October 19, 2009 HOOPS SEASON A MONTH AWAY With the season’s tip-off just over four weeks away, Mississippi State University Women’s Basketball Head Coach Sharon Fanning will give us a preview. The Lady Bulldogs will host 16 home games as Fanning enters her 15th season at the helm of the program. NEXT WEEK Rick Stansbury, MSU's winningest men's basketball coach, will be our guest speaker. In 10 years, he has taken eight teams to post-season play (5 NCAA and 3 NIT appearances). LAST WEEK Invocation and Pledge: Prentiss Gordon NEW RECYCLED ROTARIAN The Club welcomed back Charlotte Coker after a year-and-a-half membership hiatus. She first became a member in 1999. A Starkville native and MSU alumna, she has “lived a little bit all over the world.” “My first job was with Boeing doing crew safety analysis for the Apollo 11 moon landing,” she said. “So I’ve been in computing for 42 years.” For a couple of years, she was an executive manager with a Fortune 500 company. She also has taught at MSU and served as a consultant. “The favorite part of my career was to be a system analyst and take many, many companies from manually doing a job to using computers,” she said. She and husband, Toxie, have two sons and have hosted 3 RYE students. FOUR MORE PAUL HARRIS FELLOWS Grant Arinder, Tom Ball, Dave Breaux and Bob Daniels received their Paul Harris Fellows’ medallions and pins. The PH award recognizes a contribution of $1,000 to the Rotary Foundation. Our club is the only one in the district with 100 percent member participation in annual giving. Making the presentations, Past District Governors Stu Vance and Jack Forbus noted that of every dollar we donate 50 cents come back to our district for service projects. DISTRICT 6820 KENYAN WATER PROJECT District Governor Chuck Jordan and his Greenville Rotary Club are challenging the district to support the Ngusishi River Water Project in Timau, Kenya. With the Fall Social Silent Auction, our club already has committed about $3,700 to the effort. President Martha and Vice President Tommy added their golf teams’ winnings of $600 to the total. The western side of Mt. Kenya receives little rainfall throughout the year. Bore holes are not reliable in this area therefore wells are not possible. The Ngusishi River flows 21 km before confluence with the Timau River. At the headwaters of the Timau River is a group of eight springs and the “river” is hardly six feet wide. It is the major water source for five communities and two large farms with more than 6,000 people in the area and growing. Some people downstream must walk five to seven miles just to retrieve their daily water. MSU FOCUSES TECHNOLOGY ON DISABILITIES Mississippi State University’s T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability’s mission is “to ensure that persons with disabilities are able to continually benefit from technological solutions and advances in the field of assistive technology.” Janie Cirlot-New, center director, explained that services are available to persons with disabilities regardless of age or diagnosis. In fact, she said, the youngest client was four-weeks-old with the oldest ones in their nineties. Impairment is broadly categorized as affecting mobility, dexterity, communication, seeing and hearing, and learning and understanding. “Assistive technology is anything that will allow you to do something you couldn’t do,” she said. “It could be as simple as a pencil grip or blocks under a table, or something as sophisticated as a speech-recognition system.” The 14-year-old T.K. Martin Center is “quite unique” among major universities due to its comprehensive technological approach to disabilities. Programs are not limited to analysis and recommendation of technologies. They also include extensive training in use of the equipment. Center staff numbers 12 with rehabilitation engineers, speech pathologists, special education teachers, occupational therapists and a case manager. Services range from adaptive driving to vehicle modification to seating and mobility to augmentative communication. A mobility system is more than just a wheelchair. Seating and mobility activities seek the equipment that a person who cannot walk needs to get about. Cirlot-New said that center’s seating lab is extensive enough to draw vendors to the campus to tailor devices to clients on site. This means that a device is much more likely to be correctly designed and manufactured. In our culture, the ability to drive is the key to independence. Center staff analyze needs, recommend vehicle modifications and teach persons to use the equipment. Individuals actually get in a specially-equipped full-size van, mini-van or sedan and practice driving. “I especially admire the occupational therapist and engineer that do that,” she said. “Because I know that just trying to teach my children to drive was scary enough for me.” Cirloit-New’s area of specialty is augmentative communication. People who are non-speaking or who cannot be understood when they speak receive recommendations for high-end voice output devices. Adaptive computer access ranges from specialty keyboards to “gee whiz” devices that follow a person’s body or eye motion to operate a computer. Other areas of evaluation include home modification, activities of daily living, job site modifications, brain trauma, learning disabilities, auditory impairments and agriculture accommodations. Special programs include:
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY GLOSSARY Assistive Technology Device — Any item, piece of equipment or product system whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized that is used to increase, maintain or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. |