Thursday, July 20, 2006

 

The day care dilemma

High costs, non-traditional working hours taking their toll on single parents in the Monadnock Region

Sunday, April 30, 2006
The Keene Sentinel


Nika Carlson
Sentinel Staff

Ivy W. Downing never planned to be a single mom. She didn’t plan to be on welfare, either, she said, but after escaping an abusive marriage at 33, it was her only option. Four years later, Downing, now 37, has been off welfare for nearly a year, and is halfway to earning a college degree.

In order to actually earn it, though, her days are strictly structured around shuttling her three kids between day-care facilities (yes, plural) and babysitters while still making it to work and school.

For Downing and many parents, child care is the finger in the dam that keeps life in order instead of it rushing madly past her. It is a necessity, but its hold is precarious and it is a constant worry.

It’s scarce. It’s expensive. And in most cases, it stops at the end of the business workday, not hers, because the need for child care spills well past 5 o’clock for many parents.

It’s a problem that the state, as well an ad hoc group of local business, child care and welfare leaders are studying how to fix. But the answers are far off as even the extent of the problem is unclear, they said.

And whatever answers they do find won’t help Downing now.

Her extended welfare benefit for child care ends at the end of May, and her out-of-pocket costs will shoot up nearly 500 percent.

“I’m trying not to think about it, but it’s not going to go away,” she said. “I’m just taking it one day at a time, one moment at a time, and trying to work it out.”

Need for care is great throughout the region

Downing is not alone.

According to the U.S. Census bureau, nearly 8,600 children ages nine and under, live in Cheshire County. More than 1,000 live in households subsisting below the poverty line. Of those households, 345 are headed by single women.

There’s no current estimate of the region’s capacity to care for those children, but a recent, state-led count of licensed programs in the Keene area came up with 2,706 slots for kids. Plenty of people use less formal arrangements — family, neighbors or providers who take three or fewer children and don’t need to be licensed — but those are uncounted.

Downing, for example, relies on a neighboring family to watch her children for several hours on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.

Her two youngest children, Julia, 2, and Matthew, 5, a kindergartner at Franklin School, go to the Keene Day Care Center’s programs for younger and school-age children, which are in separate buildings. One closes at 5:15 p.m., the other at 5:30 p.m., but Downing’s justice studies class at Keene State College goes until 5:50 p.m.

To cover for those 35 minutes without care, she picks up her kids after work and has them home by 4 p.m. to meet one of several babysitters she knows who may be available. Downing’s 11-year-old daughter Tiffany is still too young to be in charge, she said.

Downing doesn’t know how long the arrangement will last, but it’s the best she could find given Matthew’s allergies to cats, which often makes home day care hard to find, she said.

Even during the day, care can be elusive.

Many, if not all, of the spaces at licensed centers are taken, especially for infants and toddlers, said Kathy Torrey, director of Child First Child Care Resource & Referral, a local agency that connects parents with child care.

In the last year, for example, her center referred 281 people to providers.

In follow up interviews with 52 clients, 18 reported they couldn’t find a space, she said.

In that same year, 42 clients have come back for another referral, she said. Of those call backs, 29 wanted care for children 2 and under, she said.

Not all programs accept infants and toddlers, and waiting lists for some that do can top nine months, she said.

And in recent months, calls to Child First have tripled, Torrey said. They jumped from 50 between September and December to 144 between January and March, 64 of which were for children 2 and younger, she said.

In that same period, she said, she heard of only nine new infant and toddler slots and 42 school age ones.

She attributes the increase to upcoming changes to the state welfare system, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Because of new federal requirements, as many as 1,100 more state welfare recipients will need to be working by October (see related story).

“There’s a sort of desperation that I’m witnessing,” Torrey said.

The child care needs for those workers can be particularly tough to fill, she said.

For one, child care is expensive, and can be a burden even to middle class families, she said.

A state-sponsored study of the child care market found that in 2003, average weekly rates around Keene ranged from $105 for 3- to 5-year-olds to $134 for infants, the mid-range of prices for the state.

“I’ve been here four months, and I know of at least one resignation from someone who just couldn’t afford to put their kids in childcare,” said Renee Pecor, human resources manager for Timken Super Precision in Keene. “It was a single mom.”

