Scholarship Stories | Making an Impact

By Lisa Farley How the Guyer Chair Provided New Teaching Ideas

Dr. Lisa Farley was awarded the Guyer Chair in Education in 2020. Richard W. Guyer ’48 MS ’50 Chair is awarded to a junior faculty member in the College of Education who exemplifies “values such as: compassion, integrity, dedication, servant leadership, and concern for the education of the whole student. Specifically, the recipient should be someone who advances the work of the College of Education and Butler University, demonstrates a deep caring and concern for students, and builds collaborations with the broader educational community.”

What a year! Like most people, I was challenged to find new ways to help students learn, with a whole lot of variables to consider. Due to lower numbers allowed in the classroom, I implemented a “Hy-Flex” model of instruction for half in-person and half on-Zoom attendance in many of my classes. Some classes were lucky to have everyone together, unless students were quarantined for covid or contact tracing. Their Zoom attendance often came with very little notice. That was particularly challenging for classes where students were learning skills in the Human Movement & Health Science Education (PE prefix) courses.

Luckily for me, and thanks to the Richard W. Guyer Chair in Education, I was given the opportunity to include some unique teaching equipment to innovate my teaching strategies. Since we were already learning new ways to teach, the timing was perfect!

Skill Development

Have you heard about the latest sport craze? Pickleball has been a sport for 50 years, but has only recently gained traction in the community. It is now considered the fastest growing sport in America-and possibly the world. Dr. Mindy Welch had the foresight to include it in our curriculum 11 years ago at Butler University, the first university in the Indianapolis area to teach Pickleball to students and to offer it as drop-in fun for the whole Butler community. We have been teaching Pickleball in the Human Movement & Health Science Education (HMHSE) program and now have been approved to offer Pickleball as a Physical Well Being (PWB) course in the Core Curriculum. Additionally, during my fall 2019 sabbatical, I taught it to both Staff and Students at Vallentuna High School in Sweden and explored the possibility of teaching it in Switzerland. As an avid player, I’m always looking for ways to help people improve their playing skills and fitness levels. Late this past fall, funds from the Guyer Chair allowed me to purchase a Tutor Plus Pickleball Machine with an automatic ball feed that helps students hone their playing skills and offers more practice time. It provided us a way to allow students to play when we unexpectedly had reduced numbers in class due to covid issues. While we typically had enough students playing on at least one court, we could set up the machine with the oscillator to feed practice balls to those waiting to get into a game, maximizing instructional time-a win-win for everyone. Students learned the game, had great practice opportunities, and learned how to use the machine for their own future teaching. My hope is to take the machine into communities where Pickleball isn’t yet offered to help others discover this lifetime sport, where people frequently play into their 80s!

Virtual Reality

Like everyone during Covid, there were times I would have loved to escape reality…. then a COE colleague led me to learning more about Virtual Reality (VR). What I learned, thanks to the Guyer Chair, was that the use of VR for fitness training was a game changer! I purchased the Oculus Quest 2 early in the spring semester to help my students learn about this technology and how it might help people find new ways to work out and increase their fitness. For my Foundations of Fitness and Health students, they used it as an investigative tool as well as an instructional tool. Students used it throughout the semester to determine how it might be used in fitness and training. Toward the end of the semester, students taught with it as a training tool for cardiovascular fitness. We even used it with one student on Zoom. While we only had one to use, we could screencast what the user was doing so the others could observe and provide feedback. It was also a way to keep the group numbers lower for the “group fitness” teaching portion of the class when we were a full group.

In the Internships in Physical Education class, one student used it with a client as a training tool for rehabilitation on a shoulder injury. The student, his client, and the Internship Site Supervisor all loved the technology and how it allowed them to find new ways to do the work to heal. This allowed us all to include innovative technology and think outside the traditional ways of teaching fitness!

I appreciate such a wonderful opportunity. I look forward to more innovation, but more in-class time with students too!

DEI in the COE

By Chasadee Minton

Butler University has pledged to increase efforts in the areas of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Butler was founded by abolitionist Ovid Butler, who believed that all people deserve an education, without regard to race or gender. Recently, Butler has reaffirmed its founding ideals and has created various avenues to continue building a University community that is inclusive and welcoming. Each College, department, and student group has been asked to evaluate their respective areas and identify opportunities for growth and action toward more equitable and inclusive educational experiences .

The COE supports the University’s DEI efforts and is working to align our goals and take meaningful action in the area of DEI. In the 2020-21 academic year, these are some of the steps we’ve taken to more fully live into the ideals on which Butler University was founded.

• Faculty and staff created DEI professional growth plans and submitted them to Dean Kandel-Cisco at the beginning of the academic year. The submitted plans were used to plan professional learning opportunities throughout the academic year. Beginning with 2021-22, all University faculty will submit DEI goals as a part of the faculty evaluation system.

• Dr. Susan Adams was named the inaugural COE

Faculty Director of DEI and will work with faculty directors from other Colleges across the University to ensure that DEI becomes an integral part of discussions taking place from the student experience through the University administration.

• Faculty and staff re-envisioned the COE’s existing core values to more explicitly state our commitments to DEI. The core values, now call Shared

Commitments were affirmed in our College meeting in

May 2021.

• The EPPSP Master’s program created a “Graduates of Color” group to address several areas related to DEI in teaching. Their goal is to support equitable access for all EPPSP students; past, present, and future. They also wish to “tap” more educators of color to continue with to pursue advanced degrees and additional licensure through the EPPSP program and pursue the EPPSP program, increasing diversity in educational administration. • The newly created College of Education Diversity,

Equity, and Inclusion fund raised nearly $10k on the

Day of Giving 2021. If you wish to contribute to the

COE DEI fund, please visit: www.butler.edu/gifts and select “Designation,” and select “Other Designation,” then type “COE Diversity Fund” within the box.

• In June of 2021, the Butler Giving Circle awarded its second annual community partnership grant in the amount of $12,065 to the College of Education (COE) to support the development of a new mentoring program in which experienced teachers of color from the Partnership for Inquiry Learning’s Leadership

Group will mentor small groups of COE students in inclusive, culturally responsive, and anti-racist teaching.

• COE staff committed to a yearlong book study into DEI, reading three books related to the topic. In 2020, Butler

University invited Dr. Ibrahim X. Kendi, author of How to be an Anti-Racist to speak for our Fall Faculty

Workshop. One of the books staff chose to read was

Dr. Kendi’s book, mentioned above. Out of this book study, staff met online for deep discussions and asked thoughtful questions that sometimes required additional research. They plan to continue seeking opportunities to learn more about DEI and take action to make the COE a more inclusive place.

• Dr. Brooke Kandel-Cisco, Dean of COE, was selected to serve on the President’s Council on DEI.

While these are just a few examples of how the COE has committed to DEI, we understand that disrupting systemic and curricular inequities will require steadfast introspection, honest evaluation, and personal hard work for the long haul as we continue to engage in learning and action in the long-term.