University Times

Pitt student health officials are asking faculty for assistance in changing the culture of alcohol abuse on campus.

Joe Mull, coordinator of the Office of Health Education and Promotion, part of the Division of Student Affairs, reported to Faculty Assembly last week on his office’s efforts to launch a program that engages faculty support.

Prompted by a Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) program and buoyed by student survey data that show faculty can influence students on health matters, Mull wants faculty to take a more proactive role in alerting students to the dangers of alcohol abuse.

Although the problems of college students abusing alcohol are not new, they have evolved, he said. “What has changed is the intensity and the frequency with which students use alcohol in the course of their college experience.”

Mull said alcohol use is an age-old, deep-seated cultural phenomenon. But he said the problem is not intractable, despite many failed efforts on college campuses to change the way students view alcohol.

Last April, Pitt participated in the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment, an annual survey that some 300 institutions nationally use for information on attitudes, beliefs and behaviors on health-related topics, including alcohol abuse.

The assessment includes data on binge drinking, defined as consuming more than four drinks for a woman and more than five drinks for a man on one drinking occasion.

“That is essentially the tipping point for when people start to experience negative academic consequences as a result of alcohol abuse,” Mull said.

Pitt students score slightly higher than the national average on the alcohol-related questions: 42.5 percent said they consumed five or more drinks the last time they consumed alcohol; the national average is 38 percent.

Other data show that one in four students nationally say they have experienced a negative academic consequence as a direct result of alcohol abuse. Typically on a college campus, about 31 percent of students will meet the clinical definition of alcohol abuse, and about 6 percent meet the criteria for clinical alcohol-dependence or alcoholism.

About 1,700 college students die each year from alcohol-related causes, Mull said.

Contributing factors to alcohol abuse are student expectations; peer pressure; the role of gender, and the role of media and advertising, he said. “The reasons are complex and as a result our approach has to be multi-dimensional, starting with being willing to reject strategies that research suggests don’t work.”

Those ineffective strategies include scare tactics and abstinence-only messages, Mull maintained.

In the last two years, Pitt has changed its approach from pushing do’s and don’ts to examining hows and whys, he said.

Pitt students were asked: Who for you are the most credible sources of health-related information?

“Faculty rank No. 3, ahead of parents and behind only medical staff and health educators,” Mull said. “Students assign value to persons they see as credible or in positions of authority and who are knowledgeable. You as faculty are seen as knowledgeable in a topic area and that’s translated into other areas. We concluded we need to do a better job of engaging with faculty on this issue, of building that partnership, of getting more information out to faculty,” he said.

The PLCB annually gives out grants to colleges and universities to carry forward evidence-based approaches to changing campus alcohol behavior. Pitt used its PLCB grant to hold four workshops last year to help faculty integrate alcohol abuse issues into the classroom.

The workshops, which are expected to be offered again next academic year, included such recommendations as: using the course syllabus to provide information on the effects of alcohol abuse; debunking students’ misperceptions about the frequency of other students’ alcohol abuse; taking advantage of “teachable moments” following alcohol-related events; scheduling a class presentation (which Mull said his staff will provide); bringing up the issues during advising sessions; making referrals to campus resources; infusing the course curriculum with alcohol-abuse prevention efforts, and crafting assignments to study alcohol-related issues.

While Assembly members at the May 6 meeting generally acknowledged the potential negative academic effects of student alcohol abuse, some were skeptical that the proposed program would be effective.

Others were doubtful of certain recommendations, particularly “curriculum infusion” and using the syllabus.

For example, Assembly member Paul Munro said, “The idea that students trust faculty is interesting, but to me it doesn’t seem sufficient to motivate a program like this. From time to time, I’ve talked to students with a personal problem on a one-to-one basis — with some trepidation. But I’m especially disturbed by the idea that I should incorporate this into my syllabus or curriculum. I teach computer science-type courses, and it’s not a good fit.”

He added, “If I detect a problem I feel a responsibility to take action. But when it comes to preaching values in class, I’m a little nervous. There are other social issues, too. Am I supposed to integrate things like dangerous sexual behavior? It seems outside my job description, not to seem cold about the issue. I’m skeptical that this will have any positive result.”

Mull responded, “We’re not trying to engage faculty to do anything they are not comfortable with. But we know that faculty are held in very high esteem by students. We also know that this is one of the most pervasive issues with regard to student behavior and in terms of some of the life-long impact that students take away from college.”

Mull continued, “Our job at the University is to take children and turn them into adults, and unfortunately what we’re hearing from employers and grad schools and internships, they’re getting children.

“The student who is abusing alcohol on the weekends doesn’t check that issue at the door when they enter your class. It is affecting their ability to engage with you in your class and how to get the most out of that experience. We want to maximize their ability to get the most out of their academic coursework, and this is inhibiting that ability.”

For more information, contact Mull at 412/383-1826 or via email at mulljj@upmc.edu.

Institutional Review Board (IRB) report

Irene Frieze reported to Faculty Assembly on the accomplishments and continuing concerns of the IRB advisory committee for social and behavioral research, which she chairs. According to Frieze, the committee, which was formed in 2004 in response to faculty concerns about lack of input into IRB policies and procedures, has succeeded in:

—Establishing new training modules for certification of researchers.

—Serving as liaison between faculty and the IRB office.

—Advocating for additional communication channels between the IRB staff and faculty and students in the Provost area.

—Assigning responsibility to determine the scientific merit of proposals to the unit instead of the IRB review boards.

—Clarifying what type of review is appropriate (exempt, expedited or full-board review).

—Having the IRB add staff to review exempt proposals.

—Working with the Office of Research to ensure that the electronic submission system (OSIRIS) is functioning smoothly for exempt and expedited proposals.

Issues continuing on the committee’s agenda, Frieze said, include:

—Increasing availability of IRB office consulting.

—Ensuring that submitted proposals are acted on in a timely manner.

—Monitoring the functioning of the unit certification of scientific merit.

—Mastering the new system for providing payment to research participants.

(For a related story, see Dec. 6 University Times.)

In other Faculty Assembly business:

• Assembly endorsed a University Senate bylaws change designating that the immediate past president of the Senate will serve ex officio as chair of the elections committee and be a voting member.

Bylaws changes need the approval of Senate Council, and further require notification to the Pitt community via the Senate web site and the University Times. Approved changes go into effect 45 days after the University community has been notified.

• Frieze reported that the recent Senate elections response rate was slightly lower than the 23 percent rate of the past two years’ elections.

She said the Senate elections committee is considering a recommendation to extend Senate officers’ terms from one to two years, and asked for input on that potential change via email at frieze@pitt.edu.

• Senate President John Baker announced that the ad hoc committee on fitness for life, chaired by Michael Pinsky, professor in the School of Medicine, will continue its work beyond the two-year limit of ad hoc committees.

“The committee has been renamed the ad hoc committee on fitness for life 2,” Baker said. “The charge of the new committee is to work with UPMC Health Plan officials and our Benefits office to implement recommendations of the risk management subcommittee that were endorsed by Faculty Assembly in 2006.”

(To view those recommendations, visit www.pitt.edu/univsenate/Risk%20management%20proposal_102606.pdf.)

—Peter Hart