April 2020 | Page 2 | College of Applied Health Sciences

Podcast: A Few Minutes With … David Strauser

March 03, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Vince Lara, media relations specialist at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, speaks with David Strauser, professor of Kinesiology and Community Health at Illinois, about Dr. Strauser’s research on work personality and vocational behavior with a focus on people with chronic health conditions and disabilities.

Transcript

VINCE LARA: Hi, and welcome to another edition of A Few Minutes With, the podcast that showcases Illinois College of Applied Health Sciences. I’m Vince Lara, and today I’ll speak to Dr. David Strauser of our Kinesiology and Community Health Department about his research on work personality and vocational behavior with a focus on people with chronic health conditions and disability.

All right. Speaking with Dr. David Strauser. Dr. Strauser, I appreciate you taking the time to come on with our podcast. The first question I ask when I meet with faculty is I’m interested– I do my prep as any journalist would, and I try to find out– hmm, I wonder what led this person to our fine institution? Your background is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is where you got your degrees. So I wonder what led you to Illinois.

DAVID STRAUSER: That’s a good question. There’s probably a variety of things that led me to the University of Illinois. I came to the University of Illinois from the University of Memphis where I spent 10 years. And that was the first job that I got after completing my PhD at the University Wisconsin-Madison. Down there, I started a research center, had about 30 people working for me. We were doing a lot of work across the state of Tennessee in the southeast.

And then this opportunity came available at the University of Illinois. And I think for a combination of probably family reasons, being a native Midwesterner, and also an opportunity to be at a school like Illinois, it just seemed like a nice opportune time to make that switch from the University of Memphis to the University of Illinois. And a chance to be in a Big Ten school, at a big research school just seemed like a hard opportunity to turn down.

Also, I think Illinois is a little bit unusual compared to other programs in the Big Ten that have my area of study that it focused a little bit more on health and health behavior. And so that was something that maybe initially didn’t come into the mix but became a point of what I really appreciated over the course of my time here.

VINCE LARA: Are you from the Midwest originally?

DAVID STRAUSER: I’m from Madison, Wisconsin originally.

VINCE LARA: That makes sense. I know research is a big part of this job, obviously. But did you always want to teach? Was that something that was top of mind, or was it the research first for you?

DAVID STRAUSER:: That’s a really good question. And I would say it’s probably teaching first, research second. I started out as an undergraduate thinking that I would go on and do– as an athlete, I was going to go on and do coaching of some kind. So I think that was always kind of my focus as an undergraduate.

And I had some very influential faculty people who pulled me aside and said, hey, what about me be doing this? What about looking at this opportunity? And that started to peak my interest enough to go look into it a little bit deeper. After completing my undergraduate, I was out in the private sector for about a year or so and decided, you know, this is good, but really being affiliated with the university and pursuing that academic work would really be something that I’d want to do as a career.

With that then became the teaching, and then the research developed through my work as a doctoral student to really look at their research. But I was very much trained from faculty at UW Madison who trained me as a professor. So when we talk about a professor, in my opinion, it’s the research, teaching, and service together. It’s not just one aspect of it. So that relates to your first question about being in Illinois. I think Illinois gives me an opportunity to do all three of those core components of being a professor, and that’s teaching, research, and service.

VINCE LARA: Focusing on that research part, now, your research, to an extent, focuses on work, health, and well-being. And I’m wondering, commonly with researchers, there’s something that inspired them to look at that. And I was wondering if there’s anything that inspired you to look at those research lines.

DAVID STRAUSER:: Yeah, that’s an interesting story probably as a reflecting back on it. Again, as I was an athlete in college and struggled with injuries in college, it became losing the opportunity to compete in college because of injuries. I guess that was happening at the same time that I had some of these influential faculty in my year talking about, hey, what about pursuing rehabilitation psychology as a career? What about some of those things? So I guess serendipity of those things coming together.

That extended then to probably my first job, as I mentioned, before I went back to graduate school, and that was working with injured workers in Southern California. And through that and my own experience of injury and then working with industrial injured workers solidified my interest into working with people with disabilities as a whole and working with people who are having problems working– pursuing their careers because they have an injury or illness.

