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According to the 2022 College Factual Best Colleges Ranking, Dominican University of California is ranked in the top 15% in the nation for academic excellence and student outcomes.

Placed at 309 of 2,576 universities and colleges nationwide, DU has moved up by 72 places since the previous year.

That’s not all, this is Dominican’s second top ranking of the week! The US News and World Report 2022 Best Colleges Guidebook once again ranked Dominican as one of the top regional universities in the west, placing DU at 23rd.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6844357007399628800/

Providence Health System — parent company to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Petaluma Valley Hospital and Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa — plans to spend $220 million on recognition and referral bonuses for caregivers across its national 52-hospital network in seven states.

Beverly Murray, regional chief human resources officer for Providence in Northern California, said the health system’s incentive program, announced Sept. 2, comes at a time where there is a substantial shortage of health care professionals regionally and across the country.

“Because of this shortage, it is critical that organizations like ours do everything reasonable to recruit and retain talent,” Murray said. “The last 18 months of the pandemic and its associated demands on health care have further exacerbated this situation and the criticality of adequate staffing.”

The $220 million investment includes $1,000 recognition bonuses for all caregivers who have been with the organization for at least 90 days; a referral bonus as high as $7,500, depending on the role; and “highly competitive” sign-on bonuses in an effort to fill 17,000 jobs across the Providence network.

“A good amount of this total is available to our caregivers in Northern California, but we cannot say precisely how much will be invested in this region,” Murray said. “Since we don’t know how many referrals we will receive and how many of the open roles eligible for sign-on bonuses will be filled in the coming months, it’s impossible to say how much total investment from this fund will reach Northern California.”

Murray said systemwide, Providence has about 17,000 openings, of which 720 are in Northern California, including Humboldt County.

She said the greatest need for workers in the three Providence North Bay hospitals and entire Northern California region is in specialized acute-care nursing, infection prevention, imaging technicians, respiratory therapists and health care support roles.

SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West expressed support for Providence’s initiative and any others.

“Health care workers are exhausted, demoralized, feeling pushed to the limit and underappreciated by employers and government leaders,” SEIU-UHW Press Secretary Renée Saldaña told the Business Journal in an email statement. “Any effort to recognize the sacrifices they’ve made and continue to make is important. There should be much more investment in the people who’ve carried us through the pandemic.”

Jan Emerson-Shea, vice president, external affairs at the 400-member California Hospital Association, said staffing challenges are the biggest issue facing hospitals throughout the state and nation.

“Health care professionals are exhausted and burned out. And, the stress and uncertainty of the past 18 months is leading some caregivers to reconsider their career paths, which is very concerning,” Emerson-Shea said. “Without doctors, nurses and other clinicians, the ability of hospitals to care for anyone in need, 24/7, cannot be accomplished.”

Emerson-Shea also said that hospitals have been doing everything within their power to recruit and retain their workers.

“Many have provided enhanced compensation, temporary housing, child care services and subsidies, extended leave, counseling and wellness programs, etc.,” she said. “This latest announcement by Providence is another example of the investments hospitals are making to ensure they have an adequate supply of health care professionals now and into the future.”

Kaiser Permanente, even before the pandemic, said the state’s projected demand for new health care workers was approximated to be 500,000 by 2024.

In January 2020, as part of a labor agreement reached the previous October, Kaiser Permanente and SEIU-UHW partnered to establish Futuro Health, a $130 million nonprofit organization formed to develop more certified health care workers.

Futuro Health aims to graduate 10,000 new licensed, credentialed health care workers in California by 2024, according to Kaiser. That work will extend outside of the state to provide an affordable education-to-work solution.

In what is now a prescient statement, Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO Greg Adams said the following in the January 2020 announcement:

“Kaiser Permanente recognizes California’s health care industry is facing a projected workforce shortage of half a million people over the next few years. By investing in health education, skills training, and retraining programs with Futuro Health, Kaiser Permanente, in collaboration with SEIU-UHW, is leading efforts to reverse the shortage trend.”

The Business Journal reached out to other North Bay hospital systems, including Sutter Health, MarinHealth and NorthBay Healthcare, to learn if they also are developing recruitment and retention incentives. The health systems did not confirm one way or the other.

Dear Friends and Supporters,

We have been hard at work since we last introduced our pilot for hybrid services – offering a mix of in-person, on-site, community engagement, and virtual services.

We are proud to share that we have 65 participants who have been thriving during our pilot of on-site services at our Copperhill Parkway location. Individuals returned excited to reconnect and engage with their peers while also exploring and experiencing a new model of services. After some much needed time to mingle and catch up, clients have been working with staff to populate a personalized menu of services that they can choose from and engage in during on-site program hours. Whether those interests are in a more formal classroom setting learning about money management, in the community at volunteer or job sites, or to work on building a resume, our hybrid services cater to each client’s interests and personal/professional development. We look forward to seeing and sharing more outcomes as we collect feedback from our participants about the future of their services.

The continual impacts of COVID have been worsened by the Delta variant. Based on this concerning trend, as well as the significant health concerns for the population we serve, Becoming Independent has mandated vaccinations for all of our BI staff members. The health and safety of our participants and staff continue to be our greatest priority as we implement these changes to help reduce and mitigate the health impacts of COVID.

Becoming Independent has a long standing commitment to the people we serve, our staff, and community. It is through this commitment that we continue to recognize the hardships that accompany the pandemic and make the necessary modifications to make the greatest impact and offer the best possible services we can to our participants. We appreciate your support and dedication as we continue to forge ahead with the future of our services.