All TANF recipients are eligible for a child care subsidy, but it’s often not enough to cover costs, said Terry R. Smith, director of the Division of Family Assistance at the state Department of Health and Human Services.

He said recipients pay an average of $75 out of their own pockets for child care, often for the sort of informal child care arrangements they use during off-peak hours or when a child gets sick and can’t go to his regular center.

Payments soon to rise by hundreds of dollars

On top of her child care subsidy, Downing pays about $160 for babysitters and $89 a month to the Keene Day Care Center, she said.

In June, her payments to the center will shoot up to $430 a month, she said. That’s a big chunk out of the $1,600 a month she’ll then be making, a third of which will go toward state subsidized rent for her four-bedroom public housing apartment, whose walls are covered in brightly colored children’s drawings.

She said she hopes she’ll find some help when she reauthorizes her other benefits in May. In addition to housing and child care assistance, she also gets food stamps.

None of that will solve next fall’s dilemma. She’s taking sociological theory and introduction to business, two required courses that will put her in class from 4:30 p.m. to 8:50 p.m. two days a week, she said.

She’s already thinking about child care.

She won’t find it at a center. There’s not a single one in the area that offers evening care. The Winchester Learning Center plans to eventually extend its hours until 11 p.m., but that won’t be for several years, said the nonprofit program’s executive director, Penelope R. Vane.

Fortunately, Downing’s job allows her the flexibility to take care of child care needs, she said.

Many local businesses help employees work around child-care problems through “family friendly” policies like flexible scheduling (see related story). But many low-income parents don’t have that luxury.

Piper Reason is a career counselor for Working Futures, an agency that contracts with the state to teach work readiness skills to TANF recipients.

Reason says her clients sometimes lose jobs or can’t take those offered to them because of child care issues.

Her clients are perfect candidates for entry-level retail jobs, and in the last three years about 1,400 jobs were created by the opening of Monadnock Marketplace. But most of those jobs require evening and weekend shifts, Reason said.

“The women I work with don’t have flexibility,” she said. “They’re looking at entry-level jobs. They can’t be asking for favors. They can’t be saying, ‘My child is more important than my job.’”

Panel seeking ways to help during off-hours

Reason is part of an ad hoc task force examining local child care needs, particularly the need for evening and weekend care.

The group isn’t certain what it will find, but might look to Caba Evening Care as a model solution, said Susan B. Newcomer, the workforce coordinator for the Greater Keene Area Chamber of Commerce, who is a member of the task force.

The center, which opened in Brattleboro last November, is the only program in the nation offering child care exclusively at night, said Patrick Moreland, executive director of Community Action Brattleboro Area, or CABA.

Housed in a former elementary school, it has space for 30 children and charges parents as little as $1 a week for care between 2 p.m. and midnight in its home-like setting, said center director Carol L. Ames. All parents are in low-income situations and must demonstrate the need for care, Moreland said.

It took three years of planning and a $600,000 renovation to open the center, which survives on a higher than average subsidy from the state, as well as private grants and donations, he said.

“It sapped my soul for three years, and now it exists and it’s helping,” Ames said. “That’s a very rewarding feeling, especially for something as unusual as this.”

Should a similar center open locally, it too would take years of planning and piles of cash, Newcomber said.

And though Downing will be in school until 2009, such a center would still be too late to help her.

She can dream, though. She’s heard that in Las Vegas, you can get 24-hour child care, even if your child is sick, she said.

“That would be my dream day care: 24-hour day care with a sick room, and then I think no single parent out there would have a reason not to work,” she said.

***



Ivy Dowing signs the sign-out sheet while picking up her son, Matthew, 5, at the Keene Recreation Center day care. Meanwhile, her daughter Tiffany, 11, helps with little sister, Julia, 2. Downing had to pick up her children at three different locations.



***



Placement: A1

Note: This was the main story in a package of three. See also "New Federal Welfare plan could take a toll on N.H." and
"Keene-area businesses try to lend a hand." After this package ran, the Winchester Learning Center fast-tracked its plans for extended hours care.

 

New federal welfare law could take a toll on N.H.

Sunday, April 30, 2006
The Keene Sentinel


Nika Carlson
Sentinel Staff

Come October, New Hampshire must put hundreds more welfare recipients back to work, putting pressure not only on the state, but on support networks for those new workers.

Under the new requirements, part of the federal Deficit Reduction Act, half of eligible recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families must spend 30 hours a week working or training for work.

