By Kathy Henry Dowell

Every day, USC outreach programs positively touch the lives of thousands of South Carolinians outside the walls of the University’s eight campuses. More than 200 USC-sponsored programs and partnerships create new learning opportunities and improve quality of life for innumerable citizens, young and old. • Faculty and students involved in these partnerships and outreach programs give their time and talent; without their commitment, many of these programs and the benefits they bring would not exist. • Here, then, are four such programs in which USC faculty and students are reaching out to South Carolinians.

Midway Physics Day

Ah, the grand tradition of the S.C. State Fair: watching cotton candy swirl in a tub, catching your breath at the top of the Ferris wheel, gathering data on force and acceleration.

OK, so that last activity isn’t a tradition. But if members of USC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy have their way, it will become one for middle- and high-school students in South Carolina. In October, nearly 5,000 students attended the department’s seventh-annual Midway Physics Day, an event that offers the unbeatable combination of fun, physics, and free fair tickets.

You must be this tall to ride
Standing in the massive shadow of the Drop of Fear, Steven Eisele’s students clip tiny calculators to their arms. Then they check the harnesses that keep a calculator-based laboratory (CBL) snug against their rib cages.

“We give the students electronic equipment and physics problems to solve,” said Eisele, a physics teacher at Lexington High School. “To gather data, they attach a single-axis accelerometer to the CBL, which will measure their acceleration coming down. Since this is a free-fall type of ride, the students should fall with an acceleration of 9.8 meters/sec^2. Once the brakes come on, they decelerate at about 2g. When they get off the ride, the calculator gives them a graph of acceleration and time.

“After they apply physics formulas to the data, they can tell me how far they fell and how fast they were going,” said Eisele, a USC graduate who has taught physics for 11 years. “We study these forces in physics class, but there is no way for the students to feel the excitement and exhilaration of those forces while they sit at a desk.”

Did Newton have this much fun?
“There’s such a misconception about physics—that it’s difficult, that it’s boring. But it’s fun; you just have to take the right approach, and I think going out on the midway is the right approach,” said Dave Tedeschi, a USC physics professor. “The event is a big project for our department. We have about 50 people involved, from faculty—including the ‘Midway Committee’ of Rudy Jones, Gary Blanpied, and me—to graduate and undergraduate students.”

Midway Physics Day was the brainchild of the late Richard Childers, a USC physics professor. The first event was held in 1997 with about 1,500 students from about 30 schools participating. With more physics faculty now committed to the event, this year almost 5,000 students from 80 schools around South Carolina participated.

“My students always have a great time gathering real data, and they learn how to recognize usable data,” said Tom Sunday, a USC graduate and physics teacher at A.C. Flora High School. “If they have questions while they are gathering that data, I tell them to go to The Tent.”

The Tent is a centralized mentor station manned by physics professors and graduate students. For the past two years, Barbara Szczerbinska has been
at The Tent.

“My responsibility is to oversee five computers at the help stations and answer questions,” said Szczerbinska, a Ph.D. student in physics. “The week before the fair, the USC students who are helping go to training sessions, and we test all the equipment to make sure it works. Then we’re ready for the midway.”

Students Assisting Seniors

With Medicare forms in hand, and with an extensive knowledge of how to fill out those forms, USC students began to appear at senior citizen centers and churches in September 2002.

The students—from law, public health, social work, and nursing—are part of Students Assisting Seniors (SAS), a new, joint project of the School of Law and Arnold School of Public Health. The purpose of the program is to enroll eligible, low-income senior citizens in Medicare Savings Programs that can help them pay for uncovered health care costs, including deductibles, co-pays, and even premiums.

“We help them see that they are eligible for everything Medicare has to offer,” said Jack Duncan, a lawyer and SAS organizer. “For example, Medicare requires an $840 deductible for a hospital visit. These supplemental programs will pay that, although most people don’t know it because Medicare doesn’t publicize all their benefits.”

In its first year, SAS reached 222 senior citizens and received 119 complete applications.

“In a nutshell, we discovered that savings over an enrolled senior’s life time for 10 people we signed up during the fall alone exceeded $121,000,” said Robin Wilson, a law professor and director of SAS. “This is a substantial savings for anyone, but especially for someone on a low, fixed income.”

Bridging the age divide
“I’ll be 90 in two weeks,” grins Margaret Allen, an energetic woman with beautiful hands that her granddaughter manicures every Sunday. “You know, I just can’t read this form. Where do I write my age?”

In an activity room filled with tables and chairs, three student volunteers sit among a group of 11 senior citizens at the Crooked Creek Recreational Center in Chapin. Some of the participants need help filling out the forms, others have questions about the program. It’s a slow process but a critical one: if these senior citizens don’t apply, they can never get additional health care benefits.

“Can I take these forms home with me?” Allen asks no one in particular.

“I want my son-in-law to look at them.”

“Sure you can, that’s no problem,” answers a student volunteer handing out doughnuts donated by a local bakery.

