Open position: School of Informatics and Computing seeking grad student researcher

Dear Graduate Students:

We are seeking a highly motivated graduate student RA/intern, or a researcher to participate in a new collaborative project between the School of Informatics and Computing, the Center for Law, Ethics, and Applied Research in Health Information, the Regenstrief Institute, and the IU School of Medicine.

The project team seeks to make breakthrough progress in technology to enable nationwide health information exchanges. The project focuses on enabling providers and patients to search for and access individual health information through a secure, web-based connection. In particular, the IU-B portion of the project focuses on designing an interface for patients to allow privacy-preserving granular control over personal health information.

The primary activities will include conducting interviews with patients, coordinating the collection of patient data, analyzing interview data, planning study protocols, participating in team meetings, and preparing reports of study findings. Additional responsibilities may include and disseminating results via publications and conference presentations, collaborating with a visual designer to design a user interface for sharing patient health information, and/or conducting usability testing.

This is a 20 hour per week position starting immediately, with the option to extend to Fall and/or Spring semester.

Qualifications

• BS or BA in Informatics, Computer Science, Psychology, or a related field (MS or PhD preferred) • Knowledge and/or experience in any of the following:
• Structured interview
• Card sort
• Focus group
• User-centered design
• Human factors methods
• User evaluation

• Excellent interpersonal communication skills and collaboration skills (required to work with hospital staff and patients)
• Ability to work independently Desirable Attributes • Experience working on a multi-disciplinary team • IRB certification
• Drivers license
• Use of car (you would be reimbursed for all work-related travel)
• Strong publication history

Interested applicants should send their CV and a short email cover letter highlighting relevant experience to: caine@indiana.edu with “Application for Summer RA” in the subject line. Those with an interest in health informatics, privacy, human factors and/or an interest in attending medical school are strongly encouraged to apply. Hiring will proceed on a rolling basis, so early application is encouraged.

Contact
Kelly Caine, Ph.D.
Principal Research Scientist
School of Informatics and Computing
Center for Law, Ethics, and Applied Research in Health Information
Indiana University
caine@indiana.edu

Santosh Jain Endowed Memorial Scholarship Awarded to IU Graduate Student Wasantha Jayawardene

(from the left) Santosh Jain's son; Wasantha Jayawardene, 2011 award winner;
Mr. Chaman Jain, a senior lecturer in SPEA and husband of the late Santosh Jain Endowed; Ahmed YoussefAgha, assistant professor in applied health sciences

Santosh Jain Endowed Memorial Scholarship
Wasantha Jayawardene, 2011 Award Winner
Doctoral candidate in Health Behavior
Department of Applied Health Science

IU Doctoral student Wasantha Jayawardene from the Department of Applied Health Science is the winner of the first ever Santosh Jain Endowed Memorial Scholarship.

The $5,000 annual award offers financial support to a current international graduate student who has demonstrated commitment to service and education and plans to pursue a service-oriented career. The recipient will possess a track record of service to under-served or rural communities, humanitarian causes, or educational organizations in activities that support an improvement in the lives and opportunities to those in impoverished communities.

Award winner Jayawardene fits that description well. His advisers describe his as having a strong passion for serving disadvantaged populations, especially in terms of access to health care and his research focuses on health promotion of low income social groups and ethnic minorities through school health activities. Jayawardene is dedicated to his research, but he also possesses a background filled with experience working as a medical doctor in a rural hospital, as a medical office in health sector planning, and as a regional epidemiologist at the district level in Sri Lanka. His training is international and he is able to speak English, Russian, Tamil, and Sinhala.

“I strongly believe that our health care systems do not reach the social periphery, effectively utilize the available resources or get the full participation of disadvantaged populations,” Jayawardene said. “It has inflexible procedures and styles, is not people oriented, and overlooks the cultural and social aspects of disease, which ultimately demands more studies and researches to rectify. My ultimate goals are to study unexplored aspects of health issues in disadvantaged populations in order to utilize that knowledge to develop interventions. Gaining knowledge and research experience is an essential step to reach these goals, which is the reason for me to set my heart upon a research and academic career in HPER.”

