Founded in Richmond in 1968, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) began with a mission to build a university to serve a city emerging from the era of urban crisis--desegregation, white flight, political conflict, and economic decline. The product of the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and the Richmond Professional Institute combined into one, state-mandated institution, the two were able to embrace their mission and work together productively. In Fulfilling the Promise, John Kneebone and Eugene Trani tell the intriguing story of VCU and the context in which the university was forged and eventually thrived. Although VCU's history is necessarily unique, Kneebone and Trani show how the issues shaping it are common to many urban institutions, from engaging with two-party politics in Virginia and African American political leadership in Richmond, to fraught neighborhood relations, the complexities of providing public health care at an academic health center, and an increasingly diverse student body. As a result, Fulfilling the Promise offers far more than a stale institutional saga. Rather, this definitive history of one urban state university illuminates the past and future of American public higher education in the post-1960s era.

This is a true story of how an opportunity can completely change a life. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to buy school supplies for impoverished children in Cambodia. The youngest son of an impoverished rice-farming family in Cambodia, Chamroeun Pen shares his extraordinary story as part of a promise he made with the US Embassy in 2008. It begins with his early life in Cambodia, a country that still bears the scars of the genocide known as the Killing Fields, where most of the educated population was slaughtered between the years 1975 and 1979. This left the younger generation struggling to receive adequate schooling, and the majority of students, including Chamroeun, knew almost nothing about the world beyond their borders. Teachers doled out cruel punishments, there were threats by gang members, along with continual lack of school supplies. Against all odds, Chamroeun was granted an opportunity to study in the US at the age of thirteen. But he had to adapt to the American way of life and overcome adversity as his journey progressed. Torn by problems in his families in both the US and Cambodia, he often wished he could just quit and return home. Yet, his father's dream of having at least one of his eight children finish school propelled him forward. Chamroeun's perseverance is a stirring message of hope. With this book, he wants to encourage youth, not just in Cambodia, but also around the world, to never give up in the pursuit of an education.

Although the data in healthcare comes from and relates to patients, it has generally been the clinician and not the patient who has been seen as the end-user of health information or health information technology. This seems set to change though, as the evolution of new online tools and mobile applications has led to the growth of a grass-roots effort from patients to change their role and involvement in their own health management. This book presents papers from the Information Technology and Communications in Health conference, ITCH 2015, held in Victoria, Canada, in February 2015. The theme of this conference is patient-centered care, and not only were contributors asked to consider the role and voice of the patient, but patients themselves were invited to contribute papers describing their experiences in healthcare and their use of their own data. The papers included here reflect not only informatics innovations in the field, but also explore how to involve patients in the design process, implementation and long-term use of health information systems, and will be of interest to researchers, health practitioners and patients alike.

Gaylord Nelson’s legacy is known and respected throughout the world. He was a founding father of the modern environmental movement and creator of one of the most influential public awareness campaigns ever undertaken on behalf of global environmental stewardship: Earth Day. Nelson died in 2005, but his message in this book is still timely and urgent, delivered with the same eloquence with which he articulated the nation’s environmental ills throughout the decades. He details the planet’s most critical concerns—from species and habitat losses to global climate change and population growth. In outlining strategies for planetary health, Nelson inspires citizens to reassert environmentalism as a national priority. Included in this reprint is a new preface by Gaylord Nelson’s daughter, Tia Nelson.

The senior Senator from New Mexico, Pete V. Domenici, has written a thoughtful assessment of the progress Americans have made in their efforts to bring the benefits of nuclear power to mankind. He outlines what went wrong and why, and in this noble quest, what we must now do to recover from and repudiate past blunders. Senator Domenici has been called Congress' chief apostle for nuclear power and in this book he shares his vision and passion for a renewed commitment, by this nation, and the rest of the world, to the dreams that nuclear energy can help us fulfill. It is also a book about what kind of world our grandchildren could inhabit if we fail in making and keeping such a commitment. Visit our website for sample chapters!