Around 32 percent of them already do, but should the other 18 percent not meet the goal, the state stands to lose around $4 million for this year alone, said Terry R. Smith, director of the Division of Family Assistance at the state Department of Health and Human Services.

With cushioning to cover for those who don’t show up for planned work or training, an estimated 600 to 1,100 additional recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) will need to enter the workforce, bring the total working group to 1,624, he said.

Half that group has a child who’s too young to go to school, and 350 have children between 1 and 2. All of them are single parents, and all are eligible for a state child care subsidy.

Currently, those 350 parents of toddlers are exempt from work requirements, but the Legislature is examining a proposal to remove that exemption, among others.

Paying for the added child care costs of more people going back to work will cost the state about $3.5 million. Of that, $1.9 million is proposed to cover the average $75 a month parents pay out-of-pocket for child care on top of the state subsidy, Smith said.

The state has already identified that money within its budget, plus it’ll be getting a $1.5 million reimbursement from the federal government and around $750,000 in ensuing years, he said.

But all that money means nothing if there’s no spaces for kids, said Janine A. Lesser, a child care specialist with the family assistance division.

“The 10,000 question is capacity versus enrollment,” she said. “How much space is left anyway?”

She’s looking at that very question, along with ways to connect people with quality care. But her study likely won’t be complete until September, she said, just one month before the state has to meet the 50 percent participation mark.

The state won’t force people to work if they can’t find quality child care, Smith said, but fewer workers make it harder to reach the mark, a powerful incentive for the state to increase child care capacity and quality.

Those initiatives have already started. In addition to Lesser’s study, the state launched a new quality rating program called Licensed Plus, which encourages providers to meet higher standards.

It’s also developing a program so TANF recipients can meet work requirements by volunteering in a child care center, with training possibilities increasing up to a college degree, Smith said.

The cost of those supports is dwarfed by what the state stands to lose if it can’t get enough people working. By year 10, penalties could hit $58.7 million.

“I call it the death spiral,” he said.

***

Note: This story was a sidebar to the story "The day care dilemma."

Placement: A4


 

Keene-area businesses try to lend a hand

Sunday, April 30, 2006
The Keene Sentinel


Nika Carlson
Sentinel Staff

Child care problems affect nearly half the American workforce.

One in two workers is a parent, and of those, one in five is single. If they’re married, there’s a 75 percent chance both partners work.

And with the parents away at work, someone has to watch the kids.

In recognition of that, businesses are increasingly creating “family friendly” policies that work around the child care problems those parents face. If they want to attract and keep workers, they have to.

“We know that everybody out there has lots of options,” said Cathleen A. Schmidt, president and CEO of Citizens Bank New Hampshire.

She said the bank’s family friendly policies are a way of making it the best option, not only to potential employees, but current ones as well, she said.

“We’re looking for the very best people to work for Citizens and once we’ve identified them, we want to keep them on board,” she said.

Timken Super Precision, Keene’s second largest employer, runs its machines 24 hours a day. Child care can be a “huge concern” for its approximately 900 employees, both on and off the standard work day, said Human Resources Manager Renee Pecor.

“A lot of what we hear is the cost of child care and so many of our employees will work different shifts than their spouses so they can provide care for their kids,” she said. “If you want to keep these folks as employees, you have to be more flexible.”

Employees may take sick time to care for an ill child and can arrange their work schedules around their child’s pick-up and drop-off times at day care, she said.

Citizens Bank New Hampshire helps defray the high cost of child care for its lower income employees, giving up to $5,000 annually to workers in families earning less than $38,000 a year, Schmidt said.

The bank tackles child care problems less directly — by letting managers schedule around employee needs, with shorter work days and weeks, and even a summer leave-of-absence program for when kids get out of school, she said.

Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene eliminates the child care middle man, mitigating the cost and shortage by running its own center, which is open only to hospital employees.

The recently expanded Children’s Learning Center is owned and subsidized by the hospital, allowing its employees to pay less for care, said Julie F. Green, vice president of human resources.

The hospital also allows for flexible schedules, and employees may put cash accrued on their cafeteria plan toward personal days, Green said.

Not all companies are as progressive, or even aware that child care can be a problem for their employees, said Thomas K. Link.