The scholarship honors the memory of Chaman Jain's wife, who was well known among international graduate students. Chaman Jain, a senior lecturer in SPEA, said he and his children felt very strongly that this is the way to continue her vision to support education.

For more information on the award: http://www.indiana.edu/~grdschl/pdf/Santosh_Jain.pdf

May 2011 Graduate Student of the Month: James Paasche

James Paasche
Department of Communication and Culture
May 2011

When you meet IU Graduate Student James Paasche you can’t help getting caught up in his enthusiasm for movies and music, but you will also quickly notice that his interests run deeper than a “thumbs-up” review. Paasche wants to know what media means in day-to-day life and what it’s like for average people to be everyday media producers. His path to graduate school as a first generation college student was not exactly straightforward – the typical pipeline of high school to college to graduate school had turns and bends in it. It’s also immediately clear that his life experiences are a bonus in his research, and that he is an important addition to ongoing discourse on amateur media happening in departments like IU’s Communication and Culture.

“I was away from college for eight years being in a band and touring the country. I worked for an interesting group where I taught students with learning disabilities how to read and comprehend what they’ve read,” he said. “But probably the main thing I did was work at record stores and video stores and cinemas. I was trying to count it up, but I think I’ve worked in five different record stores, four different movie theatres and three different video stores.”

“Media and pop culture were an everyday part of my life and at some point I realized that media wasn’t just about a financial transaction. I really started to understand the affective ties people have to media and music and film, and that peaked my interest,” he said.

Paasche finished qualifying exams and is now in the process of writing a prospectus. His dissertation will focus on the amateur media environment in Vietnam in all its various forms, such as film, newsletters, magazines, newspapers, and audio letters made by soldiers and sent home. The idea, he said, is to acknowledge current day interest in amateur media, but to also “give a nod to historical precedence.”

The act of writing a prospectus, he said, is like doing research on his research project and a big part of it is figuring out the scope of his project.

“For example,” he said, “the Vietnam War is my time frame, but I might have an epilogue where I discuss the relevance to the current Iraq/Afghanistan war because there is a huge proliferation of video letters home on YouTube and sites like that because it’s a way for soldiers to communicate with their families back home. I just find it fascinating that such a private thing like a letter could become such a public thing.”

Another reason Paasche wants to focus on the Vietnam War is because he wants to work on a project that incorporates film and not just digital video.

“I want to talk about film stock – the material – which we don’t do much anymore. There are a lot of fantasies about the utopian possibilities of technology, but we don’t really talk about what it means to have that camera in your hand or what it means to have to send that film somewhere to be developed. In many cases, Vietnam soldiers were probably never watching their messages over there – they’re sending them home – so they’re eventually sitting in someone’s garage or attic. What does it mean that someone would create this media then never see it again? It’s different from what current and future film makers do,” he said.

“Every day of working on my prospectus I’m learning new things – like how a lot of film and photographs went missing after being confiscated from dead soldiers, so the surviving films – no one knows who shot it or who the people in it were now. So, this process of preparing for a large research project is about preparing and educating me as well. I’m looking for archives, veterans groups, and other data sources right now, and I’ve started to make contacts on a larger context – like sons of guys who were there and relive those memories through their father’s roles there.”

“I want to incorporate film, but I also want to think about media in a larger context as well because there were a number of newspapers being made by soldiers at the time and many of them are documents of people who are disagreeing with their government at a fundamental level, and these are the people over there fighting for the government. It can be a form of resistance as well. Another example like this is pirate radio broadcasts.”

As Paasche defines the limits for the project and looks for funding, requests IRB approval and works through other hoops that are part of beginning a large research project, he makes sure to find time for the environment that led him to finish college and pursue graduate school in the first place by working a few shifts at Landlocked Music here in Bloomington, Indiana.

I really enjoy the atmosphere in music stores, he said, but “I know now I also want to be more critical of my media practices and I want other people to have that ‘ah-ha’ moment. I want my students to have that moment of not just accepting these things as forms of entertainment but forms of culture that say something about us in a larger sense.”

“That’s really what got me here.”

For the past three years, James Paasche has organized and run Home Movie Day—an annual event that connects the university with the community in a celebration and screening of home movies.  (See the press release:  http://newsinfo.iu.edu/web/page/normal/15811.html)  Home Movie Day is held all over the country, and James took the lead in bringing this important event to Bloomington.  He has been able to establish important collaborative connections with the Black Film Center/Archive and the new IU Cinema, helping to assure that IU will continue to host this unique event.

