

The video aims to offer a more interesting way to learn UH’s history than a trip to the library to read a musty book.

“What we’re trying to do is harness the unique talents and ingenuity of the university students, staff and faculty and to use the campus resources and support scholarships through digital humanities,” Reilly said.

“Using this new digital medium that we’re able to do now, we can integrate the memories of our alumni, our students and our faculty,” he said.

The UH Memories project was founded in fall 2011, the brainchild of the Center for Public History and UH Libraries. Future documentaries will discuss subjects such as the desegregation of the University and the greater Houston area as a whole.

“This was all done collaboratively,” Reilly said.

“We really felt like this was a great opportunity for our students to do historical research, to do writing for film, to making a film. We just wanted to make it a uniquely university product. The video cameras were checked out from the library … the voice actors were all university faculty, students and staff.”

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Students for a Democratic Society held its Hungry for Justice banquet with guest speaker Alison Weir to talk about Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike to protest their incarceration without due process.

Guest speaker at the Hungry for Justice banquet was If Americans Knew Executive Director Allison Weir. | Dina Kesbeh/The Daily Cougar

Weir is the executive director of If Americans Knew, a nonprofit organization she founded following an independent investigation as a freelance journalist after the second Palestinian intifada — an Arabic term that means “shaking off” and symbolizes the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — in 2001.

“I was so outraged at what I learned has been going on, not only the tragedy I saw there and the obligation I had to tell people what I saw, I just think that it’s a determination and that they won’t get away with it — that keeps me going,” Weir said.

Hunger strikes are commonly used as non-violent resistance in all parts of the world. Samer Issawi is a Palestinian on hunger strike for more than 200 days. He was among the prisoners who were initially released by Israeli authorities in an October 2011 prisoner swap.

He is hospitalized and refuses to break his fast until he is guaranteed release. Issawi has been held in administrative detention — when a person has not yet been formally charged with a crime — since July. He will continue his hunger strike until he is formally charged with a crime, given a fair trial or released.

“Being Palestinian and seeing what happens, I wish to just inform people of what’s going on. I want to tell everyone to really do more research about the conflict and read about the Nakba. Just Google Gaza, and see what you get. Truth is in the pictures that our media won’t share with us,” said nutrition senior Baraah Asaad.

Asaad was an attendee of the banquet and said he enjoyed meeting Weir.

“One of the things that sort of give me an advantage to not give up is that I didn’t know about it before. I sort of know that there are all these people out there like me that I could have reached 20 years ago if I knew that don’t know. If we could just get them in the room and just see the documentaries, photos, billboards and websites, then we could get the results we are looking for.”

Weir has spoken at many universities, lecture halls, churches, mosques and conventions and hopes to make her way to many other places to share the information and experience she had while visiting the West Bank and Gaza.

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Every year, many fall victim to the endless violence in Mexico brought on by narcotics and the cartels pushing them.

As early as 2006, the BBC tallied deaths at about 60,000. This summer, a member of the UH community will be living in Guadalajara, Jalisco in Mexico to study the side effects of this violence, with funding from the Core Fulbright Scholar Program.

“I taught a class on globalization and violence in Latin America using films, novels, short stories and testimonial narrative,” said Associate Professor Anadeli Bencomo.

“The class was very popular, and I offered it three more times. It was an intense experience for both the students and I. I decided not to teach the class again and continued with the research, and I have been invited to lecture about this topic in Mexico.”

According to the site, the Core Fulbright program sends 800 U.S. professionals internationally each year, where the receivers of this grant give lectures and conduct research in a vast spectrum of fields. To attain the grant, Bencomo was required to apply.

“I wrote a proposal, and then as a finalist, I was interviewed by a committee of Mexican scholars who asked different questions about the project,” Bencomo said.

At UH, Bencomo normally teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on Latin American studies. She will be leaving mid-summer to spend a year in Mexico. There, she will be teaching about narrative accounts written in Latin American journalism called “cronicas.”