In 2001, he helped lead a child care task force that, among other things, tried to alert businesses to the child care problems their workers often face, said Link, who is also the spokesman for Cheshire Medical.

He said it worked most of the time.

“As businesses realize that to recruit and retain employees child care is a large and important issue, they’ll be more willing to support it,” he said.

***

Placement: A4

Note: This story ran as a sidebar to the A1 story "The day care dilemma."


 

Stoddard prepares for worst

Tuesday, October 11, 2005
The Keene Sentinel


Nika Carlson
Sentinel Staff

STODDARD — In the early evening mist Monday, Jean M. McLean shoveled sand into bags next to her small home on Stoddard’s Highland Lake.

The water had receded from its high mark of 3 inches up her outer walls, but she was still on alert.

McLean’s home on Stone Road is mere feet from the now-dry dike that was breached Sunday and about 100 feet from the usually calm dam that water now roars over.

A line of white sandbags snaked over the dike, through her yard, and up around her front door. Her house is closer to the town’s line of defense against floods than any other on Highland Lake.

“They’re warning people that got flooding that more could come later in the week,” she said wearily, leaning against the shovel. “ ... Firemen were here earlier, but I couldn’t let them do all the work.”

Stoddard escaped the bomb-like devastation that hit other northern Monadnock Region towns, but water remains high.

The roads are mostly dry, but six roads were accessible only by boat Monday, and portions are still flooded. Officials plan to staff their command center in Faulkner Elementary School — high on a hill above town — through Thursday.

If heavy rain hits the still-high lake and saturated ground, things could get a lot worse, Fire Chief Patricia “P.J.” Lamothe said.

The Stoddard Fire Department got its first flooded basement call Saturday afternoon, but the real activity didn’t begin until nearly midnight, she said.

People were reporting four or five feet of water in their basements, and the fire department was pumping in four places.

“At some point, we just stopped,” she said. “It was a losing battle.”

She doesn’t know when the dam was breached. The fire department got a call from someone early Sunday morning saying water was sneaking up to a house, and “that’s when we realized we could be in trouble,” she said. “You couldn’t even see the dam.”

McLean said she was out of her house by 4 a.m., panicked. Lake water crept higher than she’s ever seen it in her 16 years on the lake; rivers of water crossed Route 123, and firefighters had to lead her through the rushing water in the inky dark, she said.

“You could have sworn it was a stream coming down 123, not a road,” Lamothe said. “We had flooding in places we’ve never had flooding before.”

At some point, a 24-foot pontoon boat went over the dam and wedged up against the bridge over Shedd Hill Road, restricting water flow out of the lake, she said. The water rose more than 30 feet and rushed over and around the bridge, flooding the road until firefighters were able to redirect the flow with sandbags, she said.

A wrecker was able to pull the boat out before the bridge was damaged, she said.

By 6 a.m., the dam evacuation plan was put in place, and everyone in the approximately 50 houses between the fire station and Route 9 was warned to leave, Lamothe said. By Monday evening, two people remained on Treelyn Road.

William G. and Joan Forsyth held out until Monday, when they were evacuated by boat from their summer home. Water lapped at both the front and back doorsteps.

“They came back and the told us we had to go,” William Forsyth said. “They said it’s going to rain, and the water would be coming up again.”

Town officials have been sweeping the town regularly since Sunday, by truck and by boat, checking for loose debris and encouraging the final holdouts to leave their houses.

They’re telling non-residents not to come back for a week-and-a-half, as their houses may or may not be safe, Lamothe said.

“We haven’t been into houses because a lot of them aren’t year-round and don’t have foundations, so they may have shifted,” she said. “We’re waiting for the water to recede so we can check the structures for damage.”

Like many in the region, emergency workers have been going non-stop since Saturday, even with help from the Concord-area fire departments, Lamothe said.

Access to Stoddard only opened this morning. Previously, it was limited to Route 123 through Marlow, though that road was technically closed. Giant chunks of concrete had fallen away in places, narrowing the path to one lane.

Telephone and 911 service was restored Monday afternoon, while Public Service of New Hampshire workers swept the town disconnecting the still-functioning electricity from flooded houses.

Better than having to risk more electrical danger later in the week, Lamothe told the residents.

“We’re trying to prepare for the rains that are expected Wednesday,” she said.

