Whether it's a bicycle collision or difficulty breathing, the UA community can count on quick help from students trained and certified as EMTs.
 
The University of Arizona Student Emergency Medical Services, or UASEMS, group has been operational for three semesters and provides assistance in medical emergencies. Its leaders emphasize thorough training and certification.
 
"We're students at the UA who happen to be EMTs. We're not student EMTs," says Derek Smith, manager of UA Student Emergency Medical Services and a non-degree-seeking graduate student.
 
When Brandon Murphy arrived at the UA three years ago, he didn't find any options for students to work in EMS on campus. He met up with two other students – who've since graduated – to begin brainstorming a program that students could run. They looked at other universities that have student EMS programs and modeled a club after the best practices they found around the country. It took two years to work through the administration and risk management officials, but they were able to start as a club with ASUA funding and began responding in spring 2012.
 
UASEMS switched to funding from the student service fee and began expanding hours in fall 2012. As the fall progressed, the group did too, taking on additional days until they were operating from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. seven days a week.
 
UASEMS this year was the sole EMS provider at the Tucson Festival of Books, saving the festival $4,000 by not using the Tucson Fire Department. UASEMS also works stand-by at Spring Fling, football games and tailgating and when requested for special events, like the Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure.
 
"Anything that occurs on campus, we can be there," Murphy says. "Our members do get put into emergencies where they're the only person there, so we make sure they're held to the same certification. We weren't going to settle for a CPR certification or anything else. We make sure everyone has state certification."
 
UASEMS finished the semester with 32 student members, most of whom are certified Emergency Medical Technicians, with the same Arizona training and certification as a Southwest Basic Life Support Ambulance. Two EMTs staff each 12-hour shift, sometimes along with an additional Certified First Responder, and typically respond to at least two calls for service. On its busiest day, UASEMS responded to 12 calls in a 24-hour period.
 
Common calls for service deal with fall victims, injuries from pedestrian, bicycle or vehicle collisions and respiratory distress.
 
"It's part of our emergency mission to provide a quick, rapid response and be the first to provide care until further medical care arrives," Murphy says.
 
By checking vital signs and reporting to paramedics, the student EMTs can eliminate a step and save valuable time if a patient needs to be taken to a hospital.
 
"There are calls where we take the blood pressure while waiting for TFD and give the information right to them so they can load and go. They appreciate it," Murphy says.
 
Many students join out of an interest in a future medical career, some have even gone on to medical school already, while others are considering EMT as a career. Interest is growing; the group has received 80 applications since the fall that they haven't been able to accept. They're hoping to take on as many as 10 in the fall and hope to expand to providing EMS service around the clock, seven days as week.
 
UASEMS has a golf cart and two bicycles, all equipped with emergency gear. UAPD ride-alongs are a mandatory part of the orientation, which includes 20 hours of vigorous bike training and instruction on bloodborne pathogens and health privacy laws. The members participate in monthly continuing education courses and perform mock drills during the week.
 
"It's real-life, in-the-field experience they can't get shadowing somebody in a hospital," says Murphy, a junior in communications from New Jersey. "Here, you're set to a standard and you have a responsibility. That is your patient until further medical attention arrives."

After 75 years in "temporary quarters" under the west side of the University of Arizona's football stadium, the world's first laboratory dedicated to tree-ring research now has a new home.

To celebrate, the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research is hosting a 75th anniversary celebration and public open house at its new building on March 2 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Bryant Bannister Tree-Ring Building provides 17,300 square feet of usable space – about 7,000 square feet more than the space the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research was using in the stadium. The building, completed in December 2012, is named for the laboratory's director emeritus.

"Our open house this coming Saturday is our first opportunity to share the new building with the public," said Thomas W. Swetnam, laboratory director and Regents' Professor of Dendrochronology. "One of the most exciting aspects of the beautiful new building is that it is designed, in part, to share our past discoveries and current scientific work with the public.

"Tree rings are a terrific way to learn about time, history and our world. From tree rings we learn about great natural and cultural events, such as droughts, forest fires, volcanic eruptions and the rise and fall of civilizations. You can actually see and touch centuries and millennia of history, all exactly ordered in the sequences of rings."

The study of the annual rings of trees, known as dendrochronology, was invented by Andrew E. Douglass more than a century ago. Douglass, who came to the UA in 1906, pioneered the use of tree rings to date the ancient ruins of cliff dwellings, including those at Chaco Culture National Historical Park and Mesa Verde National Park.

On the ground level, the building's exhibit hall showcases the 2-ton, 10-foot-diameter cross-section of a giant sequoia given to laboratory founder Douglass in the 1930s by the superintendent of Sequoia National Park. The ground floor also has public exhibit space and a multipurpose room that serves as an auditorium and as a teaching lab.

The building's upper floors are wider than the floor beneath, thus giving the idea of a tree canopy that provides shade to the ground below. The open arrangement of the laboratory and office spaces on those floors encourages interaction and collaboration among the lab's faculty and students.

