The award is given to individuals who have been influential advocates for Irish-American relations.

Lahey, who does not consider himself a nationally-known Irish-American, was “surprised and honored to receive it.”

Most of Lahey’s exposure is in the greater New York area, but with this award, he is excited to expand to a new geographic area around Boston, where there is a large Irish population.

Lahey was the Grand Marshal in New York City’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in 1997.  He has made more than 200 speeches on the Great Famine, and has had several articles published in The Guardian, an English newspaper.

Between 1845 and 1850, 1.5 million Irish died from starvation and diseases, and more than 2 million people left the country.

“Fortunately with the immigration to this country and elsewhere, it changed a lot of places for the better,” Lahey said.  “The Irish came to this country and helped build our schools and roads, and helped develop the Catholic Church into an influential religious organization.  The Irish touched just about every facet of American life.”

Through Lahey’s efforts and generous donations from the Lender family, Quinnipiac has accumulated the largest art collection from the period of the Irish famine, along with a sizeable collection of literature.  An Gorta Mor – The Great Hunger is on display in the Lender Family Special Collection Room of the Arnold Bernhard library.

Previous winners include late author Frank McCourt, U.S. Rep.Richard E. Neal, and last year’s recipient Patricia Harty, editor of Irish American Magazine.

“I’ve moved up in class, it seems,” Lahey joked. “It’s a very exclusive group.

“This gives me the opportunity to talk about it with more people and to hopefully continue the education process, so that people never forget what happened in Ireland during that time and that human rights disasters of that kind won’t happen in the future.”

The programs were created by David L. Katz, M.D., director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, and his team of nutritional scientists. Edward O’Connor, dean of the School of Health Sciences at Quinnipiac, is partnering with Katz to curb the problems of childhood obesity in New Haven County while increasing awareness of healthy eating. The long-term goal of the project is to expand the studies performed in the county to the entire state of Connecticut.

“With the rising rate of obesity in the United States – in Connecticut alone, 25 percent of our high school students are overweight or obese – our goal is to deliver a proven, school-centered health promotion program that may be replicated in school districts in Connecticut,” O’Connor said.

Nutrition Detectives is one of the programs Katz and O’Connor are looking forward to launching over the next year. This strategy plans to educate school children  on how to read food labels and detect marketing deceptions, which, will help them choose healthier food options.

The other program, Activity Bursts for Classroom (ABC) for Fitness, aims to provide a simple, engaging, free program that encourages physical activity in the classroom.

By breaking physical activity into short sessions, ABC for Fitness enables most children to accumulate at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day. Through previous research, it has been determined that the programs seem to work best at a “third-grade level,” according to Janet Headley, director of corporate and foundation relations.

“The idea is that we wish to develop and implement these programs in school, and then evaluate their effectiveness, and then disseminate the outcomes, hopefully to replicate the program elsewhere,” Headley said.

The Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center has collaborated with the Independence School District in Missouri since 2007, when it conducted a study to test if Katz’s programs would offer potential health benefits. Once these benefits were proven, these programs, along with a food scoring system (also developed by Katz) called NuVal, were implemented in elementary schools in the district. Techniques used in the Missouri study will be be utilized in the upcoming Connecticut study.

Last year, Quinnipiac had been in contact with two school districts in New Haven County, and still has to confirm that these two districts are interested in participating in the program. Two schools will be selected in each district, with one school in each being a control group while the other schools take part as an experimental group. The programs will be installed in the third grade, and booster sessions will be held in the fourth grade.

The grant given by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield will also be used to fund salary support at the Yale-Griffin Center, whose researchers will be involved in training Quinnipiac faculty and students so they can effectively jumpstart the project. In addition, funds will be allocated toward necessary materials and stipends for the participating schools.

“We’re hoping to get additional funding for the project too that’ll help us expand what we’re doing and to really strengthen the parent component because parents have a strong influence on what their kids do,” Headley said.