***


RUN AGROUND — This pontoon boat broke free of its mooring on Highland Lake in Stoddard and was jammed by floodwaters under a bridge. The dam was barely visible as water spilled over the sides. Sand bags were deployed to protect the firehouse, which had become the command center.

***
Placement: A2

Note: This story ran as part of an edition dedicated to coverage of the October floods that devastated the Monadnock Region on Oct. 9. The region was eventually declared a federal disaster zone.

 
KSC president: Changes needed; Sexual harassment policy ‘did not work’

Friday, April 29, 2005
The Keene Sentinel

Nika Carlson
Sentinel Staff

Keene State College’s sexual harassment policy failed in a recent case and needs to change, President Stanley J. Yarosewick told a group of 21 students and staff who marched on his office Thursday afternoon after a campus forum on the issue.

The policy is ambiguous, legally confusing, allows too much lag time for reaction, and “I’m just saddened by the fact that the system did not work in this case,” he told the group. “We’re going to change some policies and procedures on this campus.”

In March, a male student wrote a female Keene State professor a derogatory, sexually charged letter — the case in question.

The case is still not resolved, the student is still enrolled at Keene State, and protesters say were outraged that, until Thursday, the administration did not publicly respond to campus concerns.

“Under the auspices of protecting the perpetrator’s rights, what we do is give out the sense on campus that these incidents are acceptable, that they are tolerated and if you do these things, you’ll get away with it,” said Mary-Ellen Fortini, director of sponsored programs at the college and one of the organizers of Thursday’s forum.

She and a handful of others organized the forum to protest not just the one case, but also how the administration handles — or fails to handle — such incidents, she said.

“We’re here today to have an open forum to confront sexual harassment, bigotry and hatred on this campus,” Fortini told the crowd of men and women that ballooned to more than 100 outside Rhodes Hall.

The catalyst

On April 4, the Keene State professor filed a report with police alleging that a month earlier, a male student gave her the letter after a classroom discussion about an article students were to have read.

In the letter, the student accuses the professor of humiliating him in class and calls her a four-letter expletive for vagina, asks if she loves him and makes other insults.

According to the report, the following ensued: The professor told the college about the letter, and the student was removed from the class and ordered not to contact her, among other punishments. The professor was unsatisfied with the sanctions the college imposed and went to police looking for legal action, but police determined the student hadn’t committed a crime.

The professor and the student declined to comment to The Sentinel, each saying through representatives that the case was not yet resolved.

The college does not comment on disciplinary action. However, several sources confirmed that this case prompted the forum and was the one referenced Thursday.

About the time the professor filed the police report, more than 50 faculty, staff and students sent letters of protest to the administration, decrying what they called an unacceptable response to the incident, said biology professor Karen Cangialosi, who helped organized the forum.

Administrators, however, didn’t respond, and at least 20 faculty members had at one time considered boycotting next week’s graduation in protest, she said Thursday.

At the forum, people stepped up to microphones to talk about sexual harassment, first haltingly, then passionately.

Over the last few weeks, the number of unresolved sexual harassment incidents they’ve heard about has blossomed, organizers said, from stories of inappropriate language in teacher evaluations to one student so frightened for her safety after repeated phone calls from another student, she had her mother sleep in her dorm room.

People often don’t know how to respond to sexual harassment: Not only is the college’s policy vague, but so is people’s understanding of sexual harassment, protestors said, and they called for more education on the subject.

Despite confusion, there is an ethical need to speak up before “this seeps all over the culture, all over the country (and) word gets around that people can be violent” without any consequences, said education professor Thomas J. Bassarear.

“There are obviously members of the administration that are incredibly concerned, not only about the incident, but the clicourt, associate vice president for academic affairs at the college, who was at the forum. “... It really does seem as if we’ve lost control of our community.”

Some questioned, though, the college’s response to the letter. A student caught smoking marijuana in a dorm faces serious charges, but students who use words that “(deliver) violence and ... (promise) more violence to come” are not dealt with seriously, said Liz Pacilio, a lecturer in English and women’s studies.

“Personally I’m afraid to be on campus with a student who would do something like that,” said a teary Michelle Emery, a senior psychology major. “What is Dr. Y’s response?”

She soon found out.

Getting answers

A group of students peeled off first to find Yarosewick, nicknamed “Dr. Y,” at a student presentation, then to lead a larger group across campus and up the narrow stairs to crowd his sunny office, grim-faced or bearing nervous smiles.

