Reminder: Time to get your flu shot
Indiana University staff, faculty and students whose work or class schedule requires them to be regularly present on campus will be required to get an annual flu vaccine during the fall 2020 semester.
To receive a vaccine at a campus clinic at no cost, make an appointment through the Student Health Center’s online scheduler. Clinics will be offered on the IU Bloomington campus at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall from 3 to 9 p.m. Oct. 15 and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 17.
Those who choose to receive a flu vaccine somewhere other than an IU flu clinic or campus health center will need to fill out the Flu Vaccine Reporting Form to let IU know you have received a vaccination. If you’re requesting an exemption, use the exemption request form.
IU Foundation plans for leadership change
After serving for eight years as Indiana University Foundation president and CEO and presiding over one of the most successful university fundraising campaigns ever at a public university, Dan Smith will be returning to the faculty of the IU Kelley School of Business.
Under Smith’s leadership, IU shattered the goal of For All: The Indiana University Bicentennial Campaign. Concluding last month, the campaign raised nearly $3.9 billion to strengthen the university’s mission to ensure the success of IU students, IU faculty and the state. Of all university campaigns completed in the past 10 years, IU’s is the 12th largest overall and the third largest among public universities.
Smith will step down as IU Foundation president at the end of the 2020 calendar year. J T. Forbes, CEO of the IU Alumni Association, will succeed Smith as interim president and CEO of the foundation beginning in 2021 while also retaining his current position at the alumni association. He will serve in this role until the appointment of a new IU Foundation president.
IU student-athletes ready to vote
Ten IU Athletics’ programs have 100 percent of their student-athletes registered to vote in the Nov. 3 election, while several other IU Athletics programs were closing in on 100 percent registration.
The IU programs that have already reached the 100 percent benchmark are men’s basketball, women’s basketball, football, field hockey, volleyball, women’s soccer, men’s tennis, water polo, softball and rowing.
IU’s voter registration efforts are part of the Big Ten Voter Registration Initiative announced by Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren in June. The nonpartisan, conference-wide initiative encourages student-athletes to take part in the electoral process. Indiana University’s Excellence Academy has been offering IU student-athletes ongoing programming and resources to inform them about how to get information on and evaluate officeholders and candidates, and logistics on how to register and vote.
Ostrom Workshop tackles space debris
A new project is tackling how to manage the problem of space debris, employing Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work on the governance of common resources.
More than 128 million pieces of debris smaller than a half inch are in orbit, and about 34,000 pieces of large debris. Societies rely on satellites for various forms of communication, and satellites can be damaged by the debris.
The project is co-led by Scott Shackelford, associate professor of business law and ethics in the IU Kelley School of Business and executive director of IU’s Ostrom Workshop, and Jean-Frédéric Morin, professor at Université Laval in Québec.
Their project, called “Astro-environmentalism: The polycentric governance of the Earth’s orbital space,” uses Elinor Ostrom’s work describing how groups can manage shared resources.
Grant helps train citizens for opioid overdose events
Researchers from Indiana University’s Prevention Insights are expanding their work to recruit and train citizen responders for opioid overdose events, thanks to a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
Prevention Insights at the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington, in partnership with REAL Prevention LLC, will use the $213,000 grant to recruit individuals from a previous IU study on an Opioid Rapid Response System. The study’s goal is to learn more about the participants’ experiences responding to an overdose event, how they were recruited and trained in naloxone administration, and their motivation to become cross-trained in naloxone and CPR administration in Clark County.
The team will then use that information to develop training and effective messaging to recruit and train citizen responders in Boone and Hancock counties.
Study: Suicide risk can be altered by social ‘sameness’
Similarities among individuals living in the same communities can dramatically change their risk of dying by suicide, according to a new study by Indiana University researchers.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined the relationship between suicide and social “sameness” – living in communities with other individuals who share common social characteristics, such as employment and marital status, ethnicity or place of birth.
