Rotary learns about Hospice and e-sports at recent meetings

The Rotary Club of Ville Platte, during its last meeting before the Mardi Gras revelry, heard from Mitch Pellerin from Louisiana Hospice and Palliative Care.
Pellerin gave an overview of the services his company provides.
“Hospice today is different than in the past,” he said. “A lot of times, people think they will get on hospice today and die tomorrow. This is not true anymore. Hospice has changed over the years because it helps out the family also with spiritual and social needs and helps prepare their loved one for when that time comes.”
Pellerin continued, “Palliative care is for when someone is not quite hospice appropriate. You can still have home health and a regular doctor, but we will send a nurse practitioner to go into the home for those patients who are unable to go to doctor’s visits.”
At its next meeting, this past Tuesday, the Rotary Club welcomed guest speaker LSUE chancellor Dr. Nancee Sorensen who updated the club about what has been going on at the college.
Among the big events around campus, LSUE had a visiting scholar this semester. Dr. Mark Williamson is an expert on marketing and strategic communication. He was with Champs Sports company and took it to a billion dollar industry. Dr. Williamson is a motivational speaker, noted by CNN, and he is an expert on electronic sports, known as e-sports.
Over 1,400 colleges and universities have added e-sports to their student activities. They form teams to compete at the national level. Twelve of 14 NBA teams have an e-sports league and compete at competitions.
“This is an emerging industry that is a blend of sports, technology, digital media, marketing, finance, etc.,” said Dr. Sorensen.
She said they had their first e-sports symposium on campus and had a competition. Twenty of their best students in the master class will be going to the NBA to compete in New York City in April and will have a chance to have internships with the leaders in the industry. Three of the students are from Ville Platte. One of the students will be going to Dallas, which is the epicenter for e-sports.
Dr. Sorensen said, “If you’ve ever had a concern that your son or daughter or grandchild or niece or nephew is spending too much time playing video games, you might want to rethink that. Those are the kinds of skills that will be involved in a lot of careers in the future.”
She said they had a young man on campus who is 22-years-old and making a minimum of $300,000 a year playing on the Lakers’ team. When gamers are really good, they can get corporate sponsorships on Youtube and make a lucrative career out of it.