The hands-on experience provided students with teamwork, research and writing skills they can use upon graduation

Siliezar, Juan

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DOCS@RWU

Roger Williams UniversityDOCS@RWUFeatured News Story The Week at Roger12-26-2017RWU Students Help Gloria Gemma ResearchPrograms for Children Whose Parents HaveCancerJuan SiliezarRoger Williams UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_newsPart of the Higher Education CommonsThis News Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Week at Roger at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in FeaturedNews Story by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact mwu@rwu.edu.Recommended CitationSiliezar, Juan, "RWU Students Help Gloria Gemma Research Programs for Children Whose Parents Have Cancer" (2017). FeaturedNews Story. 221.https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_news/221 News ArchiveRWU Students Help Gloria Gemma ResearchPrograms for Children Whose Parents HaveCancerThe hands-on experience provided students with teamwork, research andwriting skills they can use upon graduationRWU sophomores Molly Cleveland and Maggie O'Callaghan lookover the plan they and their classmates put together for GloriaGemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation’s Gidget’s Corner. As aCommunity Partnerships Center project, their technical writing classworked with Gloria Gemma to help develop age-appropriateprograms for children whose parents have cancer.December 26, 2017 Juan SiliezarBRISTOL, R.I. – Getting diagnosed with breast cancer can be devastating, not only for the persondiagnosed but those closest to them. For parents, they have to balance self-care while alsoconsidering the emotional toll the illness can have on their children. To address this, Gloria GemmaBreast Cancer Resource Foundation started Gidget’s Corner, a collection of programs to supportchildren whose parents have breast cancer.A er initial success, Gloria Gemma now hopes to expand the initiative. And to do so, it has turnedto Roger Williams University.As a Community Partnerships Center project, Brian Hendrickson, RWU assistant professor ofwriting studies, rhetoric, and composition, and two of his interdisciplinary technical writing classesworked with Gloria Gemma to research programs where children who have a parent diagnosedwith breast cancer can ask questions, get answers and interact with others going through similarexperiences.The project is a continuation of a previous CPC project for Gloria Gemma, where education studiesinterns researched programs that have been successful in supporting children who have a familymember diagnosed with cancer.Students in the current project expanded on the previous research and found additional programsGloria Gemma could integrate into Gidget’s Corner. Students then put together a list of thoseprograms and a full plan of how they could be incorporated, which they presented torepresentatives from Gloria Gemma.Included in the students' plans and presentations were suggestions on how to market Gidget'sCorner and improve user experience on Gloria Gemma's website.Both this current project and the previous one  lled key needs for Gloria Gemma, which didn't havethe resources to conduct the initial research necessary to begin program development.Representatives from Gloria Gemma Mandy Zito and CarolAnn Donnelly listened to two presentations from BrianHedrickson’s Writing 311: Technical Writing courses.“You guys are laying the groundwork for what’s going to happen in the future,” said Mandy Zito,patient and survivor navigator at Gloria Gemma. Zito and Carol Ann Donnelly, communications andPassport to Wellness expo manager, were the representatives who heard presentations from thetwo classes and provided feedback.“You really did quality business work,” said Donnelly to the students. “This is something you canpresent in a boardroom.”Equally as impressive as the work itself was the e ective technical writing, teamwork and researchskills students developed producing it.“This experience gives students the opportunity to work on real-world problems with a client,” saidHendrickson. “I want to give them as real an experience as possible – the kind of things students aregoing to do for the rest of their lives.”Students in the from Brian Hedrickson’s Writing 311:Technical Writing classes prepared a full plan ofprogramming to develop ageappropriate programs forchildren whose parents have cancer and presented it torepresentatives from Gloria Gemma.Hendrickson’s students broke into teams in their respective classrooms. The teams then strategized,researched, analyzed data, wrote individual sections and then brought it together as cohesivedocuments – one from each class.Sophomores Steven Hartnett and Casey Klein said the experience taught them how to work on alarge team toward a single goal and will serve them well when they enter the professional setting intwo years.Not lost on them or the rest of the class, however, was the impact their work can potentially have inthe near future in supporting children whose parents have breast cancer.“The kids kind of get lost in this,” Zito said. “We want to make it so that they’re not so fearful.”At RWU, we develop Civic Scholars who believe in community-engaged work. That’s why we committo providing every student an opportunity that empowers them to put their knowledge and skills to thetest solving real-world problems and creating meaningful change with community partners. Learnmore about the Civic Scholars program and how to help us reach our goal of every studentparticipating in civic scholarship.ACADEMICS ALUMNI CIVIC SCHOLARS FEINSTEIN SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES, ART AND EDUCATION

RWU Students Help Gloria Gemma Research Programs for Children Whose Parents Have Cancer

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RWU Students Help Gloria Gemma Research Programs for Children Whose Parents Have Cancer

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