STORY BY UOFL SCHOOL OF MEDICINE NEWS

Amid the turmoil of 2020, Onu Udoh, a second-year student in the University of Louisville School of Medicine, decided it was time to take action to reduce the health disparities that plague underserved communities across Louisville.

So he founded GROW502: A Health Disparities Series to highlight these disparities and begin to make changes. Two other medical students and an undergraduate student from UofL joined him to lead the project, which will include anyone from across the university and the community to who would like to participate in the project’s education, engagement and advocacy events.

First-year medical students Lisa Anakwenze and Zoha Mian, along with Chidum Okeke, a senior UofL undergraduate student and Udoh outlined a multimodal approach to transforming  the 2017 Louisville Health Equity Report into a living representation of the current state of health in Louisville. Through art, new media and virtual workshops, the group will educate community members, students, staff, faculty and health care professionals about health disparities revealed in the report, while simultaneously empowering them to enact change. 

Beginning the week of Feb 8, students across the university are invited to join project leaders and community members in weekly activities focused on education, community engagement, advocacy and edutainment focused on ways to reduce health inequity.

Education panels will be led by Udoh and medical interest groups in ob/gyn, pediatrics, nutrition, neurology and psychiatry.

Anakwenze is leading community engagement by working with community partners such as Feed the West - Change Today, Change tomorrow, Family Health Centers, Louisville Lead Prevention Program, the Kentucky State Health Department and Healthy Babies to provide direct avenues to make a change within the Louisville Metro area.

Mian will lead weekly advocacy workshops to bring local policymakers together with students to advocate for a brighter tomorrow.

Okeke’s team will work to package and market the project, using the power of creative media to present unique perspectives on health disparities in Louisville. With edutainment ranging from infographics to videos to cartoons, the marketing team will create an engaging virtual environment to increase community awareness of the disparities that exist, with the goal of reducing their effects. 

“Overall, the mission of this project is to plant seeds of information and inspiration in our local community that will lead to a long-term reduction in Louisville’s health disparities,” Udoh said. “Our role is to support the sustainable growth of our community as we GROW a better tomorrow.”

Students, professionals and community members are encouraged to participate in the events by signing up through EventBrite. The activities, both live and virtual, and a schedule of events will be published on the group’s website www.grow502.org. 

- STORY BY SCHOOL OF NURSING -

Kentucky joins states across the United States administering its first COVID-19 vaccinations. The vaccination is being offered to health care workers and medical first responders. A mass vaccination site opened on Jan. 4 at Broadbent Arena in Louisville.

At least 15 School of Nursing faculty members are helping provide the manpower for this vaccination initiative and using it as an educational opportunity for students, who will begin volunteering on Jan. 18. Nursing students will help with check in as well as administer vaccinations under faculty supervision.

Each shift will include students primarily from the Master's Entry into Professional Nursing and undergraduate global public health programs.

The School of Nursing is scheduled to volunteer through February and will offer staffing for as long as the immunizations are being offered.

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

When a 9-year-old boy with autism first began attending UofL’s Music Therapy Clinic, he was nonverbal, easily agitated and occasionally aggressive, despite trying various therapies since he was a toddler.

Staff at that School of Music program leveraged his natural love of music to help him learn to communicate. Now, as a 13-year-old, he can better process feelings and speak in sentences.

The clinic hopes to replicate such success stories by widening its reach and hitting the road. The WHAS Crusade for Children awarded the clinic a $30,000 grant last fall to purchase a van that will be retrofitted into a traveling clinic.

“Transportation can be a barrier to children coming to the clinic to receive individualized services. One way to address this is to bring the clinic to the children,” said Jess Rushing, assistant professor and clinic supervisor.

The clinic is an extension of the Music Therapy Program, which began in 2000 and is the only approved undergraduate music therapy program in Kentucky. Board-certified music therapists regularly see 20 clients in the clinic and two clients in their homes as well as offer services at seven community facilities. Clients range from newborns to seniors needing therapy for problems spanning developmental disabilities to Alzheimer’s disease. UofL music therapy students observe and participate in these sessions to help fulfill clinical training requirements.

Rushing said the van allows staff to transport equipment and provide on-site consultations, assessments and other activities anywhere in the community.

“It opens a lot of doors for how we can offer services,” Rushing said.

The Crusade has funded the clinic two other times as well, helping to renovate the clinic space and augment service expenses, as the clinic charges on a sliding scale based on a family’s ability to pay.

