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| Wed Sep 25 15:21:40 2002 Pacific Time |
| AScribe Home Live Newswire |
MEMPHIS, Sept. 25 (AScribe Newswire) -- Brother Edward Salgado carefully, but quickly, selected volunteers from a list of his Christian Brothers University biology students who signed up for not one, but two opportunities to be chosen for a special spring break assignment.
During this year's fall and spring breaks, seven CBU students will spend more than a week in Port Au Prince, Haiti working at a medical clinic for the poor.
"As soon as we announced the annual fall and spring break project, students jumped to sign up," says Brother Edward. "That's a special commitment because this week on a Caribbean island is certainly not a week at the beach."
The fall trip will take place October 12-20 and the spring trip is planned for March 15-23 2003. Four students go in the fall and three in the spring.
The project is directed by Dr. Gordon Kraus, a staff physician at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis and president of the Haiti Medical Missions of Memphis. "Haiti Medical Missions is privileged and delighted to help contribute to the education of health science students at CBU," said Kraus. "We know the students will bring the spirit of CBU to the people of Haiti."
Haiti Medical Missions of Memphis includes physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmaceutical representatives and other medical and health care professionals. The organization was established in 1997 as a parish health ministries outreach program for the Church of the Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Memphis. A former parishioner, Patrick Moynihan, had been named director of L'Ouverture Cleary, an orphanage and school for Haitian children just outside Port Au Prince. Medical trips were conducted each year and in 2001 a permanent clinic was established.
"These trips will be invaluable to our students," says Brother Edward. "They will assist doctors and nurses at a clinic in Port Au Prince helping care for some of the poorest people in the city. Students take patients' vital signs, help distribute medicine and prepare and maintain medical charts."
Most of the students who volunteer for the mission work are already determined to go to medical school or nursing school or have a broad interest in health sciences careers.
Brother Edwards' students find a number of classrooms and labs far beyond the CBU campus. In addition to the trip to Haiti, other biology majors and some non-majors take part in a project to analyze vegetation on Memphis' Overton Park Forest, the largest "wild forest" of any inner city in the United States. The students study trees, tall shrubs and seedlings and identify species found, track the size and distribution and what plant and trees influence what percentage of the forest.
"It's a good exercise to help students understand how one community of organisms is replaced by another," says Brother Edward.
CBU biology students will also go to the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Biloxi, MS in November and study the coastal ecosystem and salt marshes of the Mississippi coast. The students will conduct water analysis and be introduced to aquaculture as well as study marine and salt marsh ecosystems, fish and fish parasites and ocean invertebrates
For more information on the Haiti medical mission project, contact Denise McMahon at 901-753-0605. For more information on CBU's programs in the sciences visit www.cbu.edu, or call Brother Edward at 901-321-3450.
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Media Contact: John Kerr, Communications Office, Christian Brothers University, 901.321.4417