 So, hello everybody. Today's announcement is really important and I want to get to that in just a minute, but before I get to that I just want to address the budget. We do have a budget bill in place that funds schools, protects human services, and invests in things like job creation. The budget invests more funding in our state universities like Clarion. It was a product of compromise and months of bipartisan work and the same spirit that allowed us to pass pension reform, liquor reform, and a whole host of other bipartisan bills throughout the last couple years. So we're now working on the last final pieces of the budget on the revenue side, and I understand the frustrations on the part of many of you who are watching this, but many of us are working hard to negotiate a final plan to that budget. We all understand that we have to get something done and we're making compromises to make that final plan a reality. That said, we did get a, we have gotten a dire warning from Standard and Poor's about the possible credit downgrade, so we're all taking that very seriously, and it just reinforces the need for all of us to make sure that the budget that we end up with and the revenue package assures that we're working with a budget that is honestly balanced. So I'm optimistic that we're going to get to that point. So let me just talk about what we're here today to talk about, and I will, we will all, the President and Ray and I will take questions, anybody, on this topic from the podium, then I'll take a, I'll do a gaggle off to the side. If you have any other questions, that's something other than what we're talking about here. But I want to thank Clarion University's President Karen Whitney and Department Chair Rafe Ferris for being here and bringing this initiative to my attention. I think this is really important. And I also want to recognize Acting Secretary of Health and Physician General Rachel Levine and Acting Secretary of the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, Jen Smith. Both of you are champions of the battle against heroin and opioid abuse. And I also want to recognize three, we have three trustees from Clarion here, Representative Oberlander, Melissa Bauer, and Representative James. So thank you all for being here. And this is really a big deal. As we all know, the opioid and heroin crisis has hit Pennsylvania hard. This crisis doesn't discriminate. It doesn't discriminate on any basis. It hits every age group, every creed, color, income level. It affects neighborhoods and communities and families all across Pennsylvania, all regions. And it has been incredibly damaging. In 2015, we know that 3,500 Pennsylvanians died from drug overdoses. We don't have the final numbers yet for 2016, but it looks like it's going to be much higher than that. Some have said 4,600. And that's the deaths we know about. This is a big problem. According to Clarion, I think Pennsylvania in 2015 was fourth in the nation in terms of deaths from drug overdoses. So we're all working to fight this epidemic. The state, strong bipartisan support, we have done a number of things, I think makes Pennsylvania maybe even one of the leading states in the nation in addressing this. But let me just point out six things that we've done working together. First of all, we've expanded Medicaid. We have 125,000 Pennsylvanians who can now get treatment and their providers be reimbursed, 125,000 people for substance use disorder, thanks to expansion of Medicaid. We've provided funding for 45 Centers of Excellence. These are treatment centers that we hope will treat as many as 11,000 Pennsylvanians. The last one got up and running in February. So this is really the first calendar year they will be up and running. And they are poised. And they are there already giving treatment to people who suffer from substance use disorder. And they can make sure that the treatment is focused on that individual. Dropboxes. Pennsylvania has over 580 dropboxes, drug take-back boxes all across the state. And this is really important because it means that drugs, these opioids, don't end up staying in a medicine cabinet or on the streets. Again, we're doing an amazing job of that. 580 in every county has at least one, every county of Pennsylvania. The fourth thing is the prescription drug monitoring program. This is an online database that helps pharmacists and doctors make sure that they know where the drugs are going and who's prescribing them and who's taking them. Naloxone, one of the first things we did two years ago, over two years ago, physician general Levine gave a standing order, basically a prescription for every Pennsylvanian that in conjunction with the Good Samaritan Law allowed every Pennsylvanian to go to a drug store and get a prescription for Naloxone. And most drug stores, most pharmacies have voluntarily made that available. We've also worked to establish grants for local first responders to make sure that they have Naloxone so that they can bring people back to life so that they can get them into treatment. And finally, we've worked with the medical profession to develop prescribing guidelines, especially in sports medicine, so that when a doctor prescribes a pain medication for someone suffering from a sports accident or injury, they have a guideline for actually doing this. It's not just an indiscriminate prescription. So we're doing a lot of things, but that's what brings me back to Clarion. What they're doing is really an important part of this overall effort, because education and actually getting people the facts about the overdose epidemic is really important. As you know, Clarion is one of the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania state system of higher education, and they're celebrating their sesquicentennial this year. You all know what sesquicentennial means, right? 