The programs were originally slated to start Oct. 1, 2010, but issues with funding has left the decision up in the air. A project plan is being set up this month by the research group to gain a clear idea of the timetable needed to implement the programs.

The Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation is an affiliate of the WellPoint Foundation. WellPoint’s program, Healthy Generations, invests in domestic initiatives that help improve the health and well-being of communities.

“Funding such as this is really an investment in the program, and so they’re wanting to take the one that they think will be most successful,” Headley said, “We were fortunate that, in the proposals that were submitted, that ours was selected for funding.”

“As Connecticut’s largest health insurer, we have a unique responsibility to improve the health of our members, as well as the overall health of the communities in which they live,” said David R. Fusco, president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Connecticut. “The expansion of the fitness and nutrition programs spearheaded by Quinnipiac University will have a direct impact on the lives of Connecticut’s children.”

The partnership between Quinnipiac and the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center has been given more of an emphasis since first lady Michelle Obama created the “Let’s Move!” initiative in February. Mrs. Obama’s project also has the specific goal of solving the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation. However, her initiative is intended to be widespread throughout the nation, as a federal task force has already been established to design a specific plan to deal with the problem.

The University had to report the 23 jobs to the government after dividing the amount of money received by the hourly salary of an average work-study job, according to Dominic Yoia, senior director of financial aid at Quinnipiac University.

“You just do the math to figure out how many new jobs that equates to,” he said.  “Whether you’ve created new jobs or not is irrelevant.  You just do the math.  You got more money, so how does that come out in terms of new jobs?”

Nine hundred ten students received work-study from Quinnipiac last year.  This year’s number will not be known until the end of the academic year, Yoia said.

“Did we create 23 exact new jobs?  No,” Yoia said.  “Did we spread it among more than 23 students?  Probably.  I don’t know how many more awards we were able to do as a result of that, but it certainly would’ve exceeded that.  But our students don’t work full-time, and if they weren’t working in work-study, they’d be working on the Quinnipiac payroll.”

The $787 billion stimulus package, signed into law on Feb. 17, 2009, gave the state of Connecticut more than $1.6 billion and created more than 7,533 jobs, according to Recovery.gov, the official Web site that provides informatin about the legislation.  A large portion of the overall $787 billion – $90.9 billion – was appropriated to U.S. schools.

Yoia said most of the schools across the state received stimulus money, so this case isn’t unique to Quinnipiac.

“The $270,000 is a work-study number,” Yoia said.  “Historically we get the roughly same amount of work-study money every year.  This year we got about a $270,000 increase, so that allows us basically to offer students opportunities to work and earn money while they go to college with the Federal Work-Study program.”

Freshmen generally receive a $2,000 work-study award and returning students earn $2,200, according to Yoia, allowing students that qualify for the program to work eight to 10 hours per week each semester.

Junior broadcast journalism major Corey Hersch thought his work-study job was in jeopardy at the end of the 2008-09 school year.  The University announced plans to close the game room in the Carl Hansen Student Center, where Hersch worked, to expand the University bookstore in time for the beginning of the new academic year.  Hersch said he was worried he wouldn’t have a job when school resumed at the end of August.

“I spent all summer looking for another work-study job,” he said.  “I came to school this year without anything lined up.  I assumed I wouldn’t have a job for the semester.”

Hersch now works on the Student Programming Board’s technology team.  He helps set up audio equipment for Student Programming Board events and holds office hours during the week.

“About two weeks into the semester, I got a call from [Associate Director of the Student Center and Leadership Development] Nicolette Yevich asking if I wanted another job in the Student Center,” Hersch said.  “She said that she knew she wanted to give former game room employees a first crack at new Student Center jobs.”

Yevich said there were eight students, including a game room manager, who worked in the game room last year.  She said that the qualified students who did not graduate were all able to get placed elsewhere.

