Greetings Ghost and Goblins!!!!

I hope that each of you have started the school year off on the “right” foot and on the Honor roll or close to it this term!!! Remember,

education comes first! The AIMS motto “we work hard and play even harder”!!!! The road you are on right now may seem a little rocky…but taking the correct path can make the journey smoother!

As a reminder, if you change addresses (home or email), please notify us ASAP. There were several messages left on the AIMS Face-book page (after the fact) telling us that they had not received the ACT waiver or various other information. If we do not have your cor-rect address, your mail will get delayed. Help us out and do your part!

This semester, we have

two special volunteers in our office who are working on independ-ent living skills and of-fice skills. You will see a small note from each one of them in this month’s newsletter. Please make them feel welcome to the AIMS family when you meet them!

Good luck to all of you who are taking the ACT this month!!! We are proud of you! One step closer to your college goal!!! Take care and study hard.

Yours in education,

WÉÜ|á VÄtÜ~@ftÜÜ

Director’s

Chair

AIMS Achievements!

Congratula-tions Jade Townsley for being selected as a Paxton

Scholars Program Partici-pant.

Congratula-tions Aalecia Crittendon on being accepted to the University

of Tennessee at Martin.

Congratula-tions to Vivian Par-ham for hav-ing out-standing grades.

Director’s Chair 1

AIMS Achievements 1

Coordinators’ Corners 2

Volunteer Messages 3

October Birthdays 3

Career Profile 4

Parents’ Corner 6

Inside this issue:

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Volume 12, Issue 7

October 2012

KY STEM Girls Collaborative 7

Schedule-At-A-Glance 8

Hello AIMS Family:

Looking forward to seeing several Bridge Students here on Saturday, October 6th! There is a lot of work for you and I hope to assist you as you prepare to begin your journey into college. If you cannot make this meeting, please remember to contact me so that we can set up a time to discuss the meeting and complete the paperwork necessary for you to remain in the Bridge Program.

School is in full swings for most of you and very soon you will see Evan and I as we visit with you, our current AIMS Participants, and recruit new members. Study hard and keep those grades up! We will be checking in with your counselors and getting your current grade reports as well. You know we always have some special treats in store for those of you who stay on top of the academic game.

I can’t believe it’s already

October. But I am very excited to see each my AIMS children and I hope your counselors have good news to report to me. Remember, we’re here to help if you need us!

Sincerely,

Stephen D. Keene

then you can expect 50% in return. But, hard work pays interest! If you give 100%, you will be rewarded with a return greater than 100%!

As always, if you are having any issues with classes, do NOT procrastinate. Seek help immediately. I also challenge you all to step out of your comfort zone this year and take part in an ex-tra-curricular activity that you might

Greetings!

It’s a cold and rainy October 1st here on the Murray State campus. Can you believe it is October?? Christmas will be here before we know it! I trust you are all working harder this year than you ever have and with your FUTURE in mind. Remember, you will get out whatever you put in—that’s just how life works! So if you’re giving 50%,

not normally do. You may surprise yourself !

Let us know what you need. We are for you.

Evan O’Neal

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COORDINATOR’S CORNER—AIMS I

COORDINATOR’S CORNER—AIMS II

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DORIS CLARK-SARR

PA-LAMIN SARR

DANTAVIUS SWIFT

EMANUEL ABBAGE

KEYONNA ALLEN-WOODS

ADAM HENDERSON

YA’SHEMA KIMBLE

Hello:

My name is Krystal Walker. I like the colors purple and pink and I love dogs. I also love kids

and I like to tell jokes and have fun. I enjoy shopping and going out to eat. I also enjoy making new friends and meeting new people.

I enjoy swimming, going to the movies, and roller skating. I would like to thank Dr. Sarr for

letting me volunteer with AIMS.

Krystal Walker

Hello:

My name is Angie Theis. I en-

joy making crafts and especially like making things for people who come into my life.

I would like to meet new people and talk about nice things. I would also like to show people that I can live on my own.

Angie Theis

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OCTOBER BIRTHDAYS!

Hello from Krystal Walker and Angie Theis: Volunteers

French epidemiologist Emilie Counil often encounters suffering—much of which, she believes, is unnecessary. Since January 2011, Counil has led a multidisciplinary team at the Paris 13 University, working to link the occupa-tional history of newly diagnosed can-cer patients with exposure to workplace carcinogens. Among other projects, herGISCOP93 team examines individ-ual cases to determine whether patients can legitimately claim that their disease is linked to occupational exposure so that they can seek financial compensa-tion. This, they hope, will provide new incentives for employers to prevent future exposure.

