{"id":15885,"date":"2012-08-10T09:24:54","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T13:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=15885"},"modified":"2017-04-11T16:01:04","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T20:01:04","slug":"first-string","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2012\/08\/10\/first-string\/","title":{"rendered":"First String"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Wright State nursing alumnus Alan Dine is a clinical researcher with a passion for music.<\/p><\/div>\n

((The following article appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the The Nurse Advocate<\/em>.))<\/p>\n

Clinical research struck a chord for Alan Dine in high school. And over the years, the Wright State College of Nursing and Health graduate has conducted important research in cardiac function, wound healing, and pain management.<\/p>\n

But there are also other chords in Dine\u2019s life\u2014those of the guitar.<\/p>\n

The 60-year-old Cincinnati-area scientist\u2014senior director of clinical research for Kimberly-Clark\u2014seldom goes anywhere without his favorite musical instrument.<\/p>\n

\u201cI keep guitars in my office and throughout the house and randomly pick one up and play during the day,\u201d Dine said. \u201cWhen I travel, which is just about every week, I take along a very nifty guitar that packs into a backpack. Travel is difficult, but having music with me makes it so much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

During a recent trip to Yokohama, Japan, Dine spent three hours sitting by the bay playing guitar.<\/p>\n

Dine had been playing the violin while attending Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati in the mid-1960s. But he traded it for the guitar.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying football gave me the incentive to give up violin and begin to play guitar,\u201d he said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t look quite right showing up for practice with a violin. My admiration for the sound of the guitar was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dine\u2019s interest in the guitar intensified about five years ago following a weekend at the Fur Peace Ranch studying with Muddy Waters\u2019 guitarist Bob Margolin.<\/p>\n

The southeast Ohio ranch\u2014owned by Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fame, and his wife, Vanessa\u2014is an instructional camp where guests immerse themselves in music to improve their performance and renew their inspiration.
\nDine goes to the ranch a few weekends each year and has studied intensively with Kaukonen, Roy Book Binder, Larry Campbell, Pete Huttlinger, and a number of other giants in the guitar world.<\/p>\n

For Dine, the ranch is an oasis, an escape from the high-pressure, high-profile universe of clinical research and big business.<\/p>\n

Dine\u2019s research career began with an internal medicine physician studying cardiac function measurement using echo, Doppler, and EKG.<\/p>\n

From there, Dine entered the world of industry-sponsored research. He has worked on products in many therapeutic areas,\u00a0including antifungals (Diflucan, Sporonox), ulcerative colitis (Asacol, Pentasa), wound healing (Oxygenesys), and pain management (ON-Q PainBuster, Cooled Radiofrequency Nerve Ablation).<\/p>\n

He has worked for Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, I-Flow, and now Kimberly-Clark, traveling the world in support of the company\u2019s ON-Q post-op pain relief system.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Dine\u2019s research career began with an internal medicine physician studying cardiac function measurement using echo, Doppler, and EKG.<\/p><\/div>\n

Dine became interested in clinical research in high school AP biology while working with rats and then writing a paper for a science journal. The research project, done for Procter & Gamble, involved Dine studying the impact of a high-sugar diet on rats and the effectiveness of various toothpaste formulas in preventing tooth decay in the rodents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to brush the teeth of 40 rats twice a day for eight weeks,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Dine says research is so important because it drives progress in science.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really great fun to design a project based on an unknown,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when you get to the point of analysis, the tension and excitement grows. That is what keeps me going. Plus, I get to be creative in my role and develop methodologies to find answers to questions that may not have been asked before.\u201d<\/p>\n

After high school, Dine decided to stay in his hometown and attend the University of Cincinnati, which gave him full tuition for academics. It enabled him to help his parents with expenses by plowing money he made managing a swim club over the summers back into the household.<\/p>\n

During Dine\u2019s senior year, his mother died. To keep busy, he worked a number of jobs, including working as an orderly in the intensive care unit at Drake Hospital. That job and an ICU nurse who encouraged him inspired Dine to pursue nursing as a career.
\n\u201cThere was something about caring for people who could not care for themselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dine was attracted by Wright State\u2019s nursing program, which was designed to enable students to graduate in three years. He was among three males in the nursing program at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was interested in the clinical side of the profession and attracted to that mentally. I did not pay much attention to the gender thing,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cIt isn\u2019t a male\/female thing really; it is using the gifts and talent you have to build a career that is enriching and satisfying.\u201d \u2028Dine called his education at Wright State \u201cgreat.\u201d But he said it is how one uses the education to build one\u2019s life that is important.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy nursing degree has opened up a lot of doors for me, and there are so many doors that this degree can open up,\u201d he said. \u201cBut once you step through the threshold, it is up to you to determine the direction you take.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dine started donating to Wright State\u2019s nursing program a little each year and then increased the amounts as his income increased. Most recently, he made a $2,000 donation and secured a corporate match from his company.<\/p>\n

Dine said the real incentive now is knowing that whatever he gives can help students enter the nursing field.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have chosen to support the nursing program not only for the foundation it gave me, but the fact that today when I go to hire people to work in clinical research, my first choices are nurses,\u201d he said. \u201cThat choice has helped me to be successful, and in turn I hope has made them successful too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Dine\u2019s research career began with an internal medicine physician studying cardiac function measurement using echo, Doppler, and EKG. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":15887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,733,4299,2040,2017,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-alumni-profile","category-giving","category-nursing-health","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15885"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45053,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15885\/revisions\/45053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}