By Maya Bell
UM News

The National Weather Service’s Robert Molleda, center, presents UM’s  President Donna E. Shalala and Emergency Management Director Scoot Burnotes with the institution’s StormReady certficate.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (May 28, 2014) — Days before the June 1 start of the 2014 hurricane season, the University of Miami officially earned the National Weather Service’s “StormReady” designation on Tuesday, making it one of about 150 institutions of higher learning to be recognized for proactively improving the timeliness and effectiveness of its monitoring and warning systems for hazardous weather.

“A lot of it is administrative; a lot of it is checking boxes, but the bottom line is it ensures that the University is doing the right things when it comes to making sure that the students here and on the other campuses are ready and all the plans and procedures are in place to mitigate a lot the impacts,’’ Robert Molleda, South Florida’s warning coordination meteorologist, said in presenting UM President Donna E. Shalala the weather service’s StormReady certificate. “You guys really have a good system here. You should be congratulated for that.”

To earn the StormReady designation, the University enhanced both its system for monitoring local weather conditions, and its 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center, and demonstrated it has more than one way to receive and alert students, faculty, and staff about severe weather. It also had to develop a formal hazardous weather plan, which included training severe weather spotters, and holding emergency exercises.

Enhancements to the local weather monitoring system include the addition of a weather dashboard accessible via the Gables campus cable TV system. Available on the new Channel 100 OEM-HD, the dashboard shows maps, satellite imagery and other tools campus public safety officials will use to monitor weather and issue alerts, complementing the University’s existing Emergency Notification Network.

“This is something we are very proud of,’’ Scott G. Burnotes, director of the Office of Emergency Management, said of UM’s StormReady designation. He noted that it took about a year and the contributions from many people in departments across the University to earn it.

They included members of the student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society, the University Police Department, the public safety and emergency preparedness offices at the Miller School of Medicine/UHealth and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and facilities personnel from all three campuses.

“Everybody else did the work,” Shalala quipped in accepting the certificate, which she called “really great.”

Maya Bell can be reached at 305-284-7972.

The 8^th Annual Happy Hour benefiting the ALS Recovery Fund will be held Tuesday, June 3, at Marlins Stadium, when the Miami Marlins take on the Tampa Bay Rays. A silent auction and raffle starts at 5:30 p.m. and the first pitch is at 7:10 p.m. A portion of each ticket will benefit the ALS Recovery Fund, which is dedicated to raising awareness, promoting research and education, and raising funds for research and patient care provided by physicians and scientists at the Miller School of Medicine’s Department of Neurology. Commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease of the nervous system. Happy Hour tickets, which cost $30 each and must be purchased in advance, include standing room in the Clevelander, one complimentary domestic beer or glass of wine, and appetizers. To purchase tickets, click here.

By Marie Guma-Diaz
UM News

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (May 29, 2014) — A form of speech known as vocal fry that is low in pitch and creaky sounding is increasingly common among young American women. Although previous research has suggested that this manner of speaking is associated with education and upward mobility, a new study conducted by a University of Miami researcher and others indicates that vocal fry is actually perceived negatively, particularly in a labor market context.

Published online in the open-access journal PLOS ONE (The Public Library of Science ONE), the study indicates that women who speak in vocal fry are perceived as less attractive, less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, and ultimately less hirable.

UM’s Casey A. Klofstad, associate professor of political science and the corresponding author of the study, said these findings suggest that perceptions of speakers based on their voices can influence hiring preferences for female job candidates.

“Our results show that the vocal fry fad is a hindrance to young women who are trying to find work,” he said. “Lack of experience due to their younger age, a historically poor economic environment, and sex discrimination are all barriers to labor market success for this demographic. Given this context, our findings suggest that young women would be best advised to avoid using vocal fry when trying to secure employment.”

For the study, the researchers recorded seven young adult females ages 19-27, and seven young adult males ages 20-30, speaking the phrase “thank you for considering me for this opportunity” in both their normal tone of voice and in vocal fry. The pairs of recordings were then listened to by 800 study participants (400 women and 400 men).

After listening to each pair of voices, participants were asked to choose whether the person speaking in vocal fry or normal voice was the more educated, competent, trustworthy, and attractive of the pair. The study participants were also asked which person they would hire.

Participants selected the speakers of the normal voices more than 80% of the time for all five judgments. The results also show that while perceptions of education, competence, trustworthiness, and attractiveness each affected willingness to hire, perceptions of trust had the greatest influence. That is, the study suggests that job candidates who use vocal fry are not preferred particularly because they are perceived as untrustworthy.