150 years, and the theme is really Clarion University, 150 years of academic excellence. What's next? Which is a great question. And Clarion has taken that question to heart. So one of the things that's next is this fight that they're joining against the heroin and opioid addiction, that epidemic in Pennsylvania. And what they're looking at is what they can do best. What's next is education. Clarion faculty, experts in addiction, rehabilitation, social work, counseling, psychology, nursing. They've contributed to the design of an opioid treatment specialist certificate that will provide advanced information on opioid abuse and its prevention, education, and treatment. This is an online course that can be taken by people anywhere actually in the world, and this is starting right here in Pennsylvania at Clarion. So education is a powerful thing, armed with facts, health care providers, drug counselors, EMTs, school counselors, therapists. Anyone interested in learning more will be able to take this online course that is poised to be the next weapon, really a weapon in this ongoing fight. So I applaud Clarion University, the administration, the trustees, everybody to make this effort to help stop the scourge of heroin and opioid overdose by coming at it from the most logical angle, the angle of education. It's my sincere hope that this new initiative will be a catalyst for arming Pennsylvanians with information that can help save lives and help rid our neighborhoods and our commonwealth of this public health menace. So now to tell you more about this, I'd like to turn this over to my pleasure to introduce Clarion's great president, Karen Whitney, who will then introduce the other speakers. Thank you. Thank you. Clarion hired a short president, so thank you to Governor Wolf and his team for hosting Clarion today and for working with us to give this exciting new certificate truly the attention it deserves. We're proud to be part of this overall state effort on opioid education and the fight against opioid abuse and its ravages upon our communities. As Governor Wolf mentioned, the battle against opioid abuse in Pennsylvania is a top priority in his administration and it's a top priority at Clarion University. And today we're proud to talk to you about how Little Clarion in Western Pennsylvania is leading the charge in opioid education. Clarion continues to align our academic programs to the needs of the commonwealth. In 1867, we are most known for teaching as a teacher's college in a normal school 150 years ago. Now we're known for as a professional university still in education and in business and proudly now in health and human services as evidenced by this opioid treatment specialist certificate. Through Clarion University online and with our new College of Health and Human Services that we launched this summer, we have the ability to equip students and professionals locally, regionally and even nationally with the tools that they need to better respond to the opioid epidemic. As mentioned before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pennsylvania was fourth in the nation in drug overdose deaths in 2015, an increase of 28% over 2014. That has to stop. That just has to stop. It has to stop now and Clarion wants to be part of that. In order to create a program, we tap the expertise of our faculty who you'll be hearing from in a few minutes, expertise in addiction, rehabilitation, social work, psychology, nursing to design this incredible certificate which addresses the specific challenges brought on by the opioid crisis. Let me walk you through a few things that really makes this certificate very innovative. First of all, it's not a whole degree. What we understood was time is now. Action is now to be taken to equip people who are overwhelmed in their daily work across our communities, not just in our clinics and hospitals, but also in our criminal justice system, in our K-12 schools. Every part of our society is being overwhelmed by this. And we wanted to provide a very direct and immediate way to be of help. So what you see is four courses, a 12 credit certificate that anyone can take with no prerequisites. Everyone in this room, you can run right now to clarion.edu and sign up for this certificate. Everyone in this room, if you're a practitioner in the field, if you have an interest, and I will also say if you have a family member who is struggling with this, this certificate could be for you at clarion.edu. Let me walk through it again. Anyone can pursue it. The coursework provides advanced information on opioid abuse and its prevention, education, and treatment. If you're a participant in this, we'll learn an in-depth opioid diagnosis, a detox treatment, and recovery aspects, as well as how to work with patients and advocate for them in their recovery and success. The certificate is particularly pertinent to drug counselors, prevention specialists, case managers, EMTs, emergency room, treatment specialists, school counselors, probation and parole staff, police, children and family therapists, and assessment specialists. The certificate is designed to be offered across two consecutive semesters. All the courses are in seven week formats delivered online. You don't have to come to clarion. In fact, clarion leads the way in online learning. Already a quarter of our students are getting their degrees at clarion online, and this is just one more way that we're going to deliver across this state and nation. I encourage you to think about it. I think this is an important way that everyone contributes. When we have these great social issues, such as this health epidemic, every one of us needs to ask ourselves within what we do, how do we contribute? And at Clarion University, we are courageous and we are confident, and we are about higher learning, and this is our contribution to the fight. And I believe that as we equip people throughout this commonwealth to do their very best, it will make a difference. What I'd like to do now is to introduce you, my friend and colleague, Dr. Ray Feros, who's our professor of rehabilitative sciences, who can talk even further about this certificate. Dr. Feros. Hi, everybody. I wanna talk a little bit about the creation and the content of the degree. And to create this degree, we have to look back a couple of years when Senator Yaw's Center for Rural Pennsylvania Group came to Clarion and accepted testimony from family members and from professionals about what was then kind of an