One obstacle to cancer prevention, Counil says, is poor public awareness of the health effects of workplace con-ditions. Another, she says, is that at least in France, occupational health issues are rarely factored in to public health strategies. Counil aims to draw public attention to carcinogen exposure at work so that “occupational cancers … are put on the political agenda as part of public health policy.”

Trials and disappointments

Given the opportunity, Counil says, she probably would have studied medicine. But she needed funding because her family could not offer her financial support. She won a scholarship—but it was to attend an engineering school.

Soon after arriving at the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Envi-ronmental Sciences(AgroParisTech), Counil decided she couldn’t see herself as an industry engineer, the job the school’s master’s degree was preparing her for. So she specialized in the for-mulation of food products and, in her third and final year, leveraged that ex-pertise into a 6-month internship with the French Institute of Research for Developmentresearching malnutrition in Burkina Faso. This first contact with public health issues was “a revelation,” Counil says.

After obtaining her engineering di-

ploma in 2000, Counil earned a 1-year professional Master of Science degree in public health from the Paris 7 Uni-versity and the French School of Public Health (now called EHESP) in Paris. She spent the required internship at a French nongovernmental organization, assessing the environmental, health, and social risks associated with arsenic contamination in Mali, which is caused by gold mining. “At the time, there was no transparency. The information given by the company was very scarce,” she says. The experience convinced Counil of the usefulness of research to inform the decision-making process. Deter-mined now to pursue a Ph.D., and again in need of financial support, she returned—ironically—to AgroParisTech to work under the supervision of Philippe Verger, her former professor there.

Starting in 2002, Counil developed epidemiological approaches to assess exposure to mycotoxin via consump-tion of contaminated goods such as coffee and cocoa, and the potential health effects of that exposure. She wanted to know whether the current regulatory limits were appropriate. She discovered a “double standard,” and also what she calls the “precautionary principle paradox” in international pub-lic health. Mycotoxin exposure, she learned, was probably sufficient to cause disease only in highly exposed groups, such as those working in agri-culture in developing countries. Rich countries, meanwhile, set strict regula-tory limits to protect their consumers, which threatens farmers' livelihoods. Dismayed by the inequities, she re-turned to fieldwork.

After graduating in 2005, Counil took a position as a field epidemiologist with the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS). She joined one of InVS’s Interregional Cells of Epidemi-ology (CIRE), which carry out disease surveillance and advise decision-makers on emerging public health is-sues. After a rare, nonoccupational case of mesothelioma was diagnosed, a

group of people who had unknowingly lived for 40 years near an asbestos-grinding plant in Aulnay-sous-Bois, near Paris, asked the ministry of health to investigate their environmental ex-posure and possible health effects

During her work at InVS, Counil dem-onstrated that she was capable of “a very high scientific rigor,” Hubert Is-nard, the scientific coordinator of her CIRE, wrote in a recommendation let-ter he shared with Science Careers. The letter notes Counil's receptiveness to nonepidemiological approaches, her collaborations with modelers to under-stand how asbestos dust disperses, and her embrace of historical and social research to compensate for a dearth of company data. Counil also has “a very strong ability to relate with others, which allowed her to be recognized and accepted by all the stakeholders,” Is-nard wrote.

Counil enjoyed the work and found the project exciting—then politics in-truded. The publication of her report, which linked cases of cancer to envi-ronmental asbestos exposure and sought to motivate a national discus-sion, was delayed as authorities scram-bled to make a public announcement. Afraid the report wouldn't be pub-lished, she quit her post in frustration.

A suitable track

Counil started a postdoc at Laval Uni-versity Hospital Research Center in Quebec, Canada, in November 2006. There, she compared the exposure of Quebec and Greenland Inuit communi-ties to industrial trans fats from food consumption. She found that people in Greenland had much lower levels of trans fats in their blood than the Que-bec group, a difference she linked to more aggressive food regulations in Denmark, where Greenland's imported commercial food came from. Con-cerned about the health of exposed peo-ple in northern Quebec, she headed out into the field to advocate for better-quality foods to be sold in local stores.

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CAREER PROFILE: Documenting Exposure for Disease Prevention By Eliasabeth Pain

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“This was really a very exciting project because I really could go from the gen-eration of scientific information" to "public health action in the field,” she says.

After about 3 years, Counil and her partner, who had come with her to Quebec to do neurophysiology re-search, decided to return to France. At a conference, Counil served on a panel with French public health researcher and advocate Annie Thébaud-Mony, whom she knew from her days working on asbestos exposure. Thébaud-Mony invited Counil to join her GISCOP93 occupational cancer research team at the Paris 13 University. Counil was invited to join the group, Thébaud-Mony writes in an e-mail to Science Careers, because of her sci-entific and human understanding of public health issues, her strength as an epidemiologist, and their “shared vision of public health research as a produc-tion of multidisciplinary knowledge for action and of quantitative and qualita-tive approaches as complementary.”