VINCE LARA: Yeah. You get some of your research was in marginalized workers. Could you talk a bit about that?

DAVID STRAUSER: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty big term, marginalized workers, in that it’s a good word. It’s an encompassing word. I look at– especially right now, for probably about the last 15 years, I’ve really looked at young adults who are having a hard time entering the labor market for some reason related to a chronic health condition, whether that’s cancer– I do a large group of that. Could be some mental health issues, autism.

So they’ve been marginalized because they have a chronic health condition. We have a project right now where we’re looking at foster care youth, formerly incarcerated or justice involved youth. So you’re correct to save my work has always looked at people who’ve been marginalized from entry or participation in the labor market, usually because of some chronic health condition or combination thereof.

So my research has focused a lot on undergraduate– or I mean younger adults in terms of their entrance in the labor market. Probably an advocacy side of me has continued to deal with industrial injured workers– I’ll use that term– people who’ve been injured on the job and advocating for their overall well-being and helping them manage and deal with their loss. So that’s probably more of an outreach service component of it than it is a research part, where my research is primarily focusing on these young adults’ entrance into the labor market.

VINCE LARA: So what particularly do you deal with? Is it trying to overcome the stigma of what these workers have dealt with?

DAVID STRAUSER: Most people who have chronic health conditions are likely to experience difficulty in meeting the demands of working how it’s typically performed. So they’re having some issue with meeting the job requirements or figuring out how they identify with the labor market. They may– for example, somebody might have an interest in doing something as a career, but because they have a limitation or a functional impairment, can’t pursue that, so that causes a lot of stress. So I deal with that.

There also is just a lot of people right now and a lot that we more to learn about mental health that they’re having a lot of mental health issues that are impacting their ability to function on the job and meet the demands on the job. So they might get a job but they can’t keep a job. And so after a period of time, they start to develop that resume that looks very scattered, very thin in terms of duration on the job. And that becomes then stigmatizing and marginalized.

So stigma is an issue, obviously, that everybody deals with with chronic health conditions. That is something I deal with, but I’m more interested in how they fit to the environment, how do they see themselves fitting as a worker, and how did they develop their identity as a worker.

VINCE LARA: Has your research ever led to you being a consultant for either a company or perhaps an industry looking to help these marginalized workers get back in?

DAVID STRAUSER: I do a lot of work with a group called Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation, where I work a lot with them to help young adult cancer survivors and businesses help understand issues related to cancer survivors, try to help that fit. So yes, I’ve worked with some non-profits and some NGOs to work with them to understand, develop plans, develop programs to help them address these issues.

VINCE LARA: You developed what’s called the Illinois Work and Well-being Model. I’m interested about that. Tell me a little bit what that is.

DAVID STRAUSER: Yeah, the Illinois Work and Well-Being Model is kind of a byproduct of my 30 years of in this field of how I was thinking about career stuff and finally came together for me as a model, where in our field, in the health field, we use a lot of the International Classification of Functioning or the ICF. So I use components of the ICF and then Common Career Development domains and mesh those two together.

And the model really tries to explain about how people’s functioning and how their personal environmental factors impact how they function and how their functioning impacts the career domains of how people become aware of what they are in terms of what they want to do, their vocational identity, how they go about acquiring jobs, and how they go about maintaining jobs.

And so that model helps provide a framework for research, and it’s guided a lot of my research over my whole career. Probably the last four or five years it’s been formalized as a model that we’re using to guide our research, to help us identify factors and variables. But also, we’ve been using it quite a bit with practitioners to help them guide their services to identify where interventions might need to be placed, where are points of intervention.

So as an example, if we’re having a person, a young adult cancer survivor who has a brain tumor, they’re trying to figure out, where do I fit into the world of work? What am I going to do? How am I going to do it? We might want to look at their functioning. What are the residual factors of their brain tumor? How do they function in terms of physically, cognitively, emotionally? And how do they communicate? And look at that.