“Humans prefer vocal characteristics that are typical of population norms,” Klofstad said. “While strange-sounding voices might be more memorable because they are novel, humans find ‘average’ sounding voices to be more attractive. It is possible that speakers of vocal fry are generally perceived less favorably because vocal fry is accompanied by a dramatic reduction in voice pitch relative to normal speech.”

Interestingly, the study also shows that while vocal fry is perceived negatively in both male and female speakers, women who use the affectation are perceived more negatively than men who use it. One explanation is that because women have higher voices than men on average, the lowering of voice pitch via vocal fry results in a sex-atypical voice pitch modulation for women.

“Previous studies show that when women try to lower the pitch of their voice they are perceived as less attractive,” Klofstad said. “You could view the results we found as an extension of this to an economic context, whereby deliberate lowering of voice pitch in a sex-atypical manner by women through vocal fry results in negative perceptions by potential employers.”

The study is titled “Vocal fry may undermine the success of young women in the labor market.” The other co-authors are Rindy C. Anderson, research scientist in biology, at Duke University; William J. Mayew, and Mohan Venkatchalam, associate professors in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (May 27, 2014) — For the fifth time, the School of Nursing and Health Studies has been awarded a grant from the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) New Careers in Nursing Scholarship Program (NCIN).

One of 52 schools of nursing that will comprise the final cohort of the program, the School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS) will receive $120,000 in the 2014-2015 academic year to support a dozen traditionally underrepresented students who are switching careers to nursing through the school’s accelerated baccalaureate degree program. NCIN is a program of the RWJF and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN).

“New Careers in Nursing has made amazing strides in helping schools of nursing recruit and retain diverse students in these competitive and rigorous accelerated degree programs,” said David Krol, the foundation’s senior program officer. “Through supporting these institutions, NCIN is working to increase the diversity of our nursing workforce, while also assisting schools of nursing in making their institutions more inclusive. The leadership, mentoring and other support these institutions provide are helping to prepare a diverse nursing workforce able to meet the challenges associated with building a culture of health in our nation.”

Each NCIN scholar already has earned a bachelor’s degree in another field, and is making a transition to nursing through an accelerated nursing degree program, which prepares students to assume the role of registered nurse in as little as 12 to 18 months.

Since 2008, the NCIN program has distributed 3,517 scholarships to students at 130 unique schools of nursing. This year, funding for 400 scholarships was granted to 52 schools of nursing. To date, the RWJF has provided SONHS a total of $720,000, enabling the institution to award $10,000 scholarships to students in its accelerated B.S.N. program. In addition to the scholarship funds, the SONHS provides its NCIN scholars with a pre-immersion curriculum, mentoring, tutoring, and leadership training to help them succeed in the program.

“NCIN scholarship funds represent a remarkable contribution to our school and to the nursing profession,” said Dean Nilda (Nena) Montalvo Peragallo. “The vision behind these scholarships has transformed not only the experience of our students and the nursing workforce, but also the lives of all the patients, families and communities who will be impacted by our scholars’ future accomplishments.” 

“Nursing and nursing education are at a critical juncture right now, and NCIN’s exemplary approach to supporting nursing schools is helping to strengthen both,” said Eileen Breslin, president of the AACN. “NCIN’s creative, innovative, and responsive approach to providing grantees with tools to ensure academic success will result in lasting changes at nursing schools nationwide. The NCIN program has truly raised the bar for recruitment, retention, mentoring and leadership development for nursing students from groups underrepresented in nursing.”

Led by UM President Donna E. Shalala, the Institute of Medicine’s 2010 report, “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health,” recommends increasing the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree or higher, and increasing the diversity of students to create a nursing workforce prepared to meet the healthcare demands of diverse populations across the lifespan. NCIN is helping to advance those recommendations by enabling schools to expand student capacity and by encouraging more diversity.

By bringing more nurses into the profession at the baccalaureate and master’s degree levels, the NCIN program also helps to address the nation’s nurse faculty shortage. This trend is reflected in the NCIN scholars, as 91 percent of the students receiving funding in the first three years of the program indicated a desire to advance their education to the master’s and doctoral levels.

For more information about the UM SOHNS accelerated program, visit miami.edu/sonhs/index.php/sonhs/academics/bachelor_programs/bsn_programs/accelerated_bsn. To learn more about the NCIN program, visit NewCareersInNursing.org.



James M. Tien

James M. Tien, who, as dean of the University of Miami’s College of Engineering for the past seven years, led successful efforts to double the number of women on the faculty, increase research expenditures, and boost enrollments at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels, has announced he will step down from his post effective August 31, 2015.

“It has indeed been my privilege to have served in this capacity,” said Tien, who came to UM in 2007 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he served as the Yamada Corporation Professor and founding chair of the school’s Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems. Read the full story