Everything Nac

Speech-language pathology graduate students at Stephen F. Austin State University recently presented findings from their capstone research projects, part of the Department of Human Services’ curriculum requirements to earn a Master of Science in speech-language pathology.

Research topics included developing clinical criteria for the purpose of food texture advancement, clinical implications to learning style preference predictors in college-age students, and research on the correlation between Deep Brain Stimulation and voice in an individual with Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Nagalapura Viswanath, SLP program director and visiting professor at SFA, expressed the importance of conducting research at the graduate level.

“Any field’s future depends on students thinking critically about issues and not just accepting what somebody tells them at face value. Research projects like this one encourage a scientific habit of mind,” Viswanath said.

Throughout their two years in the graduate program at SFA, SLP students enrolled in research methods and statistics courses to help understand how to conduct evidence-based studies. Their capstone projects were a culmination of more than a year’s worth of work. Viswanath explained this assignment taught students how to critically analyze data and its limitations.

“As a clinician, you need to stay up to date with current research and therapy techniques, which means you have to see what your peers are saying in journals and critically review their reports,” Viswanath said.

Nancy Delgado, SFA graduate student in the SLP program, conducted research with her group on the number of times a healthy geriatric individual clears his/her throat when consuming different food textures. Group members recruited 30 geriatric adults to participate in their research study.

“When you are out in the field, you have to do evidence-based practice. This project gives us a foundation of how to look for evidence-based practice and ensure what we are doing in therapy and clinic is supported by evidence,” Delgado said.

For more information about the SLP program at SFA, visit http://www.sfasu.edu/humanservices/69.asp.

During the spring semester Stephen F. Austin State University students enrolled in History 308: Introduction to Public History, taught by Perky Beisel, associate professor of history, worked with SFA’s Stone Fort Museum and the East Texas Research Center to develop a museum exhibit on historical crime and punishment in Nacogdoches and East Texas.

Carolyn Spears, curator of the Stone Fort Museum, said that she and Beisel began discussing the collaboration during the fall semester. “Perky is a member of the Education Programming Committee, which was formed to develop processes for long-term exhibit planning and collaboration with academic departments,” Spears said. “When I mentioned that we were beginning to develop a new exhibit about crime and punishment in East Texas, we both saw an opportunity to collaborate.”

Beisel worked to develop her introductory course around the framework of the museum’s potential exhibit. “The key to public history is that historic research needs to be at the request of the public or designed for the public,” Beisel said. “We used the Stone Fort Museum’s upcoming exhibit to provide a platform to teach students how to convert ‘traditional’ research into label text and visual and descriptive materials found in museum displays.”

The students presented information tracing the history of capital punishment in Texas from the late 19th century to the 1960s, when lethal injection became the state’s favored method of execution. The students presented a few historical trials that resulted in execution: The State of Texas v. Jim Buchanan, in 1902 and the State of Texas v. George Kinney, in 1904.

Students also covered the history of slavery in Texas, noting the case of The State of Texas v. Raiford Fulgham, a slave owner who was tried and convicted for the mistreatment of one of his slaves, and presented information about convict leasing, a Reconstruction-era practice where private citizens and companies could pay to have chain gangs work in agricultural and infrastructure projects without pay.

“When their work on the panels was beginning, before class they held lively discussions about murders, gambling, prostitution, vice, slavery and executions,” Beisel said. “The students learned that local examples provide a way to connect with larger themes in American history.”

After the individual students conducted their research, Beisel paired students to produce visual displays to highlight aspects of their research. Beisel said that these displays are the first step in creating the Stone Fort Museum’s eventual exhibit. The posters feature images from Nacogdoches city and county documents, as well as the students’ initial label text.

Zach McSwain, a senior history major from Houston, said that the project forced students to conduct in-depth research. “We had to use local historical archives at the East Texas Research Center to find small historical events that hint at the larger historical significance throughout the United States. It was like trying to find a diamond in the rough,” McSwain said. “We relied on primary sources and conducted advanced research from archival county and district court records.”

The students’ displays will be located on the second floor of Steen Library in front of the ETRC for the next four to six weeks. Visitors are encouraged to leave Post-It notes on the display board to help provide feedback about the theme’s exhibit. Spears urges visitors who have materials or artifacts related to the exhibit to contact her.

The Stone Fort Museum plans to showcase the final exhibit in late 2018 or early 2019.

For more information, contact Spears at cspears@sfasu.edu

Seniors pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in Stephen F. Austin State University’s Richard and Lucille DeWitt School of Nursing recently held a disaster drill in conjunction with local emergency personnel to help better prepare in the event of a crisis.

Participants acted out two scenarios — an active shooter and a bomb scenario. During each scenario, nursing students played the role of patients while fellow nursing students served as nurses. Several Nacogdoches Fire Department trainees also assisted with additional employees from community organizations and agencies also working alongside.

Each fall and spring semester, the School of Nursing conducts a disaster day, organized by a student committee under the supervision of School of Nursing faculty members. The simulation helps condition nursing students to the hectic work environment of nurses, forces them to solve problems and communicate on the fly, tests their critical thinking skills and assessment and triage abilities.

“We work closely with school faculty, the Nacogdoches Police and Fire Departments, Nacogdoches Medical Center and Nacogdoches Memorial Hospital, Nacogdoches EMS, and the district attorney to come up with details for the simulation,” Jenelle Samaroo, SFA senior nursing major from Houston, said.

Drills began with a truck serving as the mobile command center where nursing students organized into quadrants and donned protective gear. Members of each nursing quadrant triaged patients using information on a card that each patient wore around his/her neck.

Student nurses dropped triage cards beside each patient that detailed their assessed condition — green for minor injuries, yellow for more serious conditions, red for immediate attention required and black for those whose condition was beyond the help of onsite medical personnel.

The NFD trainees accompanied the student nurses and, literally, helped with the heavy lifting. They assisted in putting patients onto backboards and carrying them to color-coordinated tarps that matched the patient’s triage cards and served as treatment areas.

Samaroo and Devin Assenheimer, a Longview nursing senior who helped organize the bomb scenario drill, watched as a handful of student nurses approached a patient covered in flour. “The flour is meant to represent anthrax,” Assenheimer said. “We didn’t tell the student nurses about that beforehand. We wanted to see if they took proper precautions.”

At day’s end, participants practiced addressing the media and speaking during a mock press conference.

“We’ve been doing these disaster simulations for a number of years,” Dr. Janice Hensarling, assistant professor in SFA’s School of Nursing, said. “It’s a great opportunity to engage with local emergency service agencies and introduce our students to the pressures that an emergency situation can generate. It also teaches them the importance of clear and effective communication, leadership and teamwork.”