What can the SEMS Foundation do for you? What can you do for the SEMS Foundation?
The answers to these questions depend on who you are. The SEMS Foundation can both benefit from, and aid many people, including: students who want unbiased alcohol info, parents who want educational materials for your children, and college students who would like to bring SEMS to your campus. Please click the links at the top of the page under "site network;" these different sites are tailored to meet the needs of the you, regardless of your needs. Also, please consider donating online, every donation allows us to keep giving back to the community. For a description of our missions, products, and services, see below.
The missions of the SEMS Foundation
Please click on a mission for more information
[b] Prevent alcohol and drug related emergencies through peer intervention at the point of decision
[f] Prevent deaths from college student binge drinking and drug abuse
Products and Services
1) Introduction
6) Research
The SEMS Foundation provides cutting-edge services to students and universities nationwide. We are reinventing the collegiate EMS industry by broadening service offerings to pragmatically address the “culture of excess” on college campuses. This involves a comprehensive approach that involves the entire campus, not just EMT's. We are the first program in the country to use EMS as a preventative resource, not simply for response. It is our belief that collegiate EMS groups have the resources and organizational capabilities to lead cultural change on their campuses, but must involve students who are from the campus community at large. It is our belief that only the source of the problem can be a solution to the problem. By empowering students to be the agents of change, a truly comprehensive service can be born. It is our duty as an organization, to see to it that all major, private and public universities have access to the latest, medically reviewed research, educational resources, and logistical planning in-order to provide cultural solutions that are peer motivated and executed. Our SEMS program has evolved into what we believe to be the most comprehensive solution that currently exists for students. Students are excited at our approach because we take a stance that is realistic and treats them as adults. By endorsing responsibility and preventative services, instead of a message of abstinence, students see SEMS as a service they can trust and one which they are eager to participate in. The universities that have used our services endorse our approach and understand how important a university’s role in creating change can be, once they allow students to be proactive in being a solution to the problem.
The establishment of the SEMS student program is a large focus of operations. Our services include consultations with university student and administrators that allow us to evaluate their capabilities of establishing and sustaining and effective SEMS program. This involves constant communication and feedback in the forms of direct communications of surveys. We aim to assess university drinking/drug culture and offering pragmatic solutions based on our assessments. These solution services are in the broadest sense and can be understood as follows:
The SEMS program is our comprehensive solution to address and facilitate change in the culture of excess. The program is multi-faceted, combining emergency medical services, general alcohol and drug education for freshman and high school students, and liaison training that certifies students to become CPR/First Aid instructors who can in-turn, teach free CPR/First Aid certification classes, with SEMS alcohol/drug preventative education for their campus community. The SEMS Foundation facilitates the establishment of these groups by networking students with their communities and providing them with leadership training and the appropriate resources which include but are not limited to: funding opportunities/resources, financial management and budgeting, educational lectures and materials, logistics materials and support, organizational structure, publicity, and research and development for the most up-to-date and accurate informational resources. Our student services are largely maintained through the SEMS Foundation website at www.semsf.org. Here SEMS students can login and have access to our clearinghouse and surveys, where we monitor and supplement their needs on an ongoing basis.
The SEMS Foundation also seeks to provide our resources to pre-existing collegiate EMS groups, who desire to form a more comprehensive service based on the SEMS model. These affiliate groups will have access to SEMS materials and logos as an established affiliate group through negotiated agreements.
Student services are provided free to the students. The funding necessary to establish and sustain the SEMS programs are gleaned from university and community resources, typically from student group fees apportioned by student government. The SEMS Foundation serves to facilitate the cooperation and communication between all interested parties upon establishment which include but are not limited to: Residence Life, Greek Life, Student Government, Student Affairs, Campus Safety, and the Student Health Center.
The SEMS Foundation is beginning to offer a more solutions-based service to universities, establishing a consultative service that aims to give full assessment of cultural concerns and perceptions on that campus regarding the current alcohol/drug programming, student involvement and participation, credibility, accuracy and other areas of focus. Based on the results, a variety of program offerings are designed based on the SEMS model and the evaluated needs and capabilities of the campus. We facilitate the effort to be motivated by the students and provide student services accordingly.
University services are currently offered free to universities, but it is our intention to associate a fee with our assessments and associated research after carefully solidifying this division’s operations.
The SEMS Foundation aims to build coalitions within the campus community by coordinating communications and support from local law enforcement, community EMS, fire department, neighborhood associations, and alcohol task forces and other similarly situated groups.
We also coordinate educational outreach for our student programs in the form of alcohol and drug emergency preparedness education for high school students and pre-freshman students. This is an extended service of our student groups but, but is coordinated and evaluated by the SEMS Foundation. These services have been extended to the Boulder Valley School District and the Daniels Fund free of charge and are will continue to be offered free of charge. It is our belief that the college culture excess has effects on the community, particularly influencing teenage students. These services are and will continue to be offered free of charge.
The SEMS Foundation has gathered necessary applicable research and drafted a literature review based on medically supported scientific research. We are committed to continual research review on the topics of alcohol and drug use/abuse on college campuses, including areas of focus in Greek life, freshman, and high school students. This information is used for the development of educational materials and public relations.
We are currently developing our research and development division to have research guided under a PhD candidate with expertise in the field. The research team will work in collaboration with our university and student clientele to gather the appropriate data. This is a large area of focus for operations development and promises to be a very useful service for the community at large. It is our intention to build the appropriate avenues for reliable, candid responses because of our reputation as a peer driven and supported cause.
Stage of Development
Student services have been offered since inception for our SEMS Boulder program and have also been extended to our SEMS College Park program. The entire SEMS concept is “new to the world,” effectively reinventing collegiate EMS as the operational capabilities of student organization. The concept has been branded as something credible, pragmatic, and effective. Students easily buy into the SEMS concept because the approach to the alcohol and drug overdose issue is practical and empowering. Nevertheless, university administrations are more resistant to this “new to the world” concept because of perceived liability concerns. This has placed university services in the early phase of the service life cycle. As we continue market research and development of our university service “cultural solutions” offerings and build credibility as an organization, we expect more universities to use university services for consultative, solutions-based offerings. We do suspect that after a year of marketing, and given the current regional growth around Colorado and Washington D.C., university services supporting the entire SEMS program will enter the growth phase of service development.
SEMS Foundation college alcohol research is in the early stages of development. We plan on bringing this division into the growth stage through grant awards and strategic partnerships with institutes of higher learning.
A brief history of the foundation
The idea for SEMS was formed by Anthony Rossi, a student at the University of Colorado, after the death of "Gordie" Bailey in the fall of 2004. His vision was to prevent the deaths of other students. He believed that there was a way to convince fellow students to drink responsibly, to teach them the risks of binge drinking and to foster a more collegial and supportive environment on the CU campus so that no person would be left to "sleep it off" and subsequently die from alcohol poisoning. The logical support system to manage these tasks was the heretofore unorganized group of EMT's on campus. SEMS was born when Mr. Rossi found a supporter for his idea. J. T. Young, a sociology instructor and emergency physician, who agreed to be the faculty advisor and medical director for this group of EMT's that would staff parties with the express purpose of preventing deaths from binge drinking, educating the party-goers on alcohol issues when the alcohol was being consumed, and treating various medical and alcohol related complaints.