This October, 2011, Home Movie Day will be held at the new IU Cinema. Part of the event this year will be an hour of curated home movies from various IU archives such as from the Kinsey Institute, Black Film Center/Archive, and Fine Arts.

Paasche will also be co-programming City Lights, the classic Hollywood film series, next year for the Department of Communications and Culture and the IU Cinema.

Media Contacts:
Erika Lee, Director of Communications, The University Graduate School, ebigalee@indiana.edu
Angela Jones, The IU Graduate and Professional Student Organization, gpso@indiana.edu


The Graduate and Professional Student Organization and the University Graduate School would like to congratulate James Paasche on receiving the GPSO/UGS Recognition Award. Students selected for this award were nominated by a faculty member from within their department, and selected by the GPSO and UGS for excellence in their graduate studies at Indiana University.

‘Steps Taken’ to support strong system of graduate education

If you missed it, the IDS has a story on the recent "Steps Taken" report. The report is a follow up on the "Path Forward" report released last year on the future of graduate education in the U.S.

http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=81338&search=wimbush§ion=search

Canadian Studies Grant Program: Opportunity for faculty and doctoral students

Opportunity for faculty and doctoral students:

The Canadian Government, through the Embassy in Washington, DC and its Consulates throughout the United States, supports research, conferences, teaching, and program activity related to Canada and/or Canada-U.S. relations. The Canadian Studies Grant Program encourages comparative research and teaching, faculty exchanges, student mobility, and collaboration between American and Canadian researchers. We also seek to build stronger ties between American and Canadian universities and colleges.

We are particularly interested in projects that have policy relevance for Canada and Canada-U.S. relations.

Such topics include:

• North American economic competitiveness
• Energy and environments
• Security
• Arctic issues

You, your colleagues, and students may be interested in one of the following grant programs:

Faculty Research Grant Program assists individual scholars or teams of scholars in writing an article-length manuscript of publishable quality with a focus on Canada or Canada-U.S. relations. Applications due: November 1, 2011.
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/washington/studies-etudes/research-recherche.aspx?lang=eng

Conference Grant Program supports conferences that address important and timely issues about Canada or Canada-U.S. relations. It is designed to assist an institution in holding a conference and publishing the resulting papers and proceedings in a scholarly fashion. Applications due: June 30, 2011.
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/washington/studies-etudes/conference.aspx?lang=eng

Doctoral Student Research Award offers doctoral students an opportunity to conduct part of their dissertation research in Canada. The program is intended for students whose dissertations are related in substantial part to the study of Canada. Applications due: December 1, 2011.
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/washington/studies-etudes/doctoral-doctorat.aspx?lang=eng

Faculty Enrichment Program provides faculty members an opportunity to develop or update a course with substantial Canadian content that will be offered as part of their regular teaching load. Applications due: December 1, 2011.
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/washington/studies-etudes/enrichment-complement.aspx?lang=eng

In 2010-11, the Canadian Studies Grant Program provided support to faculty, researchers, and graduate students at institutions across the U.S. More than 80 projects were funded on a wide range of topics and in many disciplines. Here is a list of recent grant recipients and their projects.

For complete Grant Guidelines and information about our other grant programs, please visit:
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/washington/studies-etudes/programs-programmes.aspx?lang=eng

Prospective applicants are encouraged to discuss their interest in the grant program with a Canadian government officer in their area.

We would like to encourage faculty and students to sign up for Canada Watch, a bi-weekly summary of the publications and commentaries from Canadian think tanks and research centers on a wide range of Canadian and Canada-U.S. issues and NewsCan, a weekly summary of news from Canada.

We appreciate your interest in Canadian Studies and thank you for sharing this information about the Canadian Studies Grant Program with your colleagues and students.

Michael Brown
Associate, Research and Academic Relations
Associé, Recherche et relations académiques
Embassy of Canada | Ambassade du Canada
501 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
Tel: (202) 682-7727
michael.brown@international.gc.ca

We invite you to visit www.Connect2Canada.com, a virtual network for Canadians and friends of Canada in the United States.