“The grants have been instrumental in increasing access to music therapy for children in our community,” Rushing said.

Chris Millett, coordinator of the Music Therapy Clinic, told the Louisville Cardinal that the van has been especially beneficial during the pandemic, as it provides the opportunity to continue providing in-person services in a safe way.

OCTOBER 21, 2020

The City of Louisville was recently in the spotlight for a Forbes article about “equitable economic recovery.” What that means exactly is the ability to meet the demands of various industries and the educational and training opportunities available to employees in all stages of their careers.

This idea of equitable economic recovery is critical right now, especially. The story cites data that shows from February through August 2020, the number of workers who lost their jobs permanently due to COVID-19 rose by 2.1 million to 3.4 million — an over 60% increase.

The author identified Louisville as a benchmark city for equitable recovery, looking at Humana’s role specifically, and a partnership the company has with other community organizations, including the University of Louisville. As one of the city’s largest employers, Humana and the health insurance sector at large have been less impacted by the pandemic than other industries. Conversely, the company represents a sector of the economy that is still growing and, therefore, building in-demand skills.

Technology is Louisville’s fastest-growing job sector, Humana SVP Roger Cude told the publication, which is driving local business leaders to increasingly adopt a “digital-first mindset.”

“But like other communities, Louisville-area businesses are struggling to find qualified applicants for those jobs,” he said, adding that the pandemic is “creating new and unexpected challenges and accelerating the imperative for businesses to evolve.”

Simply put, there is a greater need than ever for digital and analytical skills. This is where FutureLou comes in. The coalition entails private, public and academic leaders in the region, including the University of Louisville. These players are combining resources to “create a future-ready local workforce through training and development in high-demand data science skills and capabilities,” Cude explained.

Notably, that training is free for Louisville residents.

“The goal of the FutureLou initiative is to provide a pathway for displaced or underemployed workers to upskill into industry-aligned careers that provide stability and resilience during this period of disruption. By providing both financial support and job search guidance, we’re reducing the barriers to reskilling for digital jobs and helping Louisville residents earn credentials that will have high demand now and for the future,” Cude said.

The program is a partnership between Microsoft and Louisville Metro Government, in tandem with the General Assembly, Kentuckiana Works and a virtual “micro-campus” team.

Also as part of this effort, UofL’s Center for Digital Transformation website became a strategic partner in Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer’s 30-day Data Upskilling Challenge Initiative earlier this year. The program encouraged residents to access free online, self-paced, data skills training through a COVID-19-related effort by the city’s Future of Work Initiative, also powered by Microsoft.

This isn’t the only “future-proofing” effort UofL is involved in to advance the city of Louisville and its equitable recovery. 

Last year, the university teamed up with The Humana Foundation and Interapt to bring a paid, immersive training program that teaches high-demand IT skills to the underemployed and unemployed in the community. The program, called “Louisville Skills,” provided individuals with the opportunity to build the technical, business and life skills necessary to work in fast-paced, high-tech environment, preparing them to launch promising careers in the tech industry.

Interapt’s training program has been called “a national model of creating next-generation opportunity.” The Louisville Skills program marks the first time Interapt partnered with a major university.

Also last year, UofL became part of a new Artificial Intelligence Innovation Consortium, an alliance that also includes Amazon Web Services, GE Appliances, Amgen, V-Soft Consulting and other companies. This alliance is the first-of-its-kind for the city. 

In February, UofL received a nearly $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to build a program that prepares students for the ever-evolving, technology-enabled “jobs of tomorrow.” The UofL Modern Apprenticeship Pathways to Success (MAPS) program is funded through the DoL’s “Apprenticeships: Closing the Skills Gap” initiative. UofL was one of just 28 public-private partnerships funded under this federal program in its most recent round, and is the only one in Kentucky.

Finally, last year, UofL and IBM announced a partnership that includes the establishment of an IBM Skills Academy focused on digital learning and technology skills. Like Interapt’s initiative, this skills academy is the first of its kind that IBM has developed with a higher education institution.

Specifically, the academy will provide curriculum and educational tools concentrated on eight fast-growing technology areas: artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, cybersecurity, cloud computing, internet of things, quantum computing, data science and design thinking.

It is estimated that over 120 million jobs will be affected within the next three years by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, that number may even be higher and upskilling through these areas is more important.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of what UofL is focused on, or plans to focus on in the near term. One of UofL’s identified “Grand Challenges,” for example, is “engineering our future economy.” This means, in part, honing our research to focus on developing and harnessing technological advancements for the digital and robotic transformation of the workforce.