“I will be teaching at the University of Guadalajara on the writings by the young authors who cannot avoid writing about current violence in their country,” Bencomo said.

In her year there, her presence will be missed.

“She is incredibly adept at making students feel like their opinions matter and are important, but also worth revisiting and challenging,” said UH alumnus Gabriel Barbieri. “This enables her to manage discussion classes very well and promote debate and healthy criticism in a classroom setting with a variety of proficiencies.”

Bencomo feels the work she does there will tie into her research well, and will be seeing what impact the violence of Mexico has had on journalism itself.

“Latin American new journalism is one of the core subjects of my research as a literary scholar,” Bencomo said. “Journalism in Mexico has a long tradition, and reporting on the new realities and escalating violence is a recent version of these types of engaged writing.”

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The beginning of the semester is often times hectic for students as they wait in long lines at the University Bookstore only to find out the books they need for their classes aren’t available.

According to Texas House Bill 33, all Texas public universities are required to set a deadline for faculty to submit the textbook list for the upcoming semester in order for students to better prepare for their courses.

“The name and number of the textbook should be readily available when registering for the class so we have enough time to purchase the textbook,” said hotel and restaurant management junior Prashay Deo.

Each semester, the University sets its deadline and each year, the University has many professors that fail to submit their textbook list. If all faculty would comply and meet the deadlines, students would be able to get higher buy back rates for their used textbooks because the UH bookstore would know which books will be reused and be able to give students better rates.

With tuition prices rising, textbooks have become somewhat of a financial burden to students. If faculty were to submit their list on time, it would allow the bookstore more time to shop around for the best deals. In turn, students wouldn’t have to pay top dollar for some books they could have gotten for a fraction of the price.

At the start of the semester, professors hand out the syllabus with their expectations, textbook requirements and a calendar of exam dates. However, since most professors don’t submit their list on time, the textbooks are not in the bookstore and students don’t have an adequate amount of time to study by the time they get their hands on it.

“It makes it difficult for students because professors start lecturing the first week of class, and things start to pick up, but students can’t study because they don’t have the textbooks,” said Justina George, a biology and nutrition senior.

It’s quite easy for professors to let the University know what textbooks they will need, according to a press release issued last month. Professors have five convenient ways of letting the bookstore know what books they need: They can submit the request online, which is the fastest and easiest way; through email; by phone; mail or fax; or by directly dropping off the request at the bookstore.

The deadline for the summer 2013 session was Friday. Professors should make it a point to submit their lists on time so that students registering for the summer session can get their textbooks on time, especially since the summer sessions go by at a much faster pace.

“I hope professors put themselves in our shoes and make the textbook information available so students can have a heads up and be prepared when classes start,” George said.

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UH is one of seven universities chosen to partner with China in an effort to build a social work education program. The Graduate College of Social Work is a part of the China Collaborative, a project implemented by the Council on Social Work Education to assist in executing the Chinese government’s goal of having 2 million social workers by the year 2020.

“Our collaboration, and those of the other six US universities, will help our Chinese colleagues consider a variety of curricula models and resulting practice models and theories,” said Ira Colby, dean of the Graduate College of Social Work. “Conversely, U.S. programs will create opportunities for their faculties and students to experience the impact of cultural diversity and difference.”

So far, the GCSW is partnered with four schools in and around the city of Shanghai. Director of International Social Work Education and GCSW professor Patrick Leung emphasized the importance of establishing a social work program in China and what lasting impressions UH wants to leave after the program’s conclusion.

“This is a very rewarding experience,” Leung said. “Students and staff will learn from our partners about the problems that people in China are facing.”

Rural areas in China are dealing with families being torn apart in search for work. Children are being left in their grandparents’ care, while their parents migrate to urban areas to find jobs. Many of the elderly are also left alone in these areas while their children travel to the city for employment, Leung said.

UH’s involvement with the China Collaborative will include exchanges between students and staff of the institutions in the partnership, participation in U.S. or Chinese-based collaborative conferences and possible field practicum opportunities for students and staff in the U.S. and China.

