By Rachel Morse, Staff Writer
The campus began equipping students for prevention this semester.
An introduction course for the addiction prevention program meets from 2:30 to 5:15 p.m. on Monday afternoon, said Peter Messiah, director of addiction prevention studies. The course, taught by Messiah, instructs students from a variety of majors on the impact addiction can have on individuals and the community.
“I am wanting people to go out prepared with a cadre of skill sets needed to be successful in all of this,” he said.
The class initially did not make the spring semester due to lack of enrollment, Messiah said. Interest increased after advertising through fliers and signs. About 11 students are enrolled, and more prospective students are requesting admission, he said.
“We are excited about the number we did have,” he said. “We just have a really great broad variety of students.”
Officials still are working on new developments, Messiah said. His goal is to have a degree program in place by Fall 2012.
“We can’t say we will definitely have a degree program at this point because we are still in the infancy stage of that,” he said.
The degree program would focus on prerequisites for becoming an “outstanding preventionist” in a variety of fields, Messiah said. It could be taken as a dual major for students to apply prevention to their own area of interest.
If the degree program were approved, it would be the only one in the area, he said.
“Once again OCU will be cutting edge,” Messiah said.
Jason Blakeburn, philosophy/religion senior, said a program like this will go beyond just addiction prevention.
“I think it could help students control their addictive habits of drugs and alcohol and hopefully instill healthy lifestyle habits instead,” he said.
With a degree program in place, Messiah said he hopes to see the university develop a certification program.
“I would like to see it as a frontrunner in prevention studies in the nation, if not the world,” he said.
New things still are coming for the program, but Messiah said he can’t reveal them just yet.
“There will always be something exciting emanating from this program,” he said.
Leave a Reply