Program offers ASU students hands-on health care internships

November 14, 2014

The complexity of health care delivery is growing, along with the rapid expansion of a health care industry designed to deliver comprehensive care to an aging population. To help Arizona and its future clinical practitioners meet these rising demands, Arizona State University has established a new university-wide pre-health internship program.

Designed to develop high-quality activities that give ASU students the practical experience needed to be competitive in post-graduate degree programs and careers, the pre-health program will be housed in the Office of Clinical Partnerships and managed by Renae Larcus. medical students in class Download Full Image

Larcus comes to ASU from Scottsdale Healthcare, where she served as manager of community health services. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oregon and completed her doctorate with the University of Utah. Her experience in health care includes positions with ASU, the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale and the Arizona Department of Health Services.

New degrees recently established in the College of Health Solutions complement the existing programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering designed to prepare undergraduates for professional degrees in medicine and health-related professions.

To further boost these students’ successes as they apply to medical school or pursue health-related professions, Larcus will nurture existing partnerships and develop new ones with clinical partners, in addition to working with university constituents and academic programs to target meaningful internships.

“With more than 50 hospitals serving the more than 4 million citizens in our Phoenix metro area, Arizona State students can experience hands-on, real-world internships, job shadowing and eventual careers in the widest range of medical and health areas imaginable,” said Paul LePore, an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“ASU’s Office of Clinical Partnerships' new health internship program will help make that happen by supporting and expanding the clinical experiences available to our students and providing the much needed connection between our degree programs and the Valley’s clinical partners,” LePore added.

Joining Larcus with the new internship program is Christina Islas. Islas will work with the academic programs and with site internship coordinators as a pre-health internship placement specialist.

Islas is an ASU alumna with more than 15 years of experience as a health care provider and health care education professional. Her experience includes urgent care, pediatrics, internal medicine and orthopedics/sports medicine. Prior to joining the internship office, Islas served as the allied health program chair at Anthem College in Phoenix.

“We are excited to partner on this university-wide initiative that will expand opportunities for students in health and health care. The College of Health Solutions and the Office of Clinical Partnerships have a long history of working collaboratively to help students achieve success in the health-related disciplines; the pre-health internship program is a natural next step in serving students across the university who are interested in healthcare,” said Alison Essary, the director of Student Affairs in the College of Health Solutions and clinical associate professor in the School for the Science of Health Care Delivery.

Margaret Coulombe

Director, Executive Communications, Office of the University Provost

480-965-8045 Margaret.coulombe@asu.edu

ASU student magazine to host annual reading, open mic night

Marooned Undergraduate Creative Review, Volume 12, Fall 2014

Students, faculty and lovers of literature are invited to the Marooned Annual Reading and Open Mic event to take place at Arizona State University's Tempe campus, Nov. 20.

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ASU student magazine to host annual reading, open mic night

November 14, 2014

Students, faculty and lovers of literature are invited to the Marooned Annual Reading and Open Mic event to take place at 6 p.m., Nov. 20, in the Durham Language & Literature Building’s faculty reading room (LL 316) on Arizona State University's Tempe campus.

Several writers published in the current issue of Marooned magazine will read from their poems and short fiction. All attendees will later have the opportunity to share their own work during the open mic portion of the event. Marooned Undergraduate Creative Review, Volume 12, Fall 2014 Download Full Image

“I think the weather this time of year really lends itself to this event,” says Marooned faculty adviser Bob Haynes, an instructor in the Department of English within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“There’s excitement in the air when it starts to cool off, and spirits are always high as everyone is looking forward to the holidays.”

Marooned is an on-campus, undergraduate publication of student short fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art. The magazine is supported by the ASU Department of English, and primarily run by student interns. These interns solicit and select fellow students’ work for publication, coordinate events, including the annual reading, and fundraise for the magazine, all while earning upper-division credit. Undergraduate authors from all academic disciplines can submit and see their work in print alongside featured faculty writers and distinguished ASU alumni.

Although student-focused, work published in Marooned is hardly sophomoric. For example, the fall 2014 issue includes short fiction by Taylor Eaton – “Things Were a Little Different once People Started Melting,” pages 13-17 – whose first line reads like a sci-fi poem: “I’d heard before that we dissolve into earth like it was some sort of giant recycling mechanism, that we return to some pre-human state of Oneness with all things, that we would soon be just a coagulation of energy.”

A poem by Shane Chergosky (“Blisters,” page 48) ruminates on the writer’s curse: “The left. My good hand. From thumb / to docile pinky the skin wears thin / and lifts, reddening; early signs of corrosion.”

Photographic art by December Verbout (“Some Things are Better Left Unsaid”) provides attractive cover dressing for the issue.

Work by ASU alumni is included as bookends. Lambda Award-winning novelist and humorist Bill Konigsberg, MFA creative writing 2005, contributes a short story (“Want,” pages 3-4) as the featured author, and Cave Canem Prize-winning poet Dexter Booth, MFA creative writing 2012, sits in the “Alumni Corner” with his gorgeous poem, “White Dwarves,” pages 79-81: “We aren’t that different from the cicadas / or the Century Plant; all we do is die. The / sounds we push out into the universe take their time to arrive.”

Current student interns – Michael Cohen, Elizabeth Hansen, Tamara Ignation, Haley Marshall and Madison Ruffner – will be on-hand at the reading to sell copies of Marooned, and refreshments will be available. All proceeds go to the production of next year’s edition and continued publication for artistic student voices in the future. The reading is free and open to all.

For more information about the reading and Marooned magazine, visit: http://www.asumarooned.net/.

Written by Michael Cohen