“Multiple Asian organizations like Asian American Family Services serve the Chinese community, and its multicultural services are very beneficial to (Chinese exchange) students,” Leung said.

Leung said students in the GCSW are able to begin traveling overseas in summer 2014. They can spend a semester in Shanghai learning about Chinese culture and the lifestyle of its civilians. For students who can’t afford to make the trip, Leung said other options are available.

“We will use Skype to do interchange lectures between the two countries,” Leung said.

Along with Leung, the GCSW has two other professors working on the project. Award-winning social work professor Monit Cheung and professor Dennis Kao will also take part in seeing this project through.

Throughout the five-year partnership when UH will have schools in China, Leung hopes to leave a lasting impression that participants can take with them at the conclusion of the project.

Members of the China Collaborative will meet in October and November at the Annual Council on Social Education in Dallas to discuss the goals and plans the U.S. will put in place to make the project successful.

“We want to share our curriculum with them,” Cheung said. “We want them to take the strength from our (social work) program and develop their own curriculum to fit the needs of their community.”

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Two months ago, the shooting on the Lone Star College campus brought the nationwide debate on gun control too close to home.

Some UH students are speaking out about the movement to allow licensed concealed handgun holders on campus through an organization called Cougars for Concealed Carry on Campus.

“It’s simply not a matter of opinion; it’s a constitutional right,” said organizational leadership and supervision senior Emily Posch, the secretary of the organization.

“Our forefathers made sure that we would not be rendered defenseless against the government or anyone else. Removing the ability to legally carry guns in any environment doesn’t make people safer. The law-abiding citizens won’t carry, but the criminals will.”

A main focus of the student organization is to push for the passage of House Bill 972 in the Texas legislature, which would allow concealed handgun licensees to carry firearms into buildings of publicly owned colleges and universities. The bill has been met with a wall of opposition and controversy in legislature and was delayed in committee Friday.

“An imaginary line should not determine my natural right to defend myself,” said supply chain management junior Antoine Hythier, the president of Cougars for Concealed Carry on Campus and a concealed handgun license holder.

“House Bill 972 would only allow CHL holders to carry concealed handguns on campus. This is the largest problem when polls are conducted because most people believe it applies to just anyone, which is not the case. CHL holders are statistically safer than the general public.”

Likewise, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, since Texas Governor George W. Bush passed the law allowing concealed handgun licenses in 1995, murder rates fell 50 percent faster than the national average, rape rates fell 93 percent faster in the first year after enactment and 500 percent fast in the second.

As Cougars for Concealed Carry on Campus continue its work to raise awareness, there are still many students that oppose weapons of any kind on campus.

“Mostly I am against the idea of students having guns on campus because I do not feel safer in any way by the presence of guns,” said sociology graduate student Phoenicia Fares. “Gun sightings on campus should be alarming and a red flag that something is wrong — not commonplace.”

Other students also agree that guns on campus only create a more dangerous atmosphere.

“I get that people just want the power to protect themselves,” said history sophomore Eric Kao. “But having concealed handguns creates a hostile environment of mistrust. I think it will be a cause to worry, and will just exacerbate the situation. People would feel safer with more transparent police patrols and activity.”

Although Cougars for Concealed Carry on Campus face disagreement, students in favor for concealed handguns on campus are beginning to speak up. Some argue that concealed handguns in licensed hands are simply a measure of self-defense.

“Those that do carry legally, once concealed carry is allowed, will not act as a supplement to the police force or a vigilante force,” said mechanical engineer freshman Leo Bartos. “Seeking out and trying to stop an active shooter situation is, and will remain, the job of campus police and HPD.”

Cougar for Concealed Carry on Campus also has the support of statistics found nationwide, Porsch said.

Of the universities across the nation that have allowed concealed carry in the last decade, none of the schools have had any gun-related threats, suicides, violence, or incidents, she said.

“The numbers just speak for themselves,” Posch said.

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