Students to conduct bone marrow drive

Saving a life could be as simple as putting a name in a registry and making a personal commitment.

The Communication Studies Department at SCSU advocates for the National Bone Marrow Registry.

Each year the department conducts a drive to inform students about the bone marrow registry and to encourage students and other community members to make a commitment to sign up. This is the department's eighth year conducting the drive.

This year the Daun Kendig Memorial Bone Marrow Drive will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, in the Atwood Ballroom.

Kendig was a professor at SCSU in the Communications Studies Department who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and received a bone marrow transplant that extended her life for an additional year. The program was started by Diana Rehling and was originally run by the American Red Cross.

"The drive is sponsored through the Communications Studies Department by the Communication Studies Club," said Wendy Bjorklund, faculty adviser to the public relations committee. "The members of the club are all kinds of students that are recruited from the campus."

The Communication Studies Department was presented with the 2007 National Marrow Donor Program Collegiate Award in November for their work with The National Marrow Donor Program. According to the program, the award is presented to a college that exemplifies a high level of commitment in raising awareness, recruiting donors and supporting the life-saving work of the program.

The Communication Studies Department has enrolled more than 1,000 people and the ninth person on the registry from SCSU has now been called to serve as a donor according to Bjorklund. Besides getting names for the registry, the drive can help students become more informed.

"I don't know a lot about the registry except that you can sign up to donate," said Kelly Swadner, a junior at SCSU. "I admire those that commit to the registry."

The drive is conducted mainly to recruit college students, but people can come from the community to get on the registry.

"Students are ideal because they are young and healthy," Bjorklund said. "Sixty is the cut-off age for the registry."

This year, the department hopes to get at least 150 names on the registry.

"We receive funding from the Granite Rotary to test that may people," Bjorklund said.

For more information, contact Diana Rehling at 308-1693, dlrehling@stcloudstate.edu, or Maureen Flanders at flma0501@stcloudstate.edu.