Dear friends,

Welcome to our first full-length edition of The Pulse! As we start our fall semester, students and faculty are returning to campus, bringing it alive once again. Most of us imagine conversation and camaraderie as classes kick off, but in the halls of the College of Health & Human Services, something else is stirring as well: research.

In our summer edition of The Pulse, I presented four ambitious goals for our college, and research topped that list. Our faculty has made a serious commitment to scholarship that contributes to the scientific base of each of the disciplines within the college, and this is evident in some exciting ways.

As a college, we have a strong commitment to research. Numbers are still being tallied for fiscal year 2004-2005, but we were awarded $32 million in grants and contracts in 03-04, almost a third of total awards to the university. What's more, we consistently rank in the top two colleges in the university in amount of money raised in grants and contracts; these awards provide the strong resource base necessary to address research questions in the healthcare professions, which leads to advances in our understanding of human behavior and of services delivery.

One exciting example is that of Gwen Anderson, R.N., Ph.D., in the School of Nursing. Gwen has been awarded a research grant of $484,500 by the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The study, Looking into Common Daily Practices of Gene Therapy Clinical Research, will ultimately draw attention to the need for best practice standards and education in all types of settings where gene therapy is conducted, building public trust and perhaps promoting patient participation.

Equally exciting is the research being done by our faculty with international, and especially cross-border, implications. For example, Mel Hovell, M.P.H., Ph.D., of the Graduate School of Public Health, is seeing results in a study that was funded by the University of California's Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program for $791,000. In his research, he tested the theory that the California Tobacco Control Program had changed our state's smoking culture, and had also affected new residents from Mexico through acculturation. From this project, Mel has demonstrated how important it may be to study cross-cultural differences when testing theoretical models of behavior-a conclusion with far-reaching effects on research best practices.

These projects are only two of the many ground-breaking studies being conducted by faculty in the College of Health & Human Services. As you read through this first full-length edition of The Pulse, you're sure to learn more about the many other exciting dimensions of your college.

Warm regards, Marilyn Newhoff Dean