Four months later, in January 2010, Counil won a research grant from the French National Cancer Insti-tute and a 3-year tenure-track profes-sorship in epidemiology at EHESP, her public health alma matter. Soon after,

Thébaud-Mony retired and Counil took over the GISCOP93 project

Since the survey kicked off in 2002, the GISCOP93 team has put together a database of more than 1000 cancer pa-tients and their occupational carcinogen exposure. Counil added a quantitative approach to the project’s previous qualitative approach. Her aim is to identify industrial sectors and occupa-tional activities where carcinogen ex-posure is common and to determine how occupational exposure relates to social inequalities. She also analyzes how social inequalities impact patients’ chances of getting financial compensa-tion.

Toward greater transparency

One difficulty Counil has encountered is a lack of transparency—which has contributed to a paucity of accessible information—when it comes to occupa-tional risks. “What occurred 50 years ago, in large part, we will never be able to reconstruct,” she says. “We can’t build efficient public health programs if we don’t build on history.” She often finds that her efforts to win the atten-tion of industry and policymakers yield disappointing results. She equates her relationship to government and indus-try to a trick she recalls children play-ing, pouring itching powder into each

other’s shirts. Another difficulty, she says, is finding adequate channels to communicate her results to stake-holders and motivate public discussion of the issues.

Most of all, she is frustrated at the slow pace of change. “Occupational health is an especially difficult public health field to make things change because there are very strong forces operating and enormous economical stakes,” she says. Yet she finds in this inequity a source of motivation.

Progress may be slow, but sometimes it comes. Counil’s asbestos report was published shortly after she left for Que-bec, and the municipality is now over-seeing the dismantlement of the asbes-tos-producing site. Local public health authorities funded a feasibility study—Counil has contributed—to assess what medical support could be provided to the exposed population. She will soon present the study—which, she says, offers arguments for and against medi-cal support—to health authorities. “We don’t know if they will decide to do something or not,” she says. But “at least it will make the process transpar-ent.”

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CAREER PROFILE: Documenting Exposure for Disease Prevention (continued)

The National Household Education Survey found the following for 3-5 year olds not yet enrolled in kindergar-ten in 1999:

• 61% whose mother's highest education was less than high school were read to three or more times in the past week by a family member, compared with

• 76% whose mother had a high school diploma or equivalent,

• 85% whose mother had com-pleted vocational education or some college,

• 91% whose mother had a col-

lege degree, and

• 93% whose mother had a gradu-ate/professional degree or training.

• 36% visited a library at least once in the last month with a family member,

• 39% did arts and crafts three or more times in the past week with a family member,

• 64% were taught letters, words, or numbers three or more times in the past week by a family member,

• 81% were read to three or more times in the past week by a family member,

• 50% were told a story three or more times in the past week by a family member, and

• 49% were taught songs and mu-sic three or more times in the past week by a family member.

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found the following for kinder-garteners in the fall of 1998:

• 46% of parents read to their chil-

dren every day.

• 62% of parents with a high so-cioeconomic status read to their chil-dren every day, compared to

• 36% of parents with a low socio-economic status.

The 1997 National Survey of Amer-ica's Families found the following children were read to or told stories fewer than 3 days a week:

• 24% of children living below 200% of the poverty level, compared to 10% of children living above 200% of the poverty level, and

• 24% of children in one-parent families, compared to 15% of chil-dren living in two-parent families.

The National Household Education Survey found the following for parents with children in grades K-12 in 1999:

• 92.0% reported attending a gen-eral meeting, a scheduled meeting with a teacher, a school event, act-ing as a volunteer, or serving on a committee,

• 79.0% reported attending a gen-

eral meeting in their child's school,

• 73.0% reported attending a scheduled meeting with a teacher; and

• 66.2% reported attending a

school event.

Parents who reported acting as a volunteer or serving on a committee in 1999:

• 13.5% had less than a high school education,

• 26.7% had a high school di-ploma/GED,

• 38.1% had some col-lege/vocational/technical education,

• 50.4% had a bachelor's degree,

and

• 54.6% had a gradu-ate/professional school education.

Percentage of parents who reported attending a school event in 1999:

• 39.2% had less than a high

school education,

• 59.0% had a high school di-ploma/GED,

• 67.2% had some col-lege/vocational/technical education,

• 76.2% had a bachelor's degree,

and

• 79.0% had a gradu-ate/professional school education.

