630-007 learn - C.P.M. Module 3: Value Enhancement Strategies Updated: 2023

Established in 1993, the Scholastic Enhancement Program (SEP) is an admission-based program designed to provide support to select student populations as they attend Miami University and work toward completing their degree. Our goal is to provide each incoming SEP student with personalized academic support and a tailored study plan - all with the goal of ensuring their academic success during their first few semesters at college.

Each SEP student is assigned an RLC staff member as an Advisor. SEP advisors meet with students weekly to work on such syllabus as:

• Transitioning to College
• Time Management and Organization
• Selecting Classes
• Creating Course Schedules
• Major Selection and Degree Planning

The success of the SEP program is demonstrated by the fact that SEP was honored with a Retention Excellence Award from USA Group Noel-Levitz ®, a nationally recognized consulting firm specializing in higher education enrollment management, financial aid and student retention.

The Rinella Learning Center and the Scholastic Enhancement Program provide academic and personal guidance for targeted students to ensure their completion of a degree through coordinated programs and services in cooperation with faculty and staff campus wide.

We work with programme teams in a range of ways to develop and enhance curricula including:

Curriculum Festivals
Curriculum Festivals - an event to develop new programmes or reinvigorate existing ones. Each festival involves the whole programme team, students, alumni and relevant professional services staff, and is typically followed by a Writing Retreat to consolidate ideas into programme and unit descriptors.

Leadership Development for Curriculum Enhancement
The Leadership Development Programme aims to support Programme Directors (and other colleagues with a similar responsibility for curriculum) in tackling common challenges and empower them to get the most out of the curriculum enhancement process.

TESTA
TESTA (Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment) - a series of events drawing on programme data and student perspectives to develop and enhance summative and formative assessment across a programme.

Our curriculum enhancement work draws on the University of Bristol’s Curriculum Framework and its six connected dimensions which together form a touchstone for curriculum design and enhancement. The Curriculum Framework was co-created with staff across the institution and a small number of students in 2019. 

Dengue viral infections can result in a range of symptoms. Some people show no symptoms or only have mild signs of the disease. Other people develop severe complications. How does the body respond to a dengue infection? What factors put some people at a greater risk of severe dengue illnesses than other people? The human body's immune system is the primary defense against the dengue virus. When someone is infected with dengue, the body's innate and adaptive immune responses work together to fight the virus. B cells from the immune system produce antibodies that recognize and neutralize dengue viral particles, and cytotoxic T cells recognize and kill cells that are infected with the virus. People who are infected a subsequent time with a different type of the dengue virus may experience something called "antibody-dependent enhancement" in which the body's immune response actually makes the clinical symptoms of dengue worse and increases a person's risk of developing severe dengue.

SLaTE, Ulster University's Strategy for Learning and Teaching Enhancement is an agile framework that enables us to develop and deliver policy aims and objectives and fund support projects that deliver quality enhancement in education.

There are two sides to the SLaTE, Policies and Projects.

Policies

Policies on the SLaTE are usually succinct and define short to medium term priorities and directions.

These will have review dates and when these are reached the Learning and Teaching Committee will decide whether these policies should stay on the SLaTE, be modified, or removed and archived because this work is complete or has been main-streamed.

These policies will help colleagues align their work and activity to the current priority areas and inform applications for projects.

Projects

Projects on the SLaTE should deliver better learning experiences for students and/or working lives for staff via the development of people, policy or infrastructure and systems. Projects should normally seek to align with policies on the SLaTE and may of course come to inform those policies.

Financial support for projects is available from the Learning and Teaching Strategy fund, and project proposals are considered by an Advisory Group that represents Faculties and Departments and reports to the Learning and Teaching Committee.

The SLaTE SharePoint site provides further details on current and archived policies and projects as well as information on how to make a project application.

According to the National Institute for Aging, quackery is at an all-time high.^[1] American consumers are exposed to an overwhelming sea of advertising for dietary supplements and homeopathic products. Many consumers assume that some government entity, such as the FDA, has ruled these products safe and effective before allowing the ads to be broadcast and printed. Many people do not realize, however, that the products are not proven safe for use. This widespread misconception has resulted in the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars for products whose efficacy has not been validated by clinical trials. In effect, many consumers are placing their trust in products promoted by manufacturers who do not invest the funds to carry out research to prove the safety and efficacy of these products.

