Wednesday, October 15, 1997
Community Briefs
COMMUNITY
Program focuses
on community care
The UCLA School of Nursing is offering an innovative degree
program for nursing professionals who have already been working in
the field, but who are seeking the academic credentials and
training needed to prepare for the changing cultural environment in
the next millennium.
The ADN-BS-MSN Program provides the opportunity to students with
associate degrees in nursing or registered nurses to complete a
bachelor’s and a master’s degree in only three years.
The main objective is to train the individual nurses to adapt to
the increasing demand for community-based nursing in a highly
diverse society.
They will be working in HMO clinics with a community setting.
Yet, within the new program they will have received experience in
rescue missions throughout Los Angeles.
Researchers seek study volunteers
UCLA researchers, investigating inherited eye disorders, are
searching for volunteers in a study on macular degeneration, the
most common cause of blindness in the United States.
Volunteers must have an inherited eye disorder, be willing to
take eye and blood tests, and have their eyes dilated.
More than one-fifth of people with macular degeneration have
inherited a defective gene.
The disease is most common in people more than 60 years of
age.
Researchers hope this study will help them detect and perhaps
prevent inherited eye disorders.
Volunteers interested in participating in the study should call
Dr. Kent Small at (310) 206-7475.
Governor vetoes college funding
Gov. Wilson has vetoed the Higher Education Partnership Act
(HEPA), which would have stabilized funding for California’s higher
education.
The same weekend that Wilson signed a bill reducing fees by 5
percent for the next year, he also vetoed AB 1415, which would have
‘locked in’ monies for higher education for the first time in
California history.
"The act would have created a cap on further fee increases and
would keep funding for higher education at its current proportion
of the state budget," said UC President Richard C. Atkinson. "The
plan would even increase higher education’s share of the pie,
according to the annual growth in per-capita income.
"There is no legislation more critical to the future of the
university. (This act) represents a commitment to provide the
university with what we need to continue to offer excellent and
affordable public education."
The author of the bill, Assembly Speaker Cruz M. Bustamante,
criticized Gov. Wilson for vetoing the act, which he feels will
effectively cap enrollment numbers at state universities.
While Wilson has been receiving praise for reducing CSU and UC
tuition, Bustamante has been busy pointing out the discrepancies in
Wilson’s actions.
AB 131, the bill Wilson signed, will reduce fees in the
short-term, with promised rollbacks and freezes ensured only until
the year 2000.
Bustamante argues that more permanent change is necessary. In
arguing for HEPA, which was also supported by the University of
California Students’ Association, the speaker said that crowded
universities have forced students to attend a full five years,
defeating any fee rollbacks that legislators could provide.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.