FVSU professor contributes to new encyclopedia on diversity and social justice

    A new Fort Valley State University program will help teach students about the dangers of smoking. The university's Master of Public Health program recently received a$7,500 Behavioral Health Capacity Expansion mini-grant to launch a new program to discourage tobacco use among young people.

    The new program called, "No Smokin', No Chewin', No Dippin'," will discourage college students and young people within the community from using tobacco and marijuana.  

The new funding was underwritten by the Morehouse School of Medicine. Dr. Oreta Samples, program coordinator of Master of Public Health program, served as the principal investigator for the mini grant.

   "The purpose of this grant is to promote student behavioral health in a positive manner at an HBCU and to expand our service capacity," Samples said.                                            

A prop that displays the affects of smoking upon the body: Mr. Giant Gross Mouth.

      According to Samples, the idea for the new program was, in part, inspired by the new Georgia Board of Regent's decision to prohibit the use of tobacco on all University System of Georgia member schools and property. The tobacco ban extends to all employees, students, USG contractors, and visitors.

    The new FVSU initiative will be targeted toward freshmen, upperclassmen seeking services at Valley Behavioral Health Services and the community.

    Fort Valley State University recently hosted a two-day event to prepare aspiring educators to meet the rigors of teaching young students from diverse backgrounds. The HBCU Teacher Preparation Summit was held Feb. 18 in the C.W. Pettigrew Center and included aspiring teachers and faculty from Spelman, Paine, Benedict and Morehouse Colleges, and Savannah State and Albany State Universities.  

    According to Dr. Edward Hill, FVSU's Dean of the College of Education, "The summit was launched to initiate a dialogue among faculty, pre-service candidates, administrators and teacher educators about current, relevant teacher preparation issues."

    The conference also addressed new policies and mandates that are on the horizon that can negatively impact teacher education programs at HBCUs.

    Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, deputy director for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities served as the keynote speaker for the conference. Toldson also serves as an associate professor of psychology at Howard University, an editor-in-chief at The Journal of Negro Education and a contributor to The Root.com.

Aspiring educators attend Fort Valley State University's Teacher Preparation Summit on Feb. 18 in the C. W. Pettigrew Center.

    Toldson spoke about his personal experiences on how educators negatively and positively impacted his educational journey. As a young child, he first attended a private school, where a teacher had low expectations for him. Toldson used to turn numbers into drawings, so his teacher believed he was unintelligent.  At the private school, the teacher segregated him into a slow learners group, where he did not receive individual time and attention, nor was he expected to do great things. His mother decided to pull him out of the school, and place him into a public school. There, a teacher believed that Toldson was brilliant, capable, intelligent and creative. His grades began to raise, and he began to excel. The deputy director of the White House attributed his improvement to the raised expectations and beliefs that his public school teacher had in him.

    Read more here.