Products promising to enhance sexual performance have been promoted for over a century, dating back to the patent medicines of the 1800s; these products were characterized by wildly exaggerated claims and sold to the public by unscrupulous manufacturers, without evidence of safety or effectiveness. The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Law was an attempt to eliminate this pernicious practice, and for many years Americans were somewhat better protected from unproven products.^[2] However, the passage of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, championed by Utah's Orrin Hatch, allowed manufacturers to market products without FDA approval of safety and efficacy.^[2]

During andropause, the male's serum testosterone levels fall, leading in many cases to erectile dysfunction.^[3] Males cannot achieve an erection or cannot sustain one for a sufficient time to complete sexual intercourse. The penis may gradually disengorge during intercourse. Legitimate medical interventions include testosterone, Viagra, Caverject, and devices inserted into the penis. Patients undergoing andropause often do not choose these therapies, opting instead to try dietary supplements. As millions of baby boomers are currently experiencing andropause, marketers offer hundreds of products allegedly beneficial in reversing impotence and enhancing male sexual performance.^[4]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a government agency charged with preventing fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and with helping educate consumers to avoid them.^[5] The FTC issued a consumer alert entitled The Truth About Impotence Claims. The agency clarified several issues and disspelled a great deal of manufacturer hype:

• Products advertised as effective for treating impotence without a physician's prescription should be ignored, as they cannot cure the condition.

• Products advertised as "breakthroughs" in the treatment of impotence mandate double checking with a physician for legitimacy.

• Some manufacturers create phony "clinics" and fake "institutes" solely to promote bogus impotence cures. Consumers should check with a physician to verify the legitimacy of these organizations.

• Some manufacturers of impotence cures claim that their product is "scientifically proven" to work. When a consumer sees the phrase "clinical studies prove it works," caution is in order, as these claims are often false. Furthermore, claims providing very high rates of success are often bogus.

• When impotence cures are said to be "herbal" or "all natural," the product should be ignored. There is no herb or "all natural" substance proven to cure impotence.

The agency also urges consumers to consult a qualified practitioner for treatment of impotence, rather than placing one's trust in their bogus remedies.

In the fight against fake impotence and sexual enhancement products, the FDA revealed in 2006 that it had completed a groundbreaking survey in which it analyzed 17 "dietary supplements" promoted on the Internet for erectile dysfunction or enhancement of sexual performance.^[6] The FDA explained that some of these products (Zimaxx, Libidus, Neophase, Nasutra, Vigor-25, Acta-Rx, and 4EVERON) were promoted and sold as dietary supplements but were actually illegal drugs containing potentially harmful, undeclared ingredients, such as sildenafil or analogues of sildenafil or vardenafil. The agency concluded that the claims made for these products were claims made for the undeclared nondietary supplement components, making them illegal drugs. The FDA sent warning letters to the marketers explaining the illegal nature of their activities, halted shipment of some of them into the United States, and threatened to take additional actions.

In June 2007, the FDA announced a final rule establishing regulations for the current good manufacturing practices (CGMP) of dietary supplements, partly due to the 2006 study of sexual enhancement/impotence products.^{[7,8,9,10,11]} Henceforth, the FDA's new CGMPs will ensure that supplements are produced in a quality manner, do not contain contaminants or impurities, and are accurately labeled. The rule is effective as of August 24, 2007, for large businesses and somewhat later for small businesses. Watchdog groups immediately pointed out that supplement manufacturers have never been required to prove their products are safe and effective, and the new regulations also fail to require this fundamental evidence of quality.^[12] An expert quoted by ABC News stated, "Knowing you have pure and well-made useless crap is a little better than having impure useless crap, but not by much."^[13]