WSJ: U.S. Business Schools Get More Competition From Abroad

IU Kelley School of Business, Courtesy of Indiana University

By KEVIN HELLIKER

U.S. graduate business schools are losing their iron grip on the thriving market for international M.B.A. students.

At the 25 U.S. graduate-business programs that award the largest numbers of degrees to international students, applications for the 2011 fall semester declined 4%, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington, D.C.

Although international applications to all American business schools rose by 4%, that figure paled in comparison to the 12% growth in international bids to U.S. programs offering degrees in engineering and physical and earth sciences, the survey said.

Business-school deans attribute the relatively sluggish growth to a growing number of high-quality competitors overseas.

"Schools throughout Europe, Asia and Australia have made huge investments in graduate education in general—more specifically, business school," said James Wimbush, an Indiana University dean overseeing several graduate schools, including business.

In other disciplines, international applications to U.S. graduate programs rose 9% in education, 8% in arts and humanities, 8% in life sciences, and 5% in social sciences and psychology, making business the field with the smallest increase.

The trend is evident in separate data from the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT, the most popular entrance exam for graduate programs in business.

GMAC sent less than 78% of its scores to U.S. schools in test-year 2010, ended last June 30, compared with 83% in test-year 2006. During that period, the total number of exams sent jumped to 779,000 from 601,000, according to the GMAC Web site.

In one indication of growing international demand for graduate degrees in business, non-U.S. citizens taking the GMAT outnumbered U.S. citizens for the first time ever in test-year 2009, and did so again in test-year 2010.

Meanwhile, in the Financial Times's most recent rankings of global MBA programs, American schools held 24 of the top 50 spots in 2011, down from 31 in 2007.

World-wide, the number of programs accepting the GMAT has grown to 5,000 from 4,181 five years ago, said Julia Tyler, an executive vice president of GMAC.

A growing percentage of test-takers from India are choosing programs in their own country, Ms. Tyler said, adding that test takers in Western Europe are choosing that region's schools, including the London Business School, which on the latest Financial Times ranking shares the top spot with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

U.S. business schools aren't the only programs encountering greater competition for overseas students. Of all international students who left their home countries to study, only 20% came to the U.S. in 2008, down from 25% in 2000, said Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools.

"As we sit here today, the U.S. graduate education is the best in the world," she said. "But the future is far from secure."

For U.S. graduate schools in all fields of study, the number of applications for fall 2011 from prospective international students rose 9%, according to the Council of Graduate Schools survey, roughly the same level of growth reported last year.

That includes spikes in applications of 18% from China, 7% from India and 2% from South Korea—the largest three countries of origin for international graduate students in the U.S., the council said.

Write to Kevin Helliker at kevin.helliker@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
James Wimbush is a dean at Indiana University who oversees several graduate schools, including business. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he was dean of the university's graduate school of business.

Read the original story in the Wall Street Journal

SAA Opening: Evaluating & Improving Financial Literacy among Graduate Assistants

Application Deadline: June 15, 2011
SAA Start Date: August 1, 2011

University Human Resources is seeking a Graduate Assistant to conduct a two year research and analysis project related to evaluating and improving the level of financial literacy of IU’s Graduate Assistants.

This project is funded by the TIAA-CREF Institute and the target audience would be approximately 4400 IU Graduate Assistants and post-docs (3800 at Bloomington, 600 at IUPUI). Suggested research will involve measuring and analyzing financial literacy that results from education as well as the impact of framing the concept of lifetime savings. This project may include a cross-disciplinary approach with TIAA-CREF Institute fellows from other Institutions including Dartmouth and Boston College.

Successful candidates will have project management experience, education and/or work experience in Finance or a related field, and may be pursuing a graduate degree from the Kelley School of Business or the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. The expectation is that this position will work 15-20 hours per week; remuneration includes a $1,250 monthly stipend ($12,500 annual equivalent over 10 months) and health insurance. This position reports to the Associate Vice President of University Human Resources.

Questions may be directed to April Underwood at UHRS: underwoo@indiana.edu or 812-856-6835. Please send a letter of application, resume and contact information for 3 references to: underwoo@indiana.edu.