However, even though as we look at those factors or those components, we also understand that personal factors, psychological factors such as resilience, hope, self-efficacy, impact how they perceive their functioning. In addition, environmental factors– ethnicity, social class. I say ethnicity. Ethnicity is a personal factor, but their cultural background. Their social factors, their schooling, their family also impact how they perceive their functioning.

So we want to make sure that we’re looking at all those factors and then how do they relate over to the career domain and those three factors I talked about in terms of awareness. We call it awareness. Basically, vocational identity. Acquisition and maintenance.

VINCE LARA: You always have research going on, several projects in the pipeline. That’s one of the things you have to do.

DAVID STRAUSER: Right.

VINCE LARA: What are some of the ones that you have that you’re excited about, that can talk about, say?

DAVID STRAUSER: Yeah. We actually have a lot of good stuff going on right now, and I’m very excited about it. We’re at a good time. We’re having a lot of data and a lot of projects. So we are right now– a couple things. In terms of the cancer group, we have several data sets right now, one with Dana Farber, one with Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation, where we’re looking at these psychological career factors that impact employment and employment outcomes with a group of brain tumor survivors.

What’s really exciting about that, and this might– compared to people in other areas like epidemiology or even breast cancer, our data set combined right now is we have about 300 brain tumor survivors. That’s quite a good number for brain tumor survivors. So it’s a hard group to get. So we have some data there that we’re starting to analyze and look at working with these Dana Farber and Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation that look at what are these factors that impact employment outcomes.

And we’re very excited about that. We have several papers submitted right now. They’re under review. A couple of papers that have been accepted that are looking at using the Illinois Model, as we talked about, looking at how functioning and perception of functioning impacts the different domains of career. Highlight to that would be we’re starting to get good evidence to suggest that how people’s emotional function, the perceptions of their emotional functioning, really impact a lot of their identity development, contributes some to the acquisition phase.

Conversely, we know that people now who start to– how they perceive themselves physically really has a lot to do with how they perceive their ability to maintain a job. So what we can start to do there is start to parse out of, where people are in their career development, what our interventions need to target and what areas of functioning do we need to maybe support or address to maximize outcomes? So that’s very exciting with that.

Another population that we’re starting to look at or another group that we’re working with is, as I mentioned, a broader group of people with disabilities looking at developing some instruments related to the Illinois Work and Well-Being Model. We have a couple of instruments being developed right now to measure some of those constructs within the model, so we’re very excited about that. That’s not as maybe exciting, but for us, that’s a very practical piece.

Another area that we’re really starting to get into because we have seen it quite a bit with the young adults in foster care and the formerly incarcerated young adults is the issue of trauma and how trauma is impacting them, but how trauma is impacting their perceptions of their career development and their career development opportunities. And not surprisingly, we’re finding again there’s quite a bit of an impact there in terms of how much trauma, how they’re experiencing that trauma, how they feel about that trauma, how close to the surface, so to speak, that trauma is is going to be impacting a lot of how they see themselves as a worker, their identity, and their motivation to pursue those things.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to David Strauser. For more podcasts on Illinois’ College of Applied Health Sciences, search A Few Minutes With on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, and other places you get your podcasts fix. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

Tags: David Strauser, Podcast

A Few Minutes With … Bill Stewart

Feb. 12, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

AHS media relations specialist Vince Lara speaks with Bill Stewart, a professor in the department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, to discuss Stewart’s research on the development of parks and conservation areas to enhance a public sense of place and promote environmental awareness.

Listen to the podcast

Transcript

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spent a few minutes with Bill Stewart, professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport, and Tourism to discuss his research on the development of parks and conservation areas to enhance a public sense of place and promote environmental awareness.

And, Bill, I like to ask all the faculty when I meet with them this question. And that, is what inspires your research?

BILL STEWART:Yeah. Well, Vince, thank you for inviting me to be at this podcast. It’s really great to be here and to talk with you about this.

VINCE LARA: You bet.

BILL STEWART:What inspires my research? There’s a handful of things that do that. When I was a child, I was born and raised in Michigan. And my family was very much an outdoor enthusiast family. So I went to a lot of parks. I liked all four seasons. Winter activities, springtime romps, and summertime camping and swimming. I’ve always enjoyed being out in nature. And so that sort laid a foundation.