As President Neeli Bendapudi said when the IBM partnership was announced: “It is important for us to be nimble with this, to be truly transformative, to say, ‘We see what’s coming, how can we be proactive?’”

By IDAYA GAGER -

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on health guidelines, business operation procedures and how students are able to receive their education. But for UofL students, the pandemic hasn’t dampened one vital area of the college experience – experiential learning opportunities.

According to the University Career Center, internships, co-op and experiential learning listings for 2019-2020 increased by 72% over the previous year. The bulk of the listings increased prior to the pandemic, but while COVID-19 stalled the workforce, it didn’t stop Cardinals from seeking and finding outside-the-classroom opportunities – even if they looked a little different.

Stuart Esrock, faculty-in-residence at the University Career Center, and Bill Fletcher, director of the University Career Center, acknowledge the increase in experiential learning opportunities during a global pandemic is surprising, but they say it makes sense from an economic perspective.

Listings of internships and co-op opportunities initially took a dive in March and April, when stay-at-home orders were issued, but the center began to see a slight increase in June. “Some of that increase in June was really because we began to see an increase in the economy overall,” Esrock said.

The increase is good news for students. UofL strongly encourages adding a real-world component to the undergraduate experience. Participating in internships and co-ops helps students build a skill set that extends past a classroom setting, network with future colleagues and business contacts, discover what they are passionate about and what they dislike, and earn work experience while still completing an undergraduate degree

Fletcher and Esrock said experiential learning offers a well-rounded educational experience, but most importantly, sets UofL students apart in the competitive job market. That’s even more crucial as the pandemic continues to affect the workforce. As Fletcher believes it will take longer than expected to recover economically from the pandemic, he stressed the importance of gaining work experience where available.

He added that the University Career Center has adapted its services to make sure students are prepared for a new sense of workplace normalcy, when everything from interviews to hiring is being done virtually.

The center has a plethora of resources to prepare students for the virtual workplace. It has virtual interview etiquette tips, mock interviews, appointments with a career coach, resume review, and other resources to help students figure out what career path they are interested in pursuing.

“We want to give students a realistic view of what’s going on in the world right now, about the job market, but we don’t want them to give up hope,” Esrock said. 

The University of Louisville and partners will lead an effort to bring technologies born at Kentucky universities to market, thanks to $1.16 million in support announced by Gov. Andy Beshear on Friday.

The effort, Kentucky Commercialization Ventures (KCV), is a collaboration between UofL, the University of Kentucky and Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. (KSTC). Together, they will provide expertise, training and other support to help Kentucky colleges and universities get their inventions off campus and into the hands of entrepreneurs and industry.

“The University of Louisville has long been a leader in driving innovative, research-backed technologies to the marketplace,” said UofL President Neeli Bendapudi. “Through this new venture, we can extend our vast proven experience, knowledge and success to institutions around the Commonwealth, working with them to accelerate economic development and the commercialization of technologies that could save lives and improve the way we live and work.”

In getting university-born technologies to market, KCV’s goal is to boost Kentucky’s position as a technology hub, spurring economic development and new tech-backed startups. Connecting all the state’s schools also is expected to strengthen the state’s position to compete for grants and other federal funding that support innovative companies.

“We all want to grow Kentucky’s tech sector and create the high-paying, knowledge-based jobs that follow,” Beshear said. “A big part of doing so is turning Kentucky’s own academic research and development capabilities into commercially viable products and startups. By partnering to create Kentucky Commercialization Ventures, we will provide the infrastructure to commercialize our own best ideas, build the commonwealth’s tech industry and distinguish Kentucky as a national model in innovation.”

Under recently signed contracts, Kentucky will pay $200,000 to each of UofL’s and UK’s research foundations over the next two fiscal years, and $755,000 to KSTC this fiscal year.

At UofL, KCV will be led by the Office of Research and Innovation’s Commercialization EPI-Center, which works with startups and industry to commercialize university-owned technologies. Kevin Gardner, UofL’s executive vice president for research and innovation, said KCV is an opportunity to expand on other UofL efforts in this area, such as its suite of innovation grant and training programs that support technology and product development.

“This builds on UofL’s existing work to boost entrepreneurship and get cutting-edge, university-born technologies to market,” Gardner said. “With KCV, we can leverage those past successes and earned expertise to help other Kentucky colleges and universities do the same, driving economic development across the Commonwealth.”

