F.R. "Fritz" Nordengren

The real work of academia is done by research assistants:  those hardworking, underpaid, never thanked, graduate students; hoping to make a name for themselves, pay a few bills, and somehow keep it all balanced until they graduate.

Our university doesn’t have a formal research assistant program for our scholars, so last year I  put together an internship in leadership development.  To date, I have been blessed with some very talented and gifted interns who have made my work and life immeasurably easier.

The original posting reads like this:

Health care administrators and managers are often key individuals in leadership development roles.  Leadership development courses and talks are often offered via human resources classes, retreats, conference presentations, and other formal and informal channels.

This internship  combines both research and practical application of leadership development.  It is especially designed for those students who want to include leadership development in their career path, but not necessarily as a college-based faculty member.   Students will research and develop their own skills in creative thinking, virtual team leadership, change leadership, and storytelling as a leadership tool.

I should explain that our Master’s program has just over 200 active students and my personal advisee list is just over 40 of those students.  Out of our best students, I am fortunate to hand select 3 or 4 each year who work with me in this Administrative Internship.

The first intern in this concept project is still working with me, developing a focused segment of our Change Leadership Seminar on the role of journaling and coaching employee change.

Another of these gifted scholars took on the creation of a presentation to a state wide quality conference on the natural conflicts which exist between the ideas of  quality and quality improvement.  I’ll present the results of her work again in April.

Interns are not reqired to fetch coffee - but it is always greatly appreciated. Photo Copyright 2008 by Jim Frazier

Working with me now, on the creation of an introductory lecture to our leadership skills,  is another of my Interns who is also a dual degree Podiatry student and a military officer. This scholar also took on the difficult challenge of working with me in the classroom during the Storytelling in Health Care Leadership Seminar held in the last few weeks.

And while the ongoing projects continue, new work begins in March with a new Intern as she completes her MPH practicum with Walden University.  She will be instrumental in the organization, review and selection of additional reading resources for “We Are What We Eat: The nutrition, policy and public health of America’s diet“. This new addition to the team will be working remotely from New Mexico, and will be helping to develop an iTunes U version of our course as a pilot.

I also confess (with pride) there are moments when I review their collective CV’s  and marvel at what  each has accomplished to date.  I am fortunate that they chose to share their strengths — and my mentorship — as they round out their graduate study.

In December, I chose the textbook for “We Are What We Eat” and the college curriculum committee has given its approval to the course. Work continues, planning goes on, and we’re still on track for the Fall course launch.

Finding the right book for a course about nutrition, food sources, public health, economics, and public policy was an interesting challenge.  Ultimately, when it came tome to pick one, I settled on Dr. Marion Nestle’s What to Eat.  Dr. Nestle, from her bio, is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health (the department she chaired from 1988-2003) and Professor of Sociology at New York University.

The text approaches food from the perspective of the supermarket, in an aisle by aisle, or section by section discussion of food, labels, nutrition.  Our goal from the inception of this course was to blend the theory and science with the practical so that future public health leaders can influence reasonable policy.

As a storyteller, I like producing documentaries and an opportunity to produce a documentary and build a graduate course at the same time was too good to pass up.

We Are What We Eat:  The nutrition, policy and public health of America’s diet is the working title of our public health elective to be tentatively offered fall  2010.  It’s a graduate course, with a text book, quizzes, papers, and discussion, but what I’m setting out to do is to create five one-hour documentary interviews with our faculty to create student engagement in the course materials.

There are lots of reasons we need a course like this in a medical school, and one  I find striking is this summer’s policy statement from the American Medical Association:

“Preventing disease is paramount in the provision of health care. Hospitals, physicians and nurses are ideal leaders and advocates for creating food environments that promote health. This policy is an important contribution to a prevention-based healthcare delivery system.”

The AMA’s new Sustainable Food policy builds on a report from its Council on Science and Public Health (http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/475/refcomd.pdf), which notes that locally produced and organic foods “reduce the use of fuel, decrease the need for packaging and resultant waste disposal, preserve farmland … [and] the related reduced fuel emissions contribute to cleaner air and in turn, lower the incidence of asthma attacks and other respiratory problems.” Industrial food production is a significant contributor to increased antibiotic resistance, climate change, and air and water pollution.

The new AMA policy states:

• That our AMA support practices and policies in medical schools, hospitals, and other health care facilities that support and model a healthy and ecologically sustainable food system, which provides food and beverages of naturally high nutritional quality.
• That our AMA encourage the development of a healthier food system through the US Farm Bill and other federal legislation.
• That our AMA consider working with other health care and public health organizations to educate the health care community and the public about the importance of healthy and ecologically sustainable food systems.

This is an interesting time to explore this topic.  There are new videos about food and sustainability, there is a growing interest in what food labels like “organic” really mean, and a slowing economy has led to interest in backyard gardens, urban gardens, back yard chickens, and our continued concerns about obesity and the health consequences to the nation.

We start shooting the 5 segments this month, shooting with a tapeless  JVC GY HM 100  camera, straight to  disk, which ought to  speed up our post producti0n work flow.