O’Neill SchoolBloomington

Two members of the O’Neill School community are scheduled to speak Saturday, April 17, at TEDxBloomington — a local, independently organized TED event “committed to the goal of spreading big ideas in Bloomington and beyond.”

The theme of this year’s annual event is “The BIG Questions.” Speakers will take an out-of-the-box approach to challenges across society, health, creativity, and leadership.

“Train your brain to improvise and solve life’s essential problems”

Monika Herzig is a senior lecturer at the O’Neill School, where she teaches arts administration. She’s also a touring jazz artist who has performed at prestigious jazz clubs and festivals around the world and released more than a dozen albums.

About her talk:

Jazz musicians train their brains to improvise on a daily basis and practice taking risks during every performance. Improvisation is also at the core of solving problems and moving forward in uncertain situations, it’s an essential life skill. Just like jazz musicians, everyone can train their brain to improvise and solve life’s essential problems.

“Raise and reinforce awareness of how we talk about mental health in black men”

Malissa Sanon, O’Neill’s assistant director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, will provide helpful tips on how to support someone who is struggling with their mental health. Sanon recently successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, which explored mental health issues within the Black community, particularly in Black college men. She is passionate about using her research to help her community and the students she interacts with through her work in student affairs.

About her talk:

After talking with six Black male college students discussing their experience with suicide ideation, “If you Can’t Make A Sound, Make a Peep” was a quote that one of the participants explained is important to share with other Black men dealing with mental health issues. It is important to emphasize when a Black man makes a peep, how would you respond?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded researchers from Indiana University a $500,000 grant to study ways that the government can encourage new farm ownership among young and beginning farmers, farmers of color, and women.

The project, “Incentivizing Land Access For Small, Beginning And Socially Disadvantaged Farmers And Ranchers: Research, Extension And Community Of Practice,” will be led by Julia Valliant, assistant research scientist with the IU Ostrom Workshop and IU’s Sustainable Food Systems Science research group. The project will involve several O’Neill School faculty members, including James Farmer, Shellye Suttles, Justin Ross, and Burney Fischer. The researchers will partner with agricultural service provider American Farmland Trust in order to communicate directly with farmers and to establish a community of practice and national advisory team.

“Often, retiring farmland owners prefer to transfer their land to a beginning farmer to help them get started in agriculture — but lots of barriers get in their way,” said Valliant. “We will study policies that aim to diversify access to opportunity in agriculture by helping owners transfer their land to young and beginning farmers and farmers from historically excluded groups.”

New farmers help revitalize rural communities, but struggle to obtain land

According to the project proposal, 70,000 new farms are started in the U.S. every year. New farmers help to bring prosperity to rural communities and make outsized contributions to sustainable agriculture. However, they also face significant obstacles when trying to obtain land.

The market for available farmland is tight. Existing agricultural plots are often consolidated into larger farms or sold for development. Most new farmers do not inherit land and instead struggle to raise enough capital to compete. At the same time, retiring farm owners face disincentives when transferring their land, so they delay doing so during their lifetime and typically transfer to an established landowner.

These problems are compounded for farmers of color and women. Although people of color make up more than a quarter of the U.S. population and provide more than 60% of farm labor, they make up only 3% of agricultural landowners. Women – half the U.S. population – make up less than a quarter of agricultural landowners.

Government programs exist to promote new farm ownership, but are not well understood

Federal and state governments have tried to help beginning farmers overcome these obstacles through financial incentives. However, little research has been done to evaluate their effectiveness.

One way that the government tries to promote new farm ownership is through programs called Land Access Policy Incentives (LAPIs). At the state level, most LAPIs award a refundable state tax credit to a current farm owner who chooses a qualifying beginning farmer as their land’s next operator or owner. Other LAPIs compensate beginning farmers directly. Similar programs exist at the federal level. In total, these efforts involve over $210M of federal and state funding. This month’s American Rescue Plan dedicated part of an additional $1B to address discrimination in land access.

Valliant and her team aim to measure the reach and impact of these programs. They will start by reviewing public documents to study how the programs were designed. They will also interview and survey key stakeholders, including landowners and young, beginning, and marginalized farmers, about their experiences.

“These incentive programs appear to be a win-win-win for entering farmers, sustainable agriculture, and existing landowners. More and more states are creating them through bipartisan agreements, across the aisle,” said Valliant. “But right now the effects of the incentives are not clear, and some of the policy programs need to be better mobilized to reach their intended audiences. In this project, we will figure out policy next steps in diversifying access to agricultural opportunity in the U.S.”

Ultimately, the project aims to help revitalize rural communities by helping a new generation of farmers enter the field – one that is a bit more representational of the communities they serve.

Their research will begin in spring 2021.

IU Research

Indiana University’s world-class researchers have driven innovation and creative initiatives that matter for 200 years. From curing testicular cancer to collaborating with NASA to search for life on Mars, IU has earned its reputation as a world-class research institution. Supported by $854 million last year from our partners, IU researchers are building collaborations and uncovering new solutions that improve lives in Indiana and around the globe.

