2014-2015 Innovations Magazine

i nnovations • 34 NSU OVERVIEW NSU Opens Regional Campus in Puerto Rico NSU reconfirmed its commitment to Puerto Rico with the grand opening of a new regional campus in San Juan, which represents an expansion of its educational offerings and also provides increased opportunities for students university-wide. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held at the campus on August 28 to celebrate the opening of a new four-story, state-of-the-art building that will be offering master’s and doctoral degrees in phar- macy and education at the campus located in San Juan’s Professional Offices Park IV. It is esti- mated that the regional campus will have a $27 million economic impact on the island this fiscal year. NSU has additional regional campuses in Miami, Miramar, Fort Myers, Palm Beach, Or- lando, Tampa and Jacksonville. College of Optometry Receives Major Grant From National Eye Institute The National Eye Institute of the National Insti- tutes of Health has awarded approximately $556,532 to investigators at NSU’s College of Op- tometry to study the relationship between the vision condition, convergence insufficiency, and reading performance and attention. Convergence insuffi- ciency is a common vision disorder in which the eyes turn slightly outward when a person is reading or doing work close to his or her eyes. The grant will fund the Convergence Insuffi- ciency Treatment Trial—Attention and Reading Trial, which is a national, multicenter clinical trial that involves optometry, ophthalmology, psychiatry, and education in determining how this eye-teaming problem impacts a child’s attention and reading performance. NSU is one of seven clinical sites participating across the United States. College of Osteopathic Medicine Receives $1.95 Million Grant to Investigate CFS/ME Mary Ann Fletcher, Ph.D., Schemel Professor for the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine at NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, and her research team were awarded a $1.95 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study com- plex biomarkers of chronic fatigue syndrome/myal- gic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) in men. Dr. Fletcher and her team will combine the find- ings from this 100 percent federally funded four- year study with data the team previously compiled from its other sponsored programs in Gulf War Ill- ness, a related neuro-immune disorder. Grants for these four studies total nearly $10 million and have been funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the NIH. Men between the ages of 18 and 75 who are interested in enrolling in the study can call (305) 275-5450. Pictured at the ribbon-cutting ceremony (from left) are: Winel Segarra, NSU College of Pharmacy student; Andrés Malavé, Ph.D., executive director of NSU’s Puerto Rico Regional Campus in San Juan; George L. Hanbury II, Ph.D., NSU president and CEO; Jacqueline Travisano, M.B.A., CPA, NSU executive vice president and chief operating officer; and Alexis-Morales-Fresse, NSU Abraham S. Fischler School of Education student.