Meet “Coach,” Princeton University’s Therapy Dog, and Her Devoted Handler

By Taylor Smith | Photo by Puppies Behind Bars 

Sgt. Alvan Flanders has worked in the Department of Public Safety (DPS) at Princeton University for over 25 years, which spans his entire law enforcement career. “I love it here. I love the town, I love Princeton,” he said.

Typically, the role of the DPS is to police the campus, aiding in general security and supporting the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff alike. At times, the DPS has developed mixed reviews and reactions from college students who see them as strictly law enforcers, but the introduction of a therapy dog named Coach has changed all of that.

A black female Labrador retriever with a shiny coat and sparkling eyes, Coach was “matched” with Flanders through a rigorous program he attended at Puppies Behind Bars (puppiesbehindbars.com). Flanders learned of Puppies Behind Bars through a contact at Yale University, which also incorporated a therapy dog into their on-campus DPS services.

Puppies Behind Bars (PBB), based in New York City, was founded in 1997 at the Bedford Hills Women’s Prison to raise and train service dogs for aid in law enforcement. The program gradually expanded into training dogs for other lines of service such as veterans suffering from PTSD, first responders, therapy dogs for police departments, and an explosive-detection canine program. The first service dog paired with an Iraq War veteran took place in February 2008. more

Mercer Center for Implants and Periodontics at Princeton

Interview by Laurie Pellichero

Where is your practice located, and what is your specialty?

Mercer Center for Implants and Periodontics at Princeton is in a unique, environmentally friendly building at 601 Ewing Street, Suite B-15. I am the only board-certified periodontist and implant surgeon practicing in Princeton in a specialty practice setting. I have more than 30 years of clinical experience and have served as a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology and Implant Surgery since 2006, and recently I was successfully recertified by the American Board of Periodontology. We are proud to be part of the Princeton community. We serve patients from the greater Central New Jersey area, as well as Philadelphia and New York City. We also have patients flying in from Texas and the United Kingdom for treatment.

What is your professional background?

I come from a dentistry family; my father and brother are orthodontists. Along with a DMD, I earned a Doctor of Science in Oral Biology and taught at Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania. I have always been very committed to education, as a scientist on bone, connective tissue, and cancer cells; an author of scientific articles and book chapters; a teacher for 11 years to many successful dentists and periodontists for periodontal and implant surgical treatment; and as a clinician for 30 years who has performed more than 10,000 procedures and served more than 5,000 patients. My unique scientific background and extensive clinical experience direct my treatment approach for the best possible care and outcomes for our patients, using less invasive techniques with lifelong and comfortable results. more

An Appreciation

By Donald Gilpin | Photography by Weronika Plohn

“America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system.”

—Barack Obama

In a job that’s never been easy, nurses found themselves in March 2020 at the epicenter of a deadly pandemic, on the front lines in battling a mysterious new virus, COVID-19.

For nurses, altruism and hard work are a way of life, every single day. Princeton Magazine asked several area nurses in different fields in a variety of settings and facilities around the area to share thoughts about themselves and how they have stayed positive in facing the challenges of their profession, especially during the pandemic.

Caring, helping, teamwork, persevering, and touching people’s lives were themes that recurred over and over.

Ashley Ferrante, RN
The Pediatric Group

Ashley Ferrante has worked as a registered nurse at The Pediatric Group for 12 years. She is currently back in school to further her education and she plans to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in 2023.

“I adore working with kids,” says Ferrante. “It is rewarding to provide them with medical care and watch them grow from birth to adolescence.

“Juggling family, school, work, and dealing with the anxiety of COVID can be highly stressful. I stay positive by spending my free time with family and friends. Devoting time to my garden and hiking in the woods with my fiancé and six rescue dogs are some of my favorite ways to relieve stress.”

 more

By Anne Levin

In a video that debuted last November, 55 people join together on Zoom to sing the song Louis Armstrong made famous, “What a Wonderful World.” Most of them suffer from aphasia, a language disorder that often develops after a stroke or brain injury. As an introduction to the song, several of the participants talk — some more haltingly than others — about the frustrations of their condition. “Aphasia is difficulty speaking,” says one. “Makes me slow,” says another. “Aphasia is lonely.” “Aphasia is complicated.” “Aphasia is not being able to talk to my children.” And so on.

But once they begin to sing, all of the hesitancy disappears. Words so difficult to speak appear to flow effortlessly when set to music. The singers are members of the International Aphasia Choir, drawn from different aphasia choirs on five continents. They are visual and aural proof of the Hans Christian Andersen quote: “Where words fail, music speaks.”

Prominent among these choirs is the Bridgewater-based Sing Aphasia, founded by Westminster Choir College graduate Gillian Velmer during her doctoral studies in speech language pathology at Kean University. As part of her doctoral program, Velmer built a website, singaphasia.com, for aphasia choir resources. During the pandemic last year, she was approached by Trent Barrick, a music therapist in Florida. He had discovered the site, and wondered if she’d be interested in helping him put together an international aphasia choir video.

Gillian Velmer

“I said yes right away. I loved the idea,” says Velmer, 34, who has a day job as a speech language pathologist in the South Plainfield Public Schools. “Aphasia can be so isolating. If you are all of a sudden not able to communicate the way you used to, it’s just devastating. And it doesn’t affect just one person. It really affects the whole family and friends and community of the person as well.”
A native of Bridgewater, Velmer has always loved to sing. At Westminster, “choir was a huge and very fulfilling part of my life,” she says. “My time there inspired me to look into the field of speech language pathology. My senior year, I had classes on anatomy and physiology of the voice, which I found so interesting.”

As a prerequisite for her master’s degree, Velmer took a course on aphasia. “That was the first time I had heard of it, or even heard the word,” she says. “But that’s not really unusual. Statistics say that less than 15 percent of Americans know about aphasia, yet nearly two million in this country are living with it. I was so fascinated by that. Somehow, doing the research and having my musical background, I thought, ‘What about music for aphasia?’ ”

Velmer made aphasia choirs around the world the topic of her master’s thesis. After earning her degree and working in public education for a few years, she returned to Kean to pursue a doctorate. “I knew I wanted to continue my research,” she says.

She began looking into the question of whether singing can help with word-finding. “Over a five-week period, we did find an improvement,” she says. “There is definitely more research needed in this area, and that’s what Sing Aphasia hopes for in the future.” more