Sincerely,

Paula Finley

Chief of Services

Research by psychology professor Dr. Benjamin Rosenberg examining the “pandemic rebellion” will be among the topics Dominican University of California students will be addressing in his classes this fall, including a Health and Motivation Lab devoted primarily to studying reactance theory.

Freedom, Covid-19, and Resistance To Public Health Orders was published last spring on the website of the International Society for the Science of Existential Psychology.

“Perhaps the broadest point I was trying to make is that simply delivering people accurate information about a behavior – like wearing a mask or getting vaccinated – is often not sufficient; people aren’t always rational actors. Other stuff, aside from having accurate information, influences people’s behavior – like who is around them, their current state of mind, or how much they value freedom,” Rosenberg says.

“Although doctors’, nurses’, and public health folks’ insight throughout this pandemic has been essential, there has been gross oversight of the expertise that many others have in explaining human behavior. Consulting more social scientists would not have ended the pandemic, but I truly believe it could have changed the trajectory by, say, crafting more effective or targeted messages and turning down the volume on some of the political rhetoric.”

Rosenberg was recruited to write the ISSEP article by Dr. Kenneth A. Vail of Cleveland State University, who edited a chapter for a book that Rosenberg and his colleague, Dr. Jason Siegel of Claremont Graduate University, authored that examined religion and religious adherence through the lens of psychological reactance theory.

“The issues that I discuss in that chapter – freedom, reactance, and the pandemic – have been on my mind since March 2020,” Rosenberg says. “It was a major missed opportunity, in my opinion, to increase the efficacy of the local, state, and federal pandemic response has been the exclusion of people who have expertise in things like persuasion, behavior change, and social influence. In other words, people like me, but much smarter. So, while ISSEP’s invitation motivated this article specifically, these are issues I have been considering for well over a year.”

In the ISSEP article, Rosenberg said he drew heavily on the original reactance theory work from 1966, but also on more recent papers by well-known scholars such as Claude Miller of the University of Oklahoma and Brian Quick of the University of Illinois. The Dominican professor also referenced a paper he and Dr. Siegel published in 2018 before he joined the University’s psychology department in the School of  Liberal Arts and Education.

“In that paper, we reviewed over 50 years of research on reactance theory and outlined a research agenda for scholars going forward,” Rosenberg says. “I also referred to another review that was published in 2020, wherein we discussed counterintuitive ways to combat reactance arousal. That paper is super relevant because the strategies we outlined could have been used to help some of the COVID-related messaging be more effective.”

Rosenberg, who received his BA in psychology from the University of Colorado in Boulder and his MA and PhD in applied social psychology from Claremont Graduate University, said he plans to discuss his ISSEP article plus blogs he wrote over the summer for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and Psychology Today this fall semester as he works on designing some new reactance studies. He will incorporate this as well into his courses in health psychology and the psychology of motivation and emotion.

In addition to contributing to a regular blog for Psychology Today and a podcast called “Head Games,” Rosenberg has lent his expertise on scientific strategies to a Forge article entitled “How to Give Yourself a Pep Talk” about research showing that self-talk has a positive effect on self-confidence and self-efficacy. Rosenberg’s research extends from research methods and statistics to survey design to health behavior and messaging focused on the restriction of behavioral freedom. In November of 2019, he was featured in a Parade magazine article on vaping about the psychological risks of flavored vapes. As a graduate PhD student Rosenberg worked on a federally-funded research grant focused on evaluating the effectiveness of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which featured a series of ads targeting kids’ drug use.

https://www.dominican.edu/news/news-listing/understanding-pandemic-rebellion-psychology-mask-wearing

The U.S. Department of Education has announced that Sonoma State University will receive more than $4 million to continue helping low-income, potential first-generation students in Sonoma and Mendocino counties prepare for and enroll in college.

By way of two federal Talent Search grants lasting five years, totaling $4,129,412, Sonoma State’s Academic Talent Search program will continue to identify and assist middle and high school students who have the potential to succeed in higher education. At least two-thirds of the students in each local Talent Search program are from low-income economic backgrounds and families in which neither parent has a bachelor’s degree.

Susan Wandling, senior director of Pre-Collegiate Programs at SSU, notes the renewed support from the Department of Education “confirms that we are doing a good job helping our students prepare for and enroll in a college of their choice and that we have a solid plan to reach and serve eligible students with high-impact services.”

One of the Federal TRIO Programs, the Academic Talent Search program at Sonoma State has helped 4,035 students enroll in a postsecondary institution since 1990. Talent Search provides these students with counseling and information about college admissions requirements, scholarships, and various student financial aid programs so that they can better understand their educational opportunities and options. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 80% of Talent Search participants enroll in postsecondary institutions immediately following high school graduation. In fiscal year 2020, more than 309,000 students are enrolled in 473 Talent Search TRIO projects across the U.S.

Talent Search began in 1965 and was the second of eight federal TRIO programs authorized by the Higher Education Act to help college students succeed in higher education. It recognizes that students whose parents do not have a college degree have more difficulties navigating the complexity of decisions that college requires for success. It supports students from low-income families who have not had the academic opportunities their college peers have had and helps remove obstacles preventing students from thriving academically.

To learn more about Academic Talent Search at SSU, visit https://precollegiate.sonoma.edu/ats.

http://news.sonoma.edu/article/sonoma-state-awarded-more-4-million-help-low-income-potential-first-generation-college