I went to my various programming. I had a previous life before I was an academic, and that previous life took on a couple of different job changes. I spent two years working for an oil company, and as a marketing technologist in a chemical and petroleum additives division. And that was really interesting to get a view of what life was like from the business side of an oil industry. I realized that there were some things that bothered me about the imprint that oil industry left on the environment, and I knew that they’re working hard at trying to reduce waste and pollution. But I thought it’d be better to maybe get more information about what I need to work for an oil company, or any sort of business to help with the environment.

And then I went back to school for my MBA at the University of Chicago. And I went to work for a consulting company, a worldwide consulting company. And I was in their construction engineering systems division. And I went around to a lot– I thought it’d be great to be a consultant where I help people with what they need to do.

And I found myself working for a company that built large petrochemical refinery plants in various places. I read some of their cultural impact statements and their environmental impact statements. And I thought to myself that there’s so much more to valuing nature than simply how many natives to move from one place to another, or how flat they need to make the earth to put the cement slab on to make it a refinery.

And so I went back to school at University of Arizona and the School of Natural Resources for another master’s and a PhD. Looking largely at forestry and watershed management, but I cared not so much about technical aspects of that. But I cared about how communities and individuals relate to development of natural resources. And that’s led me on this journey that I’ve been doing now for, gosh, 35 years or more. Where I really like to understand what other people think about nature, about why they value the places that they do, what some of their meanings are, and appreciate ways in which they connect with the natural environment.

VINCE LARA: You got your undergrad at Illinois, correct?

BILL STEWART:Yeah, I came here from undergraduate. I was in chemistry here. And I love learning about chemistry. It was just a fabulous undergraduate experience for me. And so it’s sort of need to come back to my alma mater to teach and do research.

VINCE LARA: What led you to academia? Because, like you said, you had this career before teaching. So, what was the path here?

BILL STEWART:Yeah. Good question, Vince. I can tell you’re good at this. What led me to an academic was that I’ve always liked reading and writing. And I came to find out during, let’s say my previous life, that I liked reading and writing what I want to read and write about. And I thought that an academic– although I clearly have some large public values that I work under at University of Illinois, I care about community well-being, public health, sustainability. Those are large questions that drive my research. But I could choose ways in which I implement those strategies through my teaching and scholarship.

And I found that the life of the academic to be one where I could be very productive, and I could blur the lines between my work and my let’s just say non-work time. I really like doing what I do. And one of the interesting things is when people ask me if I’m going to work this weekend– friends of mine in the community– I have to pause a bit. Because I’ve always, I guess, worked on the weekend. I just like to read and write about things that I care about in my teaching and research.

VINCE LARA: Interesting. So, your research involves conservation planning. Can you talk a little bit about that?

BILL STEWART:Yeah conservation planning, it’s a really huge concept. And my window into conservation planning has to do with bringing in stakeholders. Stakeholders are those people who are affected by or can affect environmental decision making. Often of a public need nature, like building a park, or developing a wetland, restoring a prairie. Those would be examples of environmental park development projects.

And for me, conservation planning is about working with communities to, at least in the Midwest here, to look at this corn or bean field on the outskirts of town that’s going to be a new development, and ask themselves to imagine what would that be like as a park. So they see it as a current cornfield, and they’re are wondering how to imagine what they need to be when they make that into some subdivisions and divide that up.

And to some extent it’s about land use planning, but to another extent it’s also about adding value to people’s lives. Each town has their unique heritage and their sense of identity on a landscape. And it’s fun to work with communities to understand what their own sense of history is about. And often, parks tend to be emblematic of those kinds of values that people have had historically in any given area their relationship with the locale.

For example, I think of Urbana and Champaign. They’re supposedly twin cities in ways that were clearly fraternal twins. You’ve got Urbana, whose parks are largely natural areas. They have this relationship with nature that says, nature should be restored and sort of untouched by humans. That the best kind of nature, the idealized park, is an environment where people are there to visit. And we’ve restored sort of a pristine nature, to some extent. Champaign parks are very different. Champaign parks have more of, I want to say, a progressive narrative of humans and nature. Where humans play a role of gardening, and they make them beautiful, and they’re meant for places for people to walk and have activities.