Though Quinnipiac reported receiving $270,052 from the stimulus bill, the Department of Education reported Quinnipiac has received or will receive $861,496.  Yoia did not know for sure what this amount was and Recovery.gov did not go into much detail.

One explanation, he speculated, was that the increase in the Pell Grant was included in that total.  The Pell Grant is a federal grant for college students and it is awarded based on financial aid needs.

This grant was increased to $5,350 from last year’s total of $4,731 – a difference of $619 – as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Six hundred sixty-eight students are receiving Pell Grants this year, Yoia said, and if that number is multiplied by $619, the result is $413,492.

“That’s genuine money,” Yoia said.  “Pell Grants went up across the country for everybody, so students actually benefitted from that.  And generally with our work-study program, we’ve had more students than we’ve had jobs, and we’ve always had more jobs than we’ve had money.”

Yoia said he wasn’t sure if the stimulus package is accomplishing what it was supposed to do.

“When you look at the tens of thousands of agencies that had to report, did we in fact save the world by adding all of this stimulus money?  I’m not convinced,” he said.  “There are just so many creative ways that I think these figures were calculated.  Certainly, more money is good, but whether or not it was designed to accomplish what the government thought, I think the jury is still out on that.  We’ll have to wait and see.”

But on a more personal and local level, Yoia didn’t complain that Quinnipiac received more money for the students.

“We can spread it among more eligible students, which is wonderful,” he said.  “We’ve been waiting for years for this to happen.  We request more money every year and we never get it.  This is the first year we got it, so we’re thrilled.”

Quinnipiac’s medical school will cost an estimated $75 million over the next seven or eight years, but according to President John Lahey, no current University programs will be affected, no money will be pulled from the endowment, and no loans will be taken out.

“We’re not living beyond our means,” Lahey said in a Chronicle interview on Thursday. “We never do.”

The money will come from a reserve fund that has been building since the “belt-tightening” of the past few years, Lahey said. The fund currently contains about $35 million, and Lahey expects $50 or $60 million by the end of the academic year.

Media credit: Joe Pelletier

“By then, we will pretty much have the cash in hand,” Lahey said. “So there will be no reduction in any other area of the institution.”

Forty million dollars will go toward renovations of the North Haven campus, which will begin this summer. Another $35 million from the University will subsidize salaries and expenses until the medical school begins running at its 500-student capacity.

The most immediate steps include finding a dean for the medical school, which Lahey hopes to accomplish this summer. The dean and additional administrators will then build a curriculum, which is to focus on primary care and global health.

A planned synthesis of the medical school and the Albert Schweitzer Institute will allow medical students to spend time working with primary care in developing countries, Lahey said.

“We think that can be a special niche for us,” Lahey said. “Given our Schweitzer Institute, we can give our medical students some unique experiences that other medical schools couldn’t do.”

Associate Professor of Nursing Lynn Price, chairperson of the nursing department, said the focus on primary care was appropriate, especially with Quinnipiac’s connection to developing countries.

“It’s very forward-looking,” Price said. “Global health starts with primary care. We need to be preventing things like diabetes, not treating it.”

Renovations of the first floor of the North Haven campus’ Building 2, which will house the medical school, will begin this summer. The University will take control of the second and third floor in October 2012, where it expects to have a year to complete renovations before its first incoming class.

One of the “major challenges,” according to Lahey, will be the search for a health system clinical partner, which the University hopes to nail down in the next six months. Lahey is on the Board of Trustees at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, however, the hospital is currently the teaching hospital of Yale’s medical school.

“Most of their resources are taken up by Yale’s medical school,” Lahey said. “If we are going to do something with the Yale-New Haven Hospital system, it will most likely be [with] the Bridgeport hospital and the Greenwich hospital.

“There are a lot of resources in Connecticut,” Lahey said, though he did not rule out a New York hospital system.

While the president understood that Quinnipiac’s medical school would probably start off at “the bottom of the pecking order,” he was hopeful that the school would quickly distinguish itself.