The EPI-Center will have an in-house KCV commercialization manager, Megan Aanstoos, who will work directly with inventors and institutions across the state to develop innovative ideas and inventions into marketable products with established business models. UofL also will have a faculty or administration champion who will work directly with the faculty, staff and students at large.

“We are very excited to work with our sister institutions to drive commercialization in Kentucky,” said EPI-Center executive director Allen Morris.

A collaboration between the University of Louisville and West Kentucky Community and Technical College will allow students from both institutions to work together in a dental clinic while providing services to residents of the Jackson Purchase region.

Dr. T. Gerard Bradley, dean of the University of Louisville School of Dentistry (ULSD), joined WKCTC President Anton Reece and Carrie Hopper, dean of WKCTC’s Allied Health and Personal Services and dental assisting program coordinator, for the announcement today in Paducah.

A memorandum of understanding between UofL and WKCTC allows the dental school to operate the mutually beneficial dental clinic on the second floor of the Anderson Technical Building on the WKCTC campus.

Partnerships like the one with WKCTC provide dental services to communities, an essential component of UofL’s dental curricula, Bradley said.

“Our goal is to develop a network of community-based partner clinics in a variety of locations across Kentucky. These externship sites enhance our clinical curriculum while meeting the oral health needs of underserved populations,” he said.

Reece said the UofL / WKCTC partnership is historic. “We are excited to partner and collaborate with the University of Louisville School of Dentistry to provide needed dental services to the community and our region.”

“Collaboration with WKCTC strengthens our community engagement in the western part of Kentucky and we are proud to join with the college to establish a dental clinic in Paducah,” said UofL President Neeli Bendapudi. “The important work of the university is not only educating future health care professionals, but also teaching students to become culturally competent providers.” 

The clinic will have a full-time licensed dentist managed by ULSD, and will be a clinical learning site for fourth-year UofL dental students. WKCTC will provide dental assistants from its existing dental assisting program along with use of existing dental equipment and chairs.

“Having the opportunity for our dental assisting students to work with UofL dental students will provide valuable learning experiences,” said Hopper. “This collaboration will help serve the underinsured, underserved population in our service region. I am beyond excited to begin this partnership with UofL School of Dentistry.”

ULSD will provide expert dental oversight, supervision and management of the dental clinic operations, including the establishment of all dental fees, billing and collection.

UofL is engaged in a similar collaboration with the Red Bird Mission and Red Bird Clinic located in Beverly, Ky. Dental students work under the direction of a local dentist, providing the students an opportunity to treat patients in a rural community and culture. Students also rotate through similar externship sites in urban settings, including the Shawnee Dental Clinic located in an underserved area of Louisville.

“These experiences truly teach our students to become confident, compassionate dental providers,” Bradley said.

JUNE 29, 2020

UofL’s Kent School of Social Work is partnering with the nonprofit organization Wellspring on a new, five-year federal grant to offer a unified care approach to help homeless people experiencing both mental health and substance use issues to find housing and recovery.

“About 50% of adults with severe mental illness have a co-occurring substance abuse disorder,” said Wellspring CEO and Kent alumna Katharine Dobbins.

The goal is to help people become free of homelessness, engage in recovery and improve their quality of life through a community-based approach.

The nearly $2 million project is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It is designed to boost specialized training to serve 180 Louisville adults via Wellspring, a behavioral health agency with a 38-year history of providing mental health services.

“Obviously the issue of people having both mental health and physical problems is a major concern in Louisville,” said Bibhuti Sar, UofL social work professor and the grant’s lead investigator, who pointed to the efforts of Wellspring and other local groups working together to address homelessness. “The Kent School of Social Work and the University of Louisville strongly support the well-being of the community. We welcome the partnership of Wellspring to enhance their efforts and experience to do that work.”

Working with other community partners such as the Coalition for the Homeless and Louisville Metro Housing Authority, the project will identify some of Louisville’s most vulnerable adults living on the streets with both disorders and will seek to provide them with housing and services designed to stabilize their lives.

“This will be a life-changing program,” Dobbins said. “It helps move a person along the path of recovery toward the goals they want to achieve. We will take a harm-reduction approach, but critical life experiences serve as opportunities to help individuals make positive changes.”