“We’re here because we’re outraged about the student who sent a professor a hate letter,” one student said, recounting the impassioned statements at the forum.

Yarosewick then launched into a specific list of failures in the college’s response to the incident.

He learned about it 26 days after it happened, he said: “too late, frankly.

“... My own personal feeling is in these types of situations, there should be immediate suspension,” he said, saying that sends a “very strong message” that sexual harassment is not tolerated on campus. “... It’s what I’m going to recommend.”

Also, “There should be a hearing within 48 hours and that didn’t happen,” he said.

Finally, there are conflicting appeal processes, Yarosewick said.

He said he would direct people to review not only what the college does in cases of sexual harassment, but the entire disciplinary process. Some changes could happen by fall, though a review of the whole process may take longer, he said.

Yarosewick retires June 30, but he said he would talk to new president Helen F. Giles-Gee about campus concerns and changes to the policy.

“It is so important that you have voiced so candidly your opinion on this issue,” he said.

Cangialosi said she thought Yarosewick was “making every honest attempt to say the system was flawed and needs to be addressed... I actually feel good about the outcome, and they will feel pressure to makes some changes.”

The Keene State protest mirrors a situation at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, where students have held a series of protests against sexual discrimination on campus. Most publicized was a magazine singling out a student in a sexually themed questionnaire.

***

Placement: A1




 

Study has Keene State lab humming

The Keene Sentinel
Tuesday, February 01, 2005


Nika Carlson
Sentinel Staff

They don’t look like much: a few fuzzy, transparent circles on a Mars-red landscape.

Pull back a few feet, take in the $30,000 microscope, the bright new walls and smooth black counters, the rows of flasks and beakers, and it’s apparent these fuzzy dots are worth a lot more than they look.

They are human lung cells and they are part of a $12 million study that looks to put Keene State College on the scientific research map.

The lab belongs to Melinda D. Treadwell, an assistant professor in the technology, design and safety department at Keene State. She’s a junior researcher in the multimillion-dollar lung disease study, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health. It’s a collaboration among Keene State, Dartmouth College in Hanover, Dartmouth Medical School, and the N.H. Department of Environmental Services.

The study aims to figure out why people in New Hampshire get lung disease by examining lung tissue at its most basic levels: cells and the proteins that make cells work.

Researchers have a few core questions they want answered.

How do the cells of a healthy lung and a lung with cystic fibrosis work differently?

What’s going on with all the proteins inside these cells?

What effect do certain environmental factors in New Hampshire’s air have on lung health?

“What we haven’t had so far is a linkage between what we observe and how we understand how these things work at the molecular level and what we see in the effect on people’s health,” said Joshua W. Hamilton, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Dartmouth Medical School and one of the project’s leaders.

Lung disease is the third most common cause of death in the U.S., taking 361,000 lives annually, according to the project’s Web site. An additional 25 million Americans have chronic lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and asthma.

It is these statistics that are the ultimate push behind the research, with the hope of eventually influencing public policy.

“One of the biggest challenges facing policy makers or public health officials today is understanding which chemical or which compound they should worry about the most,” Treadwell said. “Common sense may dictate one thing, but in the end — especially if money is involved — the proof is in the science.

“At the end, if we’re successful, we will identify those metals that are most toxic, then we can focus on those areas and say, ‘What can we do to decrease the risk?’ ”

Making a statement

Over the next three years, Treadwell, her staff, and a handful of undergraduate students will focus on how metals commonly found in the air in workplaces affect lungs — one of five studies in the project.

For the past two years, Treadwell has been examining 10 years of data the state has collected on levels of metals in different locations.

But with a large investment from Keene State on a new lab and $200,000 worth of equipment, among other things, Treadwell can get started on developing her own data.

Using samples Treadwell and her students have collected, they will figure out at what levels of toxicity cells begin to die.

It is slow, careful, often tedious work, Treadwell said. It requires three years of growing cells, infecting them with arsenic, nickel, and other airborne metals, and watching them die.

The project, however, is not just about research. The money comes through the National Institutes of Health’s Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, established to strengthen the research capabilities of small, rural states and their young college faculty.