“We’re not looking just to have a medical school,” Lahey said. “We want a first-rate medical school.”

Ferguson released a MyQ announcement on Jan. 20 which identified an accident which will leave Twining out of office for an “indeterminate amount of time.”

Despite his absence, Twining has remained a part of day-to-day operations, and according to Barger, no changes will be enacted without Twining’s consent. Barger, a night supervisor on campus for more than 10 years, will play the role of “boots on the ground.”

“When we need the physical presence of a chief, whether it is dealing with law enforcement or admissions or anything on campus – when they want to see a face, I’ll be there,” Barger said.

In his Irmagarde Tator office on Friday afternoon, Barger appeared to have settled into the role, calming down a questioning parent on the phone and keeping tabs with Residential Life during a Chronicle interview.

“It’s really no different than what I have done before,” Barger said.  “A few extra meetings, and some more responsibility. I am only too happy to fill in for the chief at this time, to make sure everything runs smoothly.”

Prior to his time at Quinnipiac, Barger worked for 24 years in the Connecticut State Police, working his way to a master sergeant role.

“He’s not the kind of guy to sit behind a desk,” SGA liaison for security and transportation Ben Wald said. “He is fair and understanding, and has always been there for me as a student.”

And in what Wald called “really unique timing,” he found exactly what he had been looking for from campus security for the past year: two guards on the night shift at the York Hill campus. On Thursday night, one was controlling traffic, the other patrolling on foot.

“They were doing exactly what they needed to do,” Wald said. “Not policing, just making their presence known.”

Wald has been “extraordinarily pleased” with the accessibility of Barger thus far.

“Whenever I’ve reached out to him, he’s always made a point to reach out to me in a timely fashion and with the utmost honesty and integrity,” he said. “It’s something I haven’t always had with security.”

Barger will continue his work as a night supervisor, working closely with Residential Life, on top of his interim chief stint.

“My primary responsibility and duty here is to maintain the continuity of service that the security unit gives to the university community,” he said. “If (the students) are not safe and secure, they cannot be educated. They cannot be in an environment where they worry about something happening to them.”

Lahey began his address by thanking SGA for their leadership and announcing the addition of 30 full-time faculty members for the 2009-2010 academic year. According to Lahey, QU’s endowment currently stands at over $210 million dollars, the highest in Quinnipiac’s history.

Most notably, Lahey discussed the situation of ethnic and racial diversity in QU’s undergraduate and graduate student populations. This year saw an increase in diversity, according to Lahey. It was this progressive subject that captured the attention of SGA members, who were permitted to field questions.

Junior class Representative Nick Rossetti inquired about the lack of attention given to economic diversity. To answer Rossetti’s question, Lahey mentioned the $7.5 million increase in financial aid. Lahey said that two-thirds of the student body receives financial aid in some form. He also mentioned QU’s attempt to attract lower and middle income students through grant and scholarship opportunities.

Lahey then took the opportunity to discuss the role that the Schweitzer Institute plays in achieving a more diverse student body. He also mentioned diversity regarding sexual orientation, and talked about the support LGBT students receive at QU. With regard to race, Lahey announced that QU recently appointed its third black trustee and mentioned an upcoming appointment of a Latino trustee.

Following that exchange, Representative Dan Dempsey inquired about the dynamics between increasing enrollment and the possibility of quotas for ethnic minorities. Lahey responded by citing the U.S. Supreme Court decision which outlawed quotas, saying that QU maintains no specific racial quotas. According to Lahey, the percentage of students at QU who consider themselves part of a racial minority group stands at an all-time high of 15 percent.Lahey fields questions on diversit.

Aside from questions about ethnic diversity, Lahey answered a question regarding increasing enrollment and its possible effects on academic standards. Lahey insists standards will not suffer withStaff Writerincreased enrollment, claiming that graduate programs will see much of the growth and the undergraduate numbers will not change dramatically.