Participants will have a support team that includes a therapist, case manager, nurse practitioner and a peer support professional. This team, in conjunction with the Kent School, will develop skills in using evidence-based methods that help integrate “trauma-informed” care for participants. UofL will bring in national experts for training in evidence-based interventions. Sar said he hoped the training will occur this summer with services to begin in early fall.

“This grant will help our staff hone and improve their skills in evidence-based practices,” Dobbins said.

Those practices include integrated dual disorder treatment, which addresses both problems (mental health and substance use) simultaneously with the same team; motivational interviewing, which guides people toward change; and a “housing first” model, which uses supportive services to help chronically homeless people with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.

The Kent School team includes Martin Hall, an associate professor with experience in researching substance use issues, who will lead the evaluation part of the grant to ascertain the program’s effectiveness. Jim Guinn will be the project’s daily coordinator, and Sar said the team will hire a research assistant.

“We also want to understand the impact of services on consumers in the sense of improving their functioning and well-being,” Sar said.

Partnering organizations also will measure outcomes including how many homeless people get housed and how quickly and whether they maintain housing for a year or more. Other measurements will assess improvement to their quality of life and whether their psychiatric conditions changed.

“Our goal is to get people into independent housing, their own apartments with their own amenities,” Dobbins said. “We provide supportive services. We hope to get people into treatment as well, using these evidence-based practices.”

Continuing the UofL connections, Dobbins has a Kent social work degree and Wellspring program manager Paul Bliss has been a Kent adjunct faculty member; Sar hopes later to involve Kent students in the work as well.

“It’s rewarding to see our graduates making a difference in the community, and the chance to partner with them as alumni is fantastic,” Sar said.

Photo provided by publicdomainphotos.net. 

Increasing diversity in the medical field is Tino Mkorombindo’s goal, and the reason he has established Greater Influence Inc., a nonprofit that serves as a resource for minority students who plan to pursue a career in medicine.

Mkorombindo has completed his third-year as a student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. This fall he is pivoting to pursue a MBA before completing his medical education and ultimately applying for a residency position in orthopedic surgery.

A native of Zimbabwe, Mkorombindo grew up in California, and says the number of minority physicians in the United States is far too few to reflect the patient population.

According to the U.S. Census of 2019, those who identify as underrepresented minorities (Blacks, Mexican-Americans, multi-race, mainland Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans-American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians) represent more than 36% of the general population. However, according to data from the Diversity in Medicine: Facts and Figures 2019 report of the Association of American Medical Colleges, individuals from these groups comprise just a little more than 12% of the physician workforce.

“Increasing physician diversity is important for ensuring culturally competent patient care and access for underserved populations. Studies also tell us diversity leads to improved patient outcomes and patient satisfaction,” Mkorombindo said.

His vision for the organization is to create a space that ensures all students, from high school through medical school, have the tools they need to excel.

“This would ultimately allow us to positively address the dire need for diversity in the physician workforce,” he said.

Mkorombindo created and designed a website that provides a blueprint and support for high school students until their final year of medical school. Website resources address various topics including weekly motivation, study information, guidance for applications to undergraduate schools, medical schools and residencies, advice on seeking and providing mentorships, along with printable checklists and timelines.

The community-based nonprofit looks to increase early exposure to medicine, launching new initiatives that will improve access to health care in Louisville’s West End, and implementing fundraising campaigns for student scholarships.

Mkorombindo says the scholarships will fund things like SAT/ACT/MCAT/Board prep courses, medical school applications, travel funds for interviews and conferences.

Find out how to get involved, visit Greaterinfluence.org or @Greaterinfluence on Instagram. Follow Mkorombindo @tinomko on Twitter and Instagram or email him at info@greaterinfluence.org.

University of Louisville athletics generated more hours of community service during the 2019-20 academic year than any other power five school.
 
This announcement, which came last week, marks the sixth consecutive year that UofL has ranked in the top 10 in all of Division I in community service, improving upon last year’s seventh place ranking.
 
Fourteen teams placed in the top 10 in community service in Division I for their sports, including Field Hockey and Lacrosse, which led their respective sports.

Men’s Soccer, Women’s Soccer, Baseball and Dance ranked third in the country, Men’s Swimming and Women’s Rowing ranked fifth, Cheerleading ranked sixth, Women’s Golf and Softball ranked eighth, and Women’s Basketball, Men’s Golf and Women’s Swimming ranked tenth.

From April 2019 to April 2020, Louisville athletics generated $279,831.72 in financial impact of service, worked with 208 different partners, took part in 864 service opportunities and conducted 11,004 validated hours of community service.
 