“When Dartmouth was interested in writing one of these grants, the thought was to link our research to a smaller institution,” Hamilton said. “We thought it would be a good way to develop ties with Keene and help them develop a greater research presence ... I’m very impressed with Keene State and the support that they’ve given to science.”

The college, in fact, made a bold statement about its research ambitions this past year with a $23 million renovation of its science center.

“They’ve traditionally been a teaching institution and they decided they really wanted to boost their research activities and bring them into the classroom,” Hamilton said.

In the end, all this investment in research, science and technology is for the students, school officials said.

“We’ve wanted to provide more hands-on instruction for our students, because we felt that was lacking,” Keene State President Stanley J. Yarosewick said. With the grant, Treadwell will be able to do just that, he said.

Both Yarosewick and Treadwell said on-campus research allows students to deal with real-world problems, to think creatively, and be better prepared to enter the workforce.

‘Can I be a part of that?’

Undergraduates will begin working with Treadwell over the summer, she said. Eventually, she will build a senior seminar class around the study and even incorporate results from her work into her regular safety-studies curriculum.

She said showing real-world research applications is especially important in the slow-moving and technical world of science.

“It’s showing through example,” she said. “Sometimes when we show these things in class, students get very excited and they ask, ‘Can I be a part of that?’ ”

One of those students is Jaime K. Ingalls, Treadwell’s research assistant and a 2001 graduate of Keene State’s safety-studies program.

“This is pretty exciting because it allows me to take some of the things I’ve learned about and take them further, realize why standards are set the way they are and maybe help set future standards,” she said. “It’s working toward a solution to the problem instead of just monitoring it.”

Fostering enthusiasm like Ingalls’ is Treadwell’s ultimate goal.

“Informing teaching through research is what I’m really interested in,” she said. “It just makes the learning real to me, and for those students that think like me, it’ll make it more real for them, too.”

***


Melissa D. Treadwell works in her lab Friday afternoon at Keene State College. Treadwell is a junior researcher in a lung disease study with Dartmouth College.

***


Placement: A1

Note: This story won second place in the 2005 New Hampshire Press Association Better Newspaper Contest's Education category for daily newspapers.

 

People everywhere got to have Free

The hot Freecycle Web site isn't just a good place to find goods and services, it's become a community of friends

Tuesday, August 31, 2004
The Oregonian


Nika Carlson

Through the Web site Freecycle, people give and take -- literally, freely, liberally. People post a request or offer, hoping someone has what they want or wants what they have. Ask for a woodstove, get it for free. Have too much Splenda on your hands, give it away. Hundreds of frozen chicken necks: offered and taken.

The listserve was created in Arizona in May 2003 to help keep landfills clear, but for some the site has grown beyond its environmental mission. For them, the Internet community of Freecycle has gone from virtual to actual. Politeness and generosity reign.

"It's an opportunity to accept something with grace," said Kathy Cruz, who runs a Washington County Freecycle group. "It's counter to society today. We're not protected by the convenience of having to pay for it and not having to extend ourselves. It's a heart-to-heart transaction."

Freecycle has grown from one group in Arizona to hundreds worldwide. More than 6,000 people subscribe to the Portland group, the biggest Freecycle group by far, and hundreds more subscribe to groups for surrounding areas.

Not everyone has had the spiritual experience Cruz has had with Freecycle, but a special few have made connections or simply slowed down for a minute to say "thank you."

"There comes a time where if somebody else can help, it's OK to let them help... Freecycle has redeemed my opinion of the human race."
-GINA GRIFFIN, WHO FOUND HELP, AND A FRIEND, THROUGH FREECYCLE

Megan Brooks and Hollie Butler are stay-at-home moms. They live three blocks away from each other in tidy Orenco Station. They both shop at New Seasons Market and wonder about the other hip-looking young parents, though they rarely approach them.

"I've joked before that trying to find new friends as an adult is hard because you feel like you're dating," said Butler, 29.

The women laugh, interrupting and finishing each other's sentences. They act like old friends, but the met just over six months ago.

They were brought together by spice racks.

They talked three hours the first time they met, when Brooks, 27, picked up the racks Butler offered on Freecycle. They discussed politics, religion, parenting and love lives while their toddler sons played in the living room. Brooks tipped Butler off that she practiced attachment parenting, a style of parenting focusing on creating physical and emotional bonds between parent and child.

"I remember thinking I was so grateful: 'Another one like me,' " Butler said.

