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Best Cover Story
     At least 400 homeless Floridians in the panhandle won't have to tremble in the cold for another night thanks to students in the University of West Florida's Honors Program. After listening to Dr. Pedro Jose Greer’s keynote address at the Florida Collegiate Honors Council conference in Tampa last year, 10 volunteers banded together to help the less fortunate, following the lead of the physician and Samaritan whose speech inspired them. "Dr. Greer’s words produced what I can only describe as a paradigm of my views toward the impoverished," says Tyler Merritt, project coordinator. Merritt and his peers contacted local agencies and discovered that blankets were in shorter supply than clothing, forcing many homeless persons to wrap themselves in old newspapers. So, the scholars launched a blanket drive by advertising via press releases, church bulletins, the internet, radio, and television.
     When the students started, however, they probably didn’t anticipate that their own inspired work would cause a ripple effect throughout Florida. "The drive has been taken up in other parts of the state," Merritt says. "People have called asking if they can be involved, and we tell them, ‘Sure, just raise blankets for your area, and give them to the needy.’"
Contact Merritt at tgm1@students.uwf.edu.

Best Apathy Buster
     At the University of Miami, Student Government blows away commuter apathy. "Lack of school spirit has long been one of our biggest problems, but no one had made any real effort to combat it," says Shane Weaver, SG president. "We decided that any such spirit-building effort could not come from the administration, but from the students themselves." SG designed "Category 5," a spirit-programming board named after the most powerful hurricane. At the football game against arch-rival Florida State University last fall, Category 5 pumped up the Hurricane’s spirit. The students painted an old car on campus garnet and gold and labeled it with anti-‘Nole slogans. UM students paid $1 to the United Way to have a chance to pound the car with a sledgehammer. Category 5 also coordinates carnival-type pep rallies, raffles, and road trips to away games to get students enthused about UM athletics.
Contact Weaver at SGpresident@miami.edu.

Best Service Project
     Students love to play doctor at Nova Southeastern University. Through the "DOctor’s Bag Program," campus leaders in the School of Osteopathic Medicine’s Sigma Sigma Phi honorary fraternity show local preschoolers that doctors are their friends and can help them. "A lot of underserved children are just scared," says Jeffrey Lebensburger, Xi Chapter president. "We wanted to lessen their apprehension of doctors."
     Armed with their doctor’s bags, student doctors visit local Broward and Dade county preschools and set up learning stations that teach kids about the heart, x-rays, the otoscope (for ears), the funduscope (for eyes), band-aids, and reflexes. "On the visit we did last week, we took 12 med students who met with 15 children," Lebensburger says. "The kids love it. We let them wear the white coats. We tell them what a stethoscope is and have them listen to their own heart. Doctors they’ve seen before usually are going to rush through things." When the NSU group leaves, the children get toy doctor bags and accessories, says Lebensburger, who hopes some of the children will decide to be doctors one day.
     Vice President Chirag Shah says the chapter borrowed the idea from peers at Truman State University in Missouri, where it wasn’t nearly as well received. "It’s been one of the most successful projects that the school has ever done."
Visit http://members.dencity.com/ssp and www.briangrant.org or e-mail jeffreyd@nova.edu or cshah@nova.edu.

Best Resume Padder
     Talk about hands-on experience. Last fall, students in Jim Brosemer's telecommunications class at Lynn University helped shoot and produce "Decision 2000," a series of TV interviews with political candidates, including presidential contenders Al Gore and George W. Bush.
     As a former nightly news anchor for a local NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, Brosemer's insider connections led to a contract for 34 five-minute interviews with candidates at all levels, from hopefuls for the county clerk of courts job to the presidential contenders. Brosemer now serves as Lynn's director of media services and School of Communications. "They bumped elbows with the national news press, and got secret service credentials," Broesmer says. "They got to meet the candidates personally, and got their pictures taken with them."
     Lynn's Director of Marketing Tim Marten says students operated the cameras, teleprompters, wrote the questions, and set up the interviews. "This class is all about getting practical experience," Marten says. "All of them put this on their resumes. It's really impressive."
Contact jbrosemer@lynn.edu.

Best Reason to Stay Home
     In Panama City, nearly half of all high school grads make a bee-line to Gulf Coast Community College, the highest percentage among 28 two-year schools statewide. According to the state’s Accountability Outcome Measure, 48.68 percent of the high school grads in GCCC’s three-county area stay home to go to college. The next highest is Brevard Community College, which attracts about 40 percent of its locally grown HS grads. "This area isn’t silicon valley, but we do have a higher education level than many other cities," says Carole Lapensohn, GCCC’s institutional advancement director. "Our main draw is proximity—there’s no other option to stay here and go the academic route. This is the community’s school."
Contact Lapensohn at clapensohn@mail.gc.cc.fl.us.

Best Food for Thought
     When stress level syrup, students are eggstroidinarily tired and their brains are toast. So, after instructors at Ringling School of Art and Design satisfy their students’ hunger for knowledge during finals week, they fill their pupils’ bellies with a yummy home-cooked breakfast. For the past three semesters, Ringling’s resident assistants, faculty members, and Student Affairs professional staff team up to serve a post-exam "Midnight Pancake Breakfast" to about 250 weary students. The menu includes bagels, fruits, pancakes, sausages, juice, and coffee, along with hot syrup, blueberry topping, and cinnamon apples. Not only does the late-night meal recharge the artists’ energy, free toys help them unwind. "Stress relievers are given out as well such as yo-yos, bubbles, and bouncy balls," says Kelly Moselle, assistant dean of students.
Contact Moselle at kmoselle@ringling.edu.

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