Overall, 735 Louisville student-athletes participated in community service with 262 student-athletes completing more than 15 hours of community service.
 
Louisville was also named NCAA Teamworks Champions in the fall of 2019.

In the fall of 2019, Valerie Fuchs, a part-time professor at the Hite Art Institute in UofL’s Department of Fine Arts, tasked her interior design students with designing a few rooms and raising funds for the Louisville Hotel for the homeless.

Unable to reach anyone in time, that project was put on hold. But the fire had been ignited in Fuchs, who was determined to find something that mixed a comprehensive interior design project with benevolence.  

Around that same time, she read an article about Camp Restoration, a planned community of homes made of shipping containers for homeless veterans in southwest Louisville. The objective of Camp Restoration is simple: to help those veterans get back on their feet.

As reported by WDRB, the idea for the community came from Jeremy Harrell, founder and CEO of the Veteran’s Club, who recruited Paul Sirek, an architect at Luckett & Farley, to conceptualize what those homes would look like.

Coincidentally, Sirek works with Fuchs’ husband. So, she asked if her critique class could participate in the project. Initially, the class was approved to design two of the planned 25 container homes.   

“After we had a critique with Jeremy Harrell, he was so happy about how different each design was, that he said we could do more,” Fuchs said. “He wanted the veterans to be proud of their homes and show them off to encourage socialization.”

The 20 students went through the entire design process, coming up with three different schemes each and choosing one to pursue. At one point, there were 36 different single-family home designs and 24 different family home designs.

The junior class (eight students) had the family home, which consisted of four containers, while the sophomore students (12) had the single container home to design. However, the project entailed much more than just interior design. Each home has to be tailored for challenges like PTSD, for example.

With adaptive reuse of a shipping container, the students were initially required to design homes within the containers, similar to  interior design programming in most projects, Fuchs said. But the project grew as the students began their work.

“After working with the students, I thought they needed to learn how to work on the process of how to create great design as they all were so talented. So I adapted that style of studio, similar to how an architecture traditional studio is run,” she said. “Design is design and it needs rigor to accomplish anything worthwhile.”

The students’ process for the “adaptive reuse project for homeless veterans” included:

• A summation of nine readings covering design theory, PTSD, homelessness and sustainability.
• The creation of three collages and models.
• Site visits of other container-built structures (the Russell Neighborhood Community Center, Copper & Kings and Jeremy Semones Core Containers).
• A lecture and critiques by Jeremy Harrell of the Veteran’s Club and architect Paul Sirek.

All of that was even before the design development for a 9-foot-by-40-foot shipping container. The students created a thesis, designed at least four schemes and generated four plans, four elevations, one section and renderings in perspective/axonometric. They also created color and furniture finishes for the project and endured several in-class critiques before creating the construction documents. The documents included dimensions, plans, elevations, sections, schedules and cut sheets/specs.

Additionally, two students, Kayleigh Garner and Micheal Blanton, taught themselves how to use AutoCad drafting software during the project and then taught other students how to use the programming as well.

According to Fuchs, working on this “real” project allowed the students to gain the experience of solving problems within conditional parameters. 

“They learned the structural limits, had to learn codes for egress, fair housing requirements of room sizes, natural light, zoning and where to put the electrical box. These are real problems interior designers face every day and the sooner you know what your parameters will be, the better designer you will become,” she said.

Despite the abrupt shift to remote operations in March due to COVID-19, the project, and the students’ enthusiasm for the project, continued.

“Even during quarantine, the students were able to create construction documents,” Fuchs said. “The students really rose to the challenge and went way beyond my expectations. Their enthusiasm for a real project that will help so many veterans was amazing. I loved their designs and how deeply they thought this through. They worked so hard and I am so proud of them and their efforts.”

Although COVID-19 has put most things on hold, the groundbreaking for Camp Restoration was still held over spring break and the community is expected to be completed in 2021.

Meanwhile, fundraising continues for the community, and Fuchs plans to do what she can for that effort through a new, online free design service called Design for Everyone. The idea is that anyone can submit their home design problems and Fuchs and a few UofL students, acting as interns, will come up with a solution.

“In exchange we are going to ask for donations to be sent to Camp Restoration,” Fuchs said. “It is going to be fun. I had been wanting to have a real project that could give back to the community for my two interior design classes, as I believe good design is for everyone.”