While many marketers are in steep competition to capture a share of this lucrative business, one has managed to rise above the others, with its ubiquitous "Smiling Bob" Enzyte ads. This marketer has capitalized on the current thinking that an unproven dietary supplement can easily cure or treat a serious medical condition such as impotence. Early ads promised that Enzyte would add as much as three inches to the length of the user's penis.^[14] Web site testimonials also claim such benefits as allowing stronger, firmer, and easier-to-achieve erections, assisting in maintaining a fully hard erection, providing full and satisfying erections, and reversing the normal erectile problems of aging.^{[15,16,17,18,19]} Enzyte contains many ingredients, none of which is FDA-proven to be safe or effective in accomplishing its advertised purposes. These ingredients include niacin, zinc, copper, Korean red ginseng root, ginkgo, pine bark, Tribulus terrestris, arginine, Avena sativa, horny goat weed, maca root, muira puama, saw palmetto, and Swedish flower pollen.^[20,21]

The Cincinnati-based marketer of Enzyte, Berkeley Nutraceuticals, was reported in 2004 by a Cincinnati newspaper to be the subject of over 3,700 consumer complaints.^[22] In early 2006, Berkeley and its subsidiaries reached a settlement with the attorneys general of 18 states and Washington, D.C. in which it would pay $2.5 million and provide restitution to customers for unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy of their products.^[23,24,25] The $2.5 million settlement was a burden easily borne by the company, as it may have reaped as much as a quarter of a billion dollars in 2004 alone through sales of Enzyte and 14 other unproven supplements.^[26] Later in 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted the company and six individuals (including the president and owner) for bilking Americans of at least $100 million.^[27] Fraudulent business practices included sending consumers supplements they did not order, charging their credit cards without authorization, laundering the money, and mislabeling a product known as Rovicid. Despite the indictments and settlements, the company continues to advertise and sell its products to a public seemingly unaware of the controversy.

When research on dietary supplements intended for sexual enhancement appears, it must be scrutinized closely to assess the soundness of the methodology employed. Two such studies explored the abilities of KyoGreen powder (barley, wheat grass, seaweed) for sexual dysfunction in men and women and ArginMax (herbs, vitamins, minerals) to enhance sexual function in males.^[28,29] While both studies seemed to show positive results, they are rendered virtually useless because neither study used a control group that was administered a placebo for a valid comparison. Unfortunately, much of the research on dietary supplements is hampered by profound flaws such as this that would cause the research to be rejected by the FDA if it were to be submitted through the legitimate new drug application process used for new medications.

Lack of evidence about the safety and efficacy of dietary supplements exposes the consumer to unknown health hazards, as these products use ingredients that are of unknown therapeutic benefit. Marketers of these supplements have been known to engage in fraudulent and deceptive practices. Marketing hype and high profits should never override the pharmacist's professional responsibility to demand proof of safety and efficacy in the products we recommend. Patients experiencing andropause deserve a pharmacist who will refer them for legitimate medical care rather than selling them products that lack proof of efficacy and safety.

Trapasso joined the Massachusetts Athletics department in October 2022 as an Associate Director of Learning Enhancement in the office of Academic Success.  

Prior to UMass, Trapasso served as the Director of Student-Athlete Academic Enrichment (2018-2022) and the Coordinator for Athletic Academic Support Services (2014-2018) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Rizo’s Center for Student Athlete Success. She was instrumental in the development of the Rizo’s Center for Student-Athlete Success since UML transitioned from Division II to Division I in 2014. 

At UMass Lowell, Trapasso developed and oversaw an instructional assistance program and a peer tutoring program to provide student-athletes supplemental academic support. She partnered with the Centers for Learning to transition the campus wide tutoring program to meet the College studying and Learning Association guidelines for peer instruction. 

Trapasso worked closely with the men’s basketball and soccer programs to help with recruiting and transfer processes. She also monitored the academic progress and NCAA eligibility of student-athletes by maintaining a robust knowledge of the rules and regulations of the NCAA, as well as how those rules interact with the policy and procedures at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She was also involved with summer curriculum development, Title IX and sexual assault prevention education and served on the campus Diversity, Equity & Inclusion taskforce. 

Before UMass Lowell, Trapasso was a graduate assistant ad developmental instruction and disability services assistant in Boston College’s Student-Athlete Academic Services office and a peer advisor in the Carroll School of Management.  

Trapasso earned dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Sociology and Philosophy from Assumption University before earning a Master of Arts in Applied Developmental Educational Psychology from Boston College and adding a Certified Advanced Graduate Studies in Special Education from Assumption.