|
December 8, 2005
By Joan Greene
As an avid athlete in high school and college, Brandon Busteed didn't want alcohol to interfere with his future plans.
A 1995 graduate of North Allegheny Senior High School, Busteed made it a point to avoid the party scene and the pitfalls of binge drinking. Then, while attending Duke University in North Carolina, Busteed was involved with student activities and organized an array of campus events.
"I was really surprised at the number of students who wouldn't come to the events because alcohol wasn't served," said Busteed, 28, who now lives in the Boston suburb Newton.
After graduating from Duke in 1999 with a degree in public policy, Busteed decided to educate college students on the ill effects of binge drinking and developed the program AlcoholEdu, an online course that not only educates students on binge drinking, but also quizzes them on their personal drinking habits.
Now in its fifth year, AlcoholEdu is used on more than 400 college campuses around the country, and last year, the program was introduced at high schools, said Busteed, founder and chief executive officer of the Boston-based company Outside the Classroom.
This school year, the program is being introduced at high schools in Western Pennsylvania, with North Hills, North Allegheny, Pine-Richland, Quaker Valley and North Catholic high schools serving as local pilot sites for the program.
AlcoholEdu has done "extraordinarily well" on college campuses, with more than half of the top 100 ranked schools in U.S. News & World Report making it mandatory for incoming freshmen to take the course, Busteed said. "On campuses that have implemented the program, the administration has seen positive changes in students' behavior towards alcohol," he said.
Preliminary research after the first year of AlcoholEdu being introduced on high school campuses shows "really, really strong results" from 5,000 ninth-graders from 32 schools nationwide who took the course, Busteed said. "It's been well received on the student front because they like the environment of being able to do it on their own and in privacy," he said.
Anonymity is the "key" to the success of AlcoholEdu, Busteed said. "The program is very personalized and customized to the students. It allows for privacy and honesty," he said.
"The school can track if the students complete the course, but the answers the students submit are private to allow for open, honest answers."
By the end of the fall semester or early spring, officials at the five local high schools participating in AlcoholEdu plan to introduce the program to freshmen and sophomores enrolled in health and physical education classes.
The program, financed in part by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and the Northern Area Alliance Against Highly Addictive Drugs, consists of three 30-minute courses that students take, along with questions before and afterward.
"This helps allow the school districts to learn about the addictive behavior of students before and after the course," said Debra Kehoe, executive director of the drug alliance.
School officials will be able to get information about how students answer the questions but not which students gave which answers.
Kehoe said she looks forward to seeing how AlcoholEdu works in local schools and hopes to double the number of schools participating in the program next year.
At Pine-Richland High School, AlcoholEdu will be used as part of the school's major campaign on the effects of alcohol and how it relates to teen development and the importance of making healthy decisions, said Al Wille, coordinator of the school's special programs and president of the drug alliance.
"We use older students who have made healthy lifestyle decisions to serve as role models for the younger students. They talk about their goals and how making the right decisions help them achieve them," he said.
Tim McDowell, student assistance coordinator at North Hills Senior High School, said he views AlcoholEdu as an opportunity to prevent substance abuse and to explore the benefits of online learning.
"The fact that it's new and different may help in catching students' attention," he said.
Return to Media Coverage Listing
|