Percentage of parents who reported attending a scheduled meeting with a teacher in 1999:

• 61.6% had less than a high school education,

• 69.6% had a high school di-

ploma/GED,

• 74.4% had some col-lege/vocational/technical education,

• 79.1% had a bachelor's degree, and

• 75.3% had a gradu-

ate/professional school education.

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PARENTS’ CORNER: PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN LEARNING STATISTICS

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We are pleased to announce that we will be holding our 4th Annual Ken-tucky Girls STEM Collaborative Con-ference at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY on October 12, 2012. Below is a press release – please distribute widely – we hope to have a great turnout from across the state. Conference to Address STEM Oppor-tunities for Kentucky Girls BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (September 7, 2012) On Friday, October 12, 2012, the Kentucky Girls STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Collaborative, in partnership with The Center for Gifted Studies at Western Kentucky University, will hold its Fourth Annual Conference, “Collaboration: The Key to Successful Programming for Girls in STEM,” at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY. Educators, counselors, business and community leaders, parents and girls are invited to come meet others with a strong desire to see girls discover op-portunities available to them within the STEM fields. Conference attendees will explore up-and-coming career op-portunities in science, technology, en-gineering and math and learn proactive steps to help girls overcome roadblocks to their success in these fields. Keynote speakers include Dr. Claudia Rawn, Faculty, University of Tennes-see, Material Science & Engineering and Senior Research & Development, Oakridge National Laboratory, Materi-als & Technology Division, Oakridge, TN. Mr. Brian Mefford, Founder & Chairperson, Connected Nation, and Mr. Ron Crouch, Director, Research &

Statistics, Kentucky Education & Workforce Development Cabinet. For the girls attending the conference, we will have young women in STEM fields share their strategies for success. Exhibitors from prominent Kentucky industries as well as girl-serving or-ganizations and programs will be avail-able to meet with conference attendees. Lunch will be provided on-site. On Saturday, October 13, in partner-ship with Western Kentucky Univer-sity's Ogden College of Science and Engineering and the SKyTeach Pro-gram, we are hosting a “Girls STEM Day” from 12:00Noon – 3:00p.m. on the WKU campus. Registration is $5.00/student and includes a pizza lunch. We welcome girls in grades five through eight to join us for an after-noon of hands-on, minds-on explora-tion into science, technology, engineer-ing, and mathematics. Female STEM practitioners and educators will lead girls through activities that mirror real-world STEM tasks and highlight crea-tive and innovative problem solving. Participants will also learn how to best prepare themselves to study STEM fields in high school and college. Maxi-mum capacity: 150 girls. Please visit www.kygirlsstem.com/ProgramsEvents/AnnualConference2012.html to register for the conference and “Girls STEM Day.” Registration for the conference is $25 per person ($10 of that fee will go toward sponsoring future Kentucky Girls STEM events). Registration for the conference begins at 8:30a.m. Wel-come begins at 9:00a.m. We look for-ward to seeing you there! (PD credit offered for all teachers and EILI credit for school administrators and counsel-ors).

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KY GIRLS STEM COLLABORATIVE

AIMS STAFF Dr. Doris Clark—Sarr, Director 270-809-3367 dclarksarr@murraystate.edu Stephen D. Keene, Coordinator AIMS I 270-809-3368 skeene@murraystate.edu Evan O’Neal, Coordinator AIMS II 270-809-3526 eoneal@murraystate.edu Gail Woolridge, Administrative Assistant 270-809-5429 gwoolridge@murraystate.edu

240 Blackburn Science Building

Murray, KY 42071

ADVENTURES IN MATH & SCIENCE

October TBA Coordinator School Visits

6th MANDATORY Bridge Meeting 1 10:00am—1:00pm Blackburn 251

27th ACT Test Date

November TBA Summer Employment Advertisement

3rd AIMS Fall Workshop/MANDATORY Bridge Meeting 2 Blackburn 251

December 8th Honor Roll Patti’s Trip 8th ACT Test Date

15th Honor Roll Memphis Trip Dinner Texas de Brazil Jersey Boys (Musical)

January 2013 TBA Summer Employment Interviews

February TBA Summer Employment Interviews (continued)

2nd MANDATORY Bridge Meeting 3

9th ACT Test Date

March 23rd Honor Roll Trip Dinner TBA

April TBA College Tour

13th ACT Test Date

27th AIMS Summer Orientation 9:00am—12:00pm 251 Blackburn Science Bldg

May 27th Bridge Move-In Day

June 8th ACT Test Date

10th Undergraduate Move-In Day

29th—July 3rd End of Summer Trip

Schedule-At-A-Glance

Phone: 1-877-424-6777

Fax: 270-809-4351

E-mail: www.murraystate.edu/aims

Murraystate.edu/aims