Members of the Stony Brook University community donated a variety of items to help provide comfort to the SUNY students that were placed in a 14-day precautionary quarantine at Stony Brook Southampton.

Care packages with shawls, games, journals and more were donated to the students.

The last four of the students departed the Southampton campus on Monday. Stony Brook Southampton, which accommodated 26 students — 22 from the study abroad program in Italy and four more from South Korea — was selected as one of the locations for the precautionary quarantine because it has the facilities, services, technology, clinical and general staffing capabilities to accommodate New York State Department of Health precautionary quarantine guidelines. All students were pre-screened and had no symptoms of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.

Joan Dickinson, director of Stony Brook University Community Relations, put the call out for donations to provide “comfort care” to the students, and four groups responded: the Stony Brook Stitchers, the School of Professional Development, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and the Stony Brook Cancer Center.

Dickinson said the call for donations asked the question, “If you were away from home, what would you need to get through this?”

Items included knitted blankets, clothing, board games, playing cards, journals, books, snacks, toiletries, arts and crafts, as well as some Stony Brook University swag.

Dickinson noted that 17 students in the initial group were Fashion Institute of Technology students studying abroad in Italy, and so an effort was made to provide items that would satisfy their creative energy.

The Faculty Student Association provided hot food to the students each day, following SUNY/NYS DOH guidance on food delivery procedures.

Teams from the Facilities and Services Department, the Provost’s Office, Division of Information Technology/Teaching and Learning Technology, and the Division of Student Affairs including Campus Residences, Counseling Services, Student Health Services, Student Support Team, Campus Life, Environmental Health & Safety, Transportation, and Campus Dining all worked together to ensure that the students received proper academic support with minimal personal discomfort.

An expert team of clinicians provided medical surveillance, including COVID-19 monitoring, as well as support for non COVID-19 issues, mental health and other issues.

Sarah Fisher Davis, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at Stony Brook University, is looking to train Long Island college and high school students to become local water activists and citizen science storytellers using digital story mapping and ArcGIS software, which helps organizations create, manage, share and analyze spatial data.

The project, titled “Mapping the Story of Long Island Water,” is funded by an $8,000 public humanities fellowship from the Humanities Centers Initiative, a statewide partnership between Humanities New York and a network of humanities centers based at nine New York State universities.

“Because Long Island relies entirely on a sole-source, nonrenewable underground aquifer system for water, the preservation of that system through legislation, corporate accountability, and individual conservation is vital to both human and environmental health,” said Davis.

Because of its complexities, Long Island’s aquifer system — after becoming contaminated by chemicals, sewage, and runoff — cannot be simply cleaned, according to Davis. She cited research from Water for Long Island, a network of groups and individuals who advocate for and defend the aquifers and groundwater resources of Long Island.

“My project will advance water advocacy outside of the usual political and scientific avenues to include the stories and solutions of those who are most vulnerable to toxicants, and whose futures will depend on and shape policies around water wellness on Long Island — our young people,” Davis said.

Her project will be rolled out in two stages beginning this fall when she will teach an upper-level English course titled “Local Environmental Feminisms.”

Read the full story: Grad Student Promotes Water Advocacy Through Experiential Course

In just the two plus months since Governor Cuomo declared a State of Emergency because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Stony Brook University researchers launched more than 180 Covid-19 related studies in order to battle the virus and examine circumstances where it has or will change our societal landscape.

The body of work spans 45 academic departments from eight different colleges and schools within the University.

The research not only includes investigating prevention and treatment of the virus but also focuses on topics such as the psychological impacts of social distancing measures, tracking levels of community distress, and examining the impact of the pandemic on students.

“It is the responsibility of a research-intense academic medical center, such as Stony Brook Medicine, to not only provide outstanding care for patients afflicted with Covid-19, but also to mine all the clinical data, generate hypotheses helping to explain the interaction of virus and host, understand the pathophysiology of the various manifestations of the disease, and explore novel approaches to the best possible treatment for the disease,” said Kenneth Kaushansky, MD, Dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine and Senior Vice President for Health Sciences.

“The overwhelming response from our researchers in this time of need shows the breadth of Stony Brook’s expertise, which spans healthcare, physical and social sciences and many other academic disciplines,” said Richard J. Reeder, Vice President of Research at Stony Brook University. “Their innovative work during this crisis will help to solve many of the challenges we face now and in the future because of Covid-19.”

Read the full story: https://news.stonybrook.edu/newsroom/press-release/medical/more-than-180-covid-19-studies-launched-at-stony-brook-since-start-of-pandemic/