The open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on March 2 will feature guided tours of the new building, exhibits about tree-ring science and hands-on activities for children.

In addition to the giant sequoia slab, the open house exhibits will include a specimen of the world's oldest known tree and artifacts from ancient southwest archaeology sites.

Researchers will give tours of their labs, discuss the variety of events recorded in tree rings and show visitors how dendrochronologists extract that information from trees.

Scientists will demonstrate how to core a tree to study the timeline captured by the tree's annual rings. Taking such a core does not hurt the tree. Visitors will be able to try their hands at taking a core and will be able to take that core home with them.

"We expect our new exhibit hall will host thousands of visitors each year, and we plan to develop a regular program of tours through parts of our new laboratory spaces, and eventually the archives of our collections as well," Swetnam said.

"To do this we need help, so we are organizing a volunteer docent program."

Docents will lead tours of the building, share the lab's rich history with the public and provide short demonstrations. The training sessions, limited to 30 people, are free. The first one is April 6, from 10 a.m. to noon. People who wish to become docents must register in advance by contacting Pamela Pelletier at 520-248-9933 or by email at pamela@email.arizona.edu.

In the next phase of construction, a modern, climate-controlled archive will be built in the Mathematics East building to house the lab's extensive collection of wood samples, which range from pencil-thin cores of trees to 7-foot-diameter cross-sections of giant sequoias. The irreplaceable samples, the work of scores of scientists starting with Douglass, are still used by researchers as they continue to explore the wealth of information recorded in tree rings.

The collection is estimated to contain more than 2 million individual pieces of wood. Once complete, the new archive will allow the lab to double the amount of wood samples in the collection.

The lab received a $425,000 grant from the National Park Service and National Endowment for the Humanities' Save America's Treasures Program and a $484,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Collections in Support of Biological Research Program to purchase mechanical-compact shelving units to store the collection and to develop a digital database of the collections.

The Bryant Bannister Tree-Ring Building plus the renovation of the Mathematics East basement is primarily funded by private donation from Agnese Nelms Haury.

The UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research is recognized worldwide as a preeminent center for the advancement of tree-ring techniques and the broad application of dendrochronology in the social and environmental sciences.

The Arizona Board of Regents on Feb. 7 passed a resolution in support of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's fiscal year 2014 budget request, which calls for $58.6 million in new money for the state's public university enterprise.

Brewer outlined her request to board members during the two-day board meeting on the Arizona State University campus.

"The board applauds the governor’s budget recommendations and its investment in our universities, and we thank the governor for her commitment to higher education," said ABOR Chairman Rick Myers. "The board has directed the university system presidents to support and advocate on behalf of the governor’s budget recommendations for the universities and her Medicaid expansion plan to business leaders, the state Legislature and to the public."

The governor's request includes $8 million for further development of the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix. This investment is important as Arizona continues to face a troubling shortage of doctors and medical professionals.

The request also calls for $15.4 million in performance-based funding to reward progress in areas such as degrees awarded and gains in external research. Moving to a performance-based model is a priority for the regents as the universities strive to meet goals intended to support and stimulate Arizona's economy.

Additionally, a proposed allocation of $19.9 million for soft capital would be key to providing advanced equipment and technology to meet academic and infrastructure needs.

Also at the meeting, the regents approved funding for three research projects from the Regents Innovation Fund through fiscal year 2013-14. Three out of 13 proposed projects were selected for funding, for a total of $1.1 million.

They include:

• Researchers will identify ways to improve profitability of algae farming, investigate a variety of non-potable water sources and waste streams, and identify target products from algae that will flourish in the waste water streams. The project will support efforts to designate algal culture as agriculture in Arizona, increase commercialization of the product, and promote a sustainable strategy for the reuse of Arizona's waste resources. The regents have allocated $200,000 for this project.
• The second project will support the transition to informatics-intensive research for Arizona's nationally ranked environmental research programs. It will move the Arizona higher education enterprise into a national leadership position in the critical emerging area of environmental information. Research and development will focus on the environmental sciences relating to creation, collection, storage, processing, modeling, interpretation, display and dissemnation of data and information. The regents have allocated $450,000 for this project.
• A third project will build upon the pilot involving SciVal Experts. It will expand the effort in building digital research infrastructure capabilities that will enhance the research functions of Arizona's three universities. The project aims to increase researchers' ability to form creative and dynamic collaborative teams across disciplines and locations, improve their access to funding opportunities, and provide access to a data management infrastructure. The allocation for this project is $450,000.

Also at the meeting:

• The board approved an extended and revised contract for Rich Rodriguez, head UA football coach. The changes extends his contract by one year to Nov. 30, 2017, increases his base salary and makes adjustments to other compensation schedules.
• The regents approved a contract for Anthony Amato, the new UA women's head soccer coach. Amato's contract will run through Dec. 31, 2015, and his base salary will be $80,000, with increases based on team achievements.
• The board appointed Peter Calihan to the University of Arizona Health Network Board of Directors.