Fifty years ago, on March 5, 1971, the University Faculty Council received a letter proposing that Indiana University establish a new academic unit “concerned generally with the problems of human society that transcend particular disciplines and especially those of man-­environment relationships.”

The accompanying report makes the case for the School of Public and Environmental Affairs:

There is growing evidence throughout the State, (and throughout the Nation as well), that people would like to see the universities dealing more effectively and dispassionately with the needs and problems of modern society. Nearly every major problem confronting modern society cuts across disciplinary and professional boundaries. The ability of society to cope with these problems depends, in part, upon … the marshalling of knowledge and its translation into findings and propositions useful to the voter, the public official, and the concerned citizen.

The report concludes:

The main advantage of a School of Public and Environmental Affairs is to permit flexibility … to make use of talent, wherever it exists, to work toward solution of difficult, complicated public problems, particularly those of human behavior in relation to the human environment, both natural and made by man.

The school was founded the following year in 1972. Now, five decades later, the O’Neill School is recognized as a world leader in public and environmental affairs and boasts an alumni network of more than 36,000 around the world.

Two O’Neill master’s students, Natali Jouzi and Mackenzie Nworah, recently teamed up to compete in a health-themed hackathon through Stonybrook University. After a fun but grueling 24 hours of coding workshops and competition, they earned the title of “Best Beginner Hack” for their website application aimed at healthcare workers who focus on nutrition.

Jouzi and Nworah met for the first time during orientation for IU’s Master of Science in Health Management (MSHM) program. Though they’d only known each other for a few months and neither had much experience with coding, they decided to pair up to enter HackHealth. Their four-person team included two members from Iowa State University who had backgrounds in computer engineering and human-computer interaction. Together, they figured out how best to leverage their individual strengths to contribute to their project.

“We were able to apply many of the skills we’ve been learning about in the MSHM program, like presentation skills, project management skills, and team management,” said Nworah. “We had just studied some FranklinCovey collaboration and teamwork principles, so we incorporated those, which really set us apart and enabled us to work cohesively together as a team.”

Hackathons are generally 24-hour long events, where participants learn about and practice coding skills and compete to build web applications. They notoriously include all-nighters, but both Jouzi and Nworah insist they made time to sleep. “Our MSHM program includes a focus on self-care, so I was sure to sleep a bit. I knew that in order to focus and present our project well, I’d need to take care of myself,” said Jouzi.

Their winning project, “International Food Guide for Health Professionals,” was a website application intended to help dietitians, diabetes educators, gastroenterologists, and other healthcare workers give better dietary recommendations to their patients.

Before joining the MSHM program, Jouzi was a registered dietitian. She witnessed firsthand how a lack of cultural competency could impact patient care. “Many patients’ needs were not fulfilled because their prescribed diet did not reflect their current diet,” said Jouzi. “Our goal with this project was to enhance healthcare professionals’ knowledge about things like eating practices, traditional dishes, cooking methods, and food taboos from around the world. They can consult this resource to say ‘If a patient is from X country, what are the implications for their diet?’”

In the future, they’d like to modify their app so it can be used to inform things like hospital menus or even travelers who want to experience traditional dishes. But first, they have a degree to finish.

“Participating in this hackathon reminded me that there are many different directions I can go with health management,” said Jouzi. “I’m discovering different fields, like healthcare IT, data analytics – lots of new opportunities for me to find out where my passion is.”

Nworah agreed. “I got way more out of this competition than I was expecting. I got to experience working on the back end with coding and the technological side of health care. I also had the opportunity to build connections. I met people with different backgrounds and added them on LinkedIn. You never know how those connections can expand in the future.”

Twenty-five members of the faculty and staff of the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington have successfully completed Mental Health First Aid Training.

The training is a nationally recognized curriculum that increases mental health awareness, decreases stigma, helps people understand signs of symptoms of mental health disorders, and provides guidance on how to help someone having a mental health issue.

“Just like traditional medical First Aid training, this Mental Health First Aid Training gives individuals the skills to recognize, respond, and react until a person suffering from a mental health crisis can get the professional mental health services they need,” said Megan Starnes, director of strategic initiatives at the O’Neill School.

Many of the school’s student services staff at the school have completed the training and are now certified to assist. Several other staff and faculty members also finished the training, which covered common signs and symptoms of both mental illness and substance use, how to interact with a person in crisis, and how to connect that person with the help they need.

The training teaches individuals to assess for the risk of suicide or self-harm, listen nonjudgmentally, give reassurance and information, encourage appropriate professional help, and encourage self-help and other support strategies.

Note: If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health emergency, please call the campus crisis telephone line at (812) 855-5711 (after-hours, choose option 1), go to your local hospital’s emergency department, or call 911.