The Project on Health and Higher Education (PHHE), coordinated by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, wanted the voice of an undergraduate student on its national advisory board and recently selected a Penn State student to serve as a board member.

Beth Hardy (junior-economics) is president of the Global AIDS Initiative, which organized World AIDS Day last semester, and is also a member of the HIV/AIDS Risk Reduction Advisory Council
(HARRAC).

Now she is also the only student in the country to serve on the PHHE advisory board.

"It was an honor to be selected, and I think it's going to be a great experience," Hardy, who is from Wilmington, Del., said. "It's a great initiative, and I hope I will be able to contribute to it."

Tess Shier, assistant director of the Health Education and Leadership Program (HELP) of the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA), said she recommended Hardy as an articulate, competent, intelligent student who demonstrates interest and experience in HIV/AIDS education.

The purpose of the advisory board on which Hardy will be serving is to "create an academic focus on the prevention of HIV/AIDS among undergraduate students," Shier said.

She said board members will attend a meeting tomorrow in San Francisco and begin to develop a national strategy on how higher education can be used to address the challenges of HIV/AIDS, which is the ultimate goal of the board.

Hardy said the purpose of this initial meeting is to plan on a broad scale the involvement of universities in HIV/AIDS prevention.

"I hope we can come away from the meeting with some type of framework for universities and colleges developing plans to fight against AIDS," she said. "I'd like to see some innovative discussions and ideas about how to use colleges to institute change."

Hardy said the interview was a very quick process, and she found out that she had been selected within a week of being interviewed.

"It wasn't a high-pressure situation," she said. "I wasn't really shocked or worried, but mostly just looking forward to it."

Shier said Hardy was one of half a dozen students whose names she put forward to the advisory board, and she was up against students from Ivy League schools, among other universities.

The board is made up of international leaders in HIV/AIDS education and research, and Hardy will be an "equal player at the table with all these other really important people," Shier said.

She said the board was not obligated to select a student, and they would not have done so unless they had interviewed someone impressive.

"To be able to impress someone over a phone interview is very difficult, but [Hardy's] intelligence came through," Shier said.

Hardy serves as an affiliate of HELP and attended a national conference in Tampa, Fla. in November with five other Penn State students and students from two separate campuses to discuss strategies for health awareness.

Shier said she met Hardy at the conference and was impressed by her presentation, so she knew Hardy would be comfortable working in a professional environment.

"She obviously had a lot of experience working with HIV/AIDS," Shier said. "She also had a passion for doing work in this area, so I knew she was really dedicated."

Susan Kennedy, University Health Services (UHS) associate director, said HARRAC is funded by NASPA and was started three years ago to develop a program to reduce student risk of contracting HIV.

A year ago, the group members began to implement their plan using a social marketing campaign and increasing access to protection by giving out free condoms to individual students and student organizations, Kennedy said.

"Beth has been with us since last year, and she has been a really active participant and a really good collaborator in tying in the Global AIDS Initiative with HARRAC to reach a larger student audience," Kennedy said. "She speaks really well and communicates with a wide range of audiences, which is why I think they've selected her" for the advisory board.

Christina Cooke (junior-nursing), a member of HARRAC, said Hardy is very knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS, and her intelligence comes out in the ideas she brings to the meetings.

"She has wonderfully relevant experience and a professional attitude that she will definitely bring to the advisory board," Cooke said.

Hardy said the goal of HARRAC is to get people to start thinking more about the actions they take and how to prevent contracting HIV, and she hopes to share with the advisory board the work the group has been doing at Penn State.

"HARRAC has been making a lot of progress and I'd like to see if anyone can use that or build off of that," Hardy said.

Hardy said she first became interested in HIV/AIDS prevention in high school, when she started to learn more about how the epidemic has affected people in the United States and other parts of the world.

HIV/AIDS "... is something I have been interested in for a long time, and I think it needs more attention than it gets," Hardy said. "Because it is a preventable disease, it shouldn't be killing as many people as it does."