Allen turns to the student.

“I’ll be 90 in two weeks,” she says.

Navigating a difficult process
The most important part of SAS, Wilson said, is the meeting between student volunteers and senior citizens.

“During outreach sessions, students explain the enrollment form to seniors, and they assist seniors in completing the necessary paperwork,” she said.

SAS student volunteers include Trey McLeod, a second-year law student; Mary Ellen Chafin, a social work graduate student; and Sally Sorour, a public health graduate student. Thanks to them and other student volunteers, SAS was able to accomplish much on a shoestring budget in its first year.

“Many community businesses help cover other costs with in-kind donations,” Wilson said. “The students give their time: in the first year, 39 graduate student volunteers contributed more than $1,500 worth of true labor to individually assist seniors, and that’s not including the training sessions to educate the students about Medicare forms.”

Project HEART

Project HEART (Health Education and Resources Together) provides school children with instruction in health, nutrition, and smoking prevention. The program also sponsors health fairs in inner-city neighborhoods.

The program was created three years ago by members of USC’s Student National Medical Association (SNMA), an organization of minority students engaged in medical study.

“Project HEART is a chance for our students to put their newly acquired medical knowledge to use and to show their leadership skills,” said Carol McMahon, faculty advisor for the group and assistant professor in the medical school’s Department of Pathology and Microbiology. “The project combines everything you would want in future doctors: strong leadership, community activity, and health education.”

Prescription for prevention
“Project HEART is a two-pronged project: youth education and illness prevention for older people,” said Ta-Tanisha Favor, a second-year medical student and president of USC’s SNMA chapter. “Sessions take place in inner-city elementary schools or at predominately African-American churches because we want to reach people in the community who are underserved and this is typically where we can find them.” Last semester there were two adult sessions at churches that reached about 60 people each time.

“The participants benefit because they get free check-ups and learn how to have healthier lifestyles,” Favor said. “Medical school students benefit by getting experience. Some of the more advanced students get the opportunity to counsel some of the participants to eat in a healthier way.”

The project is run by medical students, who must organize the sessions around classes and examinations.

“Project HEART was funded for four years through the Association of Medical Colleges, and we are in our third year now,” Favor said. “We have a lot of participants, and our students are really enthusiastic. We believe we can continue to grow the program, and we are in the process of seeking other funding.”

Split P Soup: Poetry for the Community

The Split P Soup poetry program was cooked up in 2000 by USC English assistant professor Christy Friend and Ph.D. student Ray McManus.

“Thanks to the support of the English department, we’ve managed to reach more than 4,000 young people throughout the Midlands, and about 250 teachers, through classroom workshops, in-service workshops, and poetry classes held on the weekends, after school, and in the summers,” Friend said.

“Students run the program: they make contact with the schools and teachers, and they set up and conduct the sessions,” she said. “And what happens in these classrooms and workshops carries on for a long time. Split P is helping us build writing communities with middle- and high-school students, who now e-mail their poetry to each other and to us.”

Can you haiku?
Brown-eyed Veronica faces a challenge: with the longest name in the class, she has to find eight words—one for each letter in her name—to describe herself in a poem. And what eight-year-old knows a descriptive word that starts with “V”?
Shyly, she seeks McManus’ help.

“Words are the tools a writer keeps in his toolbox,” coaches McManus, who is at Pelion Elementary School as part of Split P. “Let’s think of words that begin with ‘V’.”

Little voices speak up from around the room.

“Um, violet?”

“Very? Very nice? It fits: she is very nice.”

Busy adding “very nice” to her poem, Veronica misses the compliment. But her teacher doesn’t.

“Poetry is such a good way for them to express their emotions and ideas, and to increase their self-esteem,” says fourth-grade teacher Marsha Wallace. “This is the second year for Split P to kick off our poetry unit. After Ray’s visit today, I’ll spend a couple of weeks on poetry, and part of that will be reading and trying our hand at writing poems of all kinds, including rhyming poetry and free verse.”

At the front of the classroom, McManus claps for attention.

“Your name poems are great!” he says. “Now, does anybody know what ‘haiku’ is?”

Poetry for the soul
As word of the Split P program spreads, the number of workshops and venues increases.

“Split P keeps growing in wonderful dimensions,” said Charlene Spearen, a Ph.D. student in English. “Lindsay Green, a Ph.D. student who is also a member of Columbia’s The Power Company dance troupe, is combining her love of movement with poetry in the classrooms she visits.

“I’ve started taking the program into women’s shelters. These women have reached a point where they have no other place to live, no way to support themselves, many of them have histories of drug and alcohol addiction, many have been paroled or released from prison.

“The Split P workshops create a way of healing and provide a safe space for the women to express themselves,” Spearen said. “It gives them the forum and the freedom to address traumatic events in a creative way. And then they share their work with the group, and the other women say they identify with the poem, or they comment on its beauty. That’s when the poet feels great self-empowerment and confidence.”