Student Service Updates: The USF Health Service Corps enables our COPH students to volunteer alongside medical, nursing, physical therapy and pharmacy students in a wide variety of meaningful, rewarding and FUN health-related community service activities.

Past events – special thanks to everyone who contributed to the fall food drive!   Check out the photos at Fall Food Drive  and special thanks to our COPH student leaders: Curtis Devetter, Shuchita Patel and Anna Cable. Together with other USF Health faculty staff and students, we collected over 52 LARGE boxes of food (and over 1400 lbs. of food!)  this year,  which we  donated  to Tampa Jewish Family Services Community Food Bank;  Metropolitan Ministries;  San Jose Mission (in collaboration with Catholic Mobile Medical Services);  Project Downtown (in collaboration with Muslims Without Borders and Council on American-Islamic Relations).

 

So now that we have successfully completed the food drive, you may ask what’s next and do you have anything similar that we can help with, next semester? Well good news – YES! We are starting an exciting new partnershipbetweenUSFHealthServiceCorpsandMealsonWheelsofTampa!

Specifically,ourService Corpswill adoptarouteintheuniversityarea,foronemorningaweekthroughoutthe year. We will also be having a special luncheon, sponsored by Meals on Wheels, in early February at USF Health.  I have included additional information in our Fall 2013 Service Corps Opportunitieswebsite at the end of section IV. Feel free to contact me if you wish to contribute to this next service learning project to help bring nutritious meals, dignity and friendship to seniors and others who might not be able to shop or prepare meals for themselves.

Upcoming events: Now that the semester is winding down, we are in the process of planning ahead for next semester and we will be updating the Fall 2013 Service Corps Opportunities  in January.  In the meantime, students may wish to check out the Service Corps Calendaras we already do have a number of rewarding service events scheduled for early – mid January!

Research  Updates:

COPH graduate students are encouraged to visit the main COPH Student Research website, with links to:  Funding Opportunities; Grant Writing Resources; Research Presentations; andFaculty Research Areas & Expertise.

News about USF Health Research Day! The 2014 USF Health Research Day will take place Friday, February 21, 2013 at the USF Marshall Center. This is a very classy event and you can check out our website for COPH involvement in last year’s Research Day at USF HEALTH RESEARCH DAY FEBRUARY 22, 2013.

Abstracts are due on Friday,January 10, 2014 and students can submit their abstracts at 2014 abstract submission form. Students will be contacted by early February with helpful details pertaining to the status of their abstracts and the master schedule for USF Health Research Day.  COPH graduate students can  also apply for the Student Honorary Awards for Research and Practice (‘SHARP’) which provides a financial incentive to COPH students to complete a body of work to a stage sufficient for presentation at a regional, national, or international professional meeting/conference.   The next deadline will be Monday, January 6^th.  COPH students can have their poster presentations for conferences and USF Health Research Day printed free of charge at the COPH center, as long as they use the COPH Vertical Poster Template  or the COPH Horizontal Poster Template.  If students are presenting oral presentations at conferences, they are asked to use the COPH PowerPoint Template.

For additional information pertaining to  student research and service, feel free to contact Ellen Kent, MPH, CPH   by email (ekent@health.usf.edu) phone (813-974-6622) or in person (COPH room 2150H through December 20^th and in the new  Shared Student Services building, room 1058 after January 2).