Missouri State employees Susan Dollar and Michele Day, of the MSU School of Social Work, and Day Ligon, assistant professor of biology, received grants in their particular fields.
Susan Dollar, director of MSU's School of Social Work, and Michele Day, assistant professor of social work, received a two-year $163,595 award from the Missouri Foundation for Health, according to an Oct. 11 MSU news release.
The grant will fund the Senior Health University program, which will provide health information and training to rural adults older than age 60.
The project is interdisciplinary, meaning social work, nursing and dietetics faculty and students will share the teaching responsibility with area seniors. The program is intended to improve health literacy in seniors and to harbor collaboration between university health students and seniors.
"We are working with students and seniors throughout the development of the program to make it meaningful, sustainable and fun,” Day said in the release. “We want to see them smile when they say health literacy.”
Ligon received a four-year $58,000 award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation for work on the project dubbed "A Survey of Alligator Snapping Turtle and other Turtle Species in Northeastern Oklahoma Rivers," according to the release.
The survey will be conducted on the Caney, Verdigris and Neosho rivers in Oklahoma to monitor the effectiveness of reintroduction in conservation of the species, which has already been done on the Caney River.
The turtles historically inhabited the Verdigris and Neosho rivers, but it is believed that they no longer do. The survey team will determine the validity of that belief and establish whether the need exists for reintroduction, the release said.
"Because of the ever-increasing rate at which many organisms are declining, and even going extinct, reintroduction efforts are becoming an increasingly important tool in conservationists’ tool boxes,” Ligon said in the release.[[In-content Ad]]