The boys shared toast made from homemade bread, and the women made a play date.

Now, they get together several times a week.

"Our level of comfort with each other is so deep, even though our history is really small," Brooks said.


At age 40, Gina Griffin is starting over.

Until recently, she was married, with three kids, her own business and her own home. After a nasty divorce, however, she was left with almost nothing. She and her kids took over a fly-ridden trailer in the hills above Wenatchee, Wash., before moving to Oregon to start over. After a brief stint at a friend's home, they moved into an apartment in Hillsboro they "Goodwilled and garage saled" together. "We had practically nothing and nowhere to put what little we did have," Griffin said.

In December, Griffin discovered Freecycle. She watched for several months to see how the site worked. She wasn't used to asking for help. But she had no place to eat and few places to sit, and since dinner was the one of the few times the Griffins regularly gathered, she asked for a table and chairs.

Michelle Brentano, 31, responded to her post. Although Griffin asked for little, Brentano noted that Griffin was a single mom in need of help just like she once was.

She overwhelmed Griffin with boxes of kitchenware, toys, books and homey knickknacks. And while Griffin played with her dogs on the floor of Brentano's suburban Milwaukie home and the women shared stories about their pasts, Brentano's son dismantled the dining room table.

In one day, Griffin's apartment was transformed from mere shelter to a home.

"I have tried to be independent and take care of what I needed and not take advantage of anybody, but there comes a time where if somebody else can help, it's OK to let them help," Griffin said. "After everything I've been through, Freecycle has redeemed my opinion of the human race."


Livia Thompson got her dream wedding.

It was a ceremony Thompson, 30, never thought she could afford, with the love she never thought she'd meet, an experience far more important than the prom they both missed in high school.

And even though their first dance was to the radio because of a CD glitch and the ceremony had a few bumps -- she had met the minister just that day -- she felt like a princess.

It was all because of Freecycle. She asked for wedding decorations and advice, but got much more.

Tammy Myers, an avid Freecycler ordained through the Internet, who had never performed a ceremony before and doesn't know if she will again, was the minister.

"I did it because she needed someone, and I love Freecycle," Myers said.

The wedding photographer, Russelle Baltzell, is a single, stay-at-home mom exploring the business of photography. When not snapping digital photos, she tied children's shoes and looked after Thompson during the reception.

"Between Tammy and Russelle, we probably saved $500," said Thompson, 30.

Thompson planned the $850 ceremony in a few months. She and her fiance Larry Thompson, 27, paid for it with their tax refund, organized the theme around Freecycled decorations, and were able to afford extras like tuxedos and renting the city of Hillsboro's River House with the money they saved.

"This is something our family is going to cherish and our grandchildren are going to cherish," Thompson said, tearing up. "That's the best thing I've gotten from Freecycle. It's a community."


Janice Caffey, 77, and Pam Myers, 57, are like family. They call each other Internet mom and Internet daughter, I-mom and I-daughter for short.

They met when Janice's daughter, Kathy Allen, requested a stuffed kitten on Freecycle. She wanted something nice for her mother to cuddle with, but couldn't bring it to her. Allen lives in Vernonia, while her mother lives about 45 miles away at Mt. St. Joseph, an assisted living center in Southeast Portland, and they don't see each other as much as they'd like.

Myers, who lives in Southeast Portland, replied to the ad Allen posted on Freecycle and now visits Caffey every week. "We always have a big hug and a big kiss and tell each other we love each other," Caffey said.

She brings her movies and treats like candy or doughnuts or KFC, sometimes hunting all over town for an elusive Heath candy bar. Some days she brings her husband, her daughter, her granddaughters, or even her dog, a beagle.

"I just feel she's an angel sent to us," Allen said.

Their chance meeting was a lucky one, they say, made even more so by the losses in their lives.

When Myers was in her 30s, her mother died, and Caffey lost a daughter nearly 40 years ago in a car wreck. That daughter would have been 57 is she were alive today, the same age as Myers.

"She calls me her daughter, her daughter's come back," Myers said. "She has replaced an important part of my life."

Several months ago, Caffey was sick to the point she thought she was near death. She attributes her strong recovery in part to Myers.

"I was so lonely up her and she's brought so much brightness to my life," she said. "It's kind of like a little miracle."

***

Placement: E1, front page of Living section


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