emerging problem, but certainly the trend was going up, it was emerging. And we thought to ourselves, we ought to maybe try and address this problem because we're a public university. One of the great things that public universities do is get plugged into their communities, into the commonwealth, what's going on? How can we be helpful? And one little way that we can be helpful as a public university is to provide education and training and prevention and education and clinical training as well. So that's what we've done with this certificate. Besides Senator Yaw's committee though, we have a rehabilitation advisory board. And I wanna mention and call out a couple of folks who are here from that board, Nicole Salvo, who's from Armstrong, Indiana and Clarion County. She's the program director for their drug and alcohol services and community mental health. And Cindy McCray is here as well, who is the executive director of ARC Manor. I'm so glad they could come on a couple of days notice because they're an example of people who got our undergraduate degree and we haven't been around 150 years with our program, but we've been around 40 years. And it wasn't quite 40 years ago, you guys got it, but. But your great examples of Clarion University's commitment to rehabilitation in the addictions field and have very responsible jobs now in private and public rehab. And I wanted to recognize them as well as, and I don't, I'm looking for them, but I don't see Chip Abramovic from Venango County. Oh, there he is, right in line. Who's a Venango County commissioner, who he and I serve on the Human Services Board there. And he just hosted a town hall, virtual town hall with our single county administrator, Marie Plummer to try and gauge. And I guess they had 400 people involved, try and gauge what's going on in rural Pennsylvania with regard to this. And unfortunately, the news is, as the governor Wolf said, it doesn't matter where you live or urban, rural, rich, poor, black, white, whatever the distinction, this illness cuts across all, all. And so we knew this was an opportunity for us to do something good for the Commonwealth. And one of the things that our faculty do with 50 interns every year out in different agencies is here in those agencies what's going on. So we had a lot of information. Faculty also do their own research, their own clinical work, their own consulting. And we feel we had good information going into the development of the certificate. And as Dr. Whitney said, there's four courses in the certificate, seven week formats all online, no prerequisites so that people can enroll this fall and just take one course at a time, the first course seven weeks in the fall, the second course, the second seven weeks and the same in the spring semester. And the certificate's made up of four courses. The first one's opioid abuse, which is the history of narcotics, the biological, psychological and social aspects of abuse and dependence. The second course is nursing four, seven, five. And by the way, you don't have to be a nursing expert to take the certificate, but expertise in nursing is good to have in this interdisciplinary certificate. And it's a comprehensive treatment of chemical disorders in which we'll focus on the physiology of substance abuse, evidence-based treatment options, in particular with special focus on medication-assisted therapies. Then we have rehab 410, prevention, education and treatment of substance abuse, where we look at supply and demand reduction strategies and the full continuum of treatment interventions, including dynamic interventions, humanistic and existential interventions and rational action cognitive kind of interventions that are out there. And basically, to be an effective helper, you really need to understand the problem from the ideological point of view, but also in what does this particular individual require to get well? And then lastly, rehab 421, advocacy and public policy and addiction and recovery, in which the students will look at the intended and the unintended effects of opioid abuse and dependency and methods for individual treatment, advocacy and systems change, because this is a hydra, this problem of opioid abuse and it's been suggested by Governor Wolf and Dr. Whitney that it's more than just an individual, it's a family affected, it's a community affected, it's grandparents raising children, it's America's number of orphans bigger than it's been in a hundred years because of mums and dads who succumbed to this illness. So, we've got a big problem, it affects not just families, but as Dr. Whitney said, the criminal justice system, pharmacies, physician prescribers, schools, hospitals, neonatal units with border babies, it's a crushing problem. And so, on behalf of Clearing University, I wanna say thanks to Dr. Whitney for her support in developing this and also to our trustees for their support, Lee, Donna and Melissa and all of you and folks that I haven't mentioned. Thank you very much. We appreciate your interest in this and we look forward to launching this certificate. Thank you. I think everybody has to be impressed with what you're doing and you must be proud of the work that your folks are doing. So, thank you very much and it's just one more indication of how important the state system of higher education is to Pennsylvania, you're doing such dramatic things like this. All right, I'm happy to, all of us would be happy to take any questions on this topic. Yeah. And I'm hoping that the fourth course, Ray, that you talked about the public policies that we're doing the right things at the state level to support what you're doing here. I think one of the things we recognize is no two suffers of substance use disorder suffers the same way. And so, there are many different ways to address this issue. And this is one really, really important one. I really value having Clearing as a partner in this effort. Karen. Did you know yet how many people are doing as we're designed up to do it? Our launch is today. Okay. So, I'll tell you tomorrow. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Well, thank you very much. And again, Claren, thank you very much.