So although that they still have some very similar amenities, Urbana Park District has more natural areas. Champaign Park District has more cultural areas. And they’re very different views of what each town is like.

VINCE LARA: Interesting. Are we getting better at quantifying what a park means to an area? Whether it’s economically, or in non-tangible ways, are we getting better about understanding what green space means?

BILL STEWART:Yeah, that’s a great question there. I think of the notion of, what does any sort of environment mean as being one of place? The concept of place and place making really underscores a lot of my research. A sense of place is a uniqueness of a meaning that people feel as attachment to an environment. And their sense of place at a personal level where you might think about your grandmother’s pasture, and the personal relationship you have with that pasture, or your grandmother’s backyard.

When I think about community sense of place, is there something collective about the community that makes its relationship with its local environments unique to that locale? And so, your question is, are we getting better at quantifying that? Just to step back from that, I’d like to think we’re getting better understanding those relationships. Those relationships come in many kinds, as you mentioned. There’s the economic valuation, there is a personal valuation, there’s sociological, there’s emotional, there’s spirituality. There’s all sorts of ways in which we connect with environments.

And I’m going to say that we’re just tapping the surface of the iceberg in understanding ways that people and communities have come to identify and care about their environments. And that kind of research is urgently needed. We’ve got, at least when I was first born back in 1955– I’m dating myself here– there is 2.5 billion people on the Earth. Right now I think we’ve got 7.5 billion people on the Earth. So in my lifetime alone– I’m 65 this year– the Earth’s population has tripled. And in that time period there’s been– I’ve never noticed any one year the increase in people. But across my lifespan I’ve noticed there is coming to be a scarcity of wild lands, of open space, of wetlands, of spots that you could go out and enjoy nature.

And so I think that the more information we have about how people connect with an environment, I think the better off we’ll be as a society. Because we need to know that those empty spaces, supposedly that really are out of production, in fact are really valuable to people.

VINCE LARA: Now, you direct the Park and Environmental Behavior Research Lab. And as a researcher, you always have projects going on. Are there any that you have going on currently that you’re– you’re excited about all of them, I’m sure. But are there any that you want to talk about that are top of mind for you?

BILL STEWART:Yeah. You’re right on that. I’ve got the neatest group of graduate students and research projects that I’m currently doing. And they’ve added a lot of value to my life and my students’ lives. I guess there’s two that come to mind.

One has to do with the evaluation Chicago’s large lot program. As you may know, there’s an urban vacancy problem across most of the world’s cities. And it’s particularly acute in the northern tier of this country, through the Rust Belt, I’m going to say. Where people have moved out of the city and urban areas for various reasons. Often they abandon their house, and they abandon their house. At times, a city will come in and fold the house into its foundation, or just haul it off. And so this left with what was once a thriving neighborhood in an urban area has become a lot of empty lots there.

Just to give you some examples of this, Philadelphia has about 40,000 vacant lots. Buffalo has about 15 vacant lots. Cleveland about 25,000. Detroit has 125,000 vacant lots to the tune of 25 square miles in Detroit. Chicago has about 35,000 vacant lots. And I will say that these vacant lots are not evenly distributed around the city. They happen only in certain neighborhoods. And what Chicago has done, which is very innovative and quite bold, they developed this green healthy neighborhood plan in 2012. And a cornerstone of that plan to sell off these vacant lots to someone that owned property on the block for $1. And so for $1, if you own property on the block, you could purchase let’s say in the vacant lot next to you and do whatever you wanted to with it.

And so I’m evaluating the social and environmental impacts of that large lot policy. And, it’s good news. We found that it connects people to their sense of place, it connects people to their neighbors, which their neighbors help them further garden their spot, and they help to pick up debris. They’ve come to know their neighbors in a tighter fashion that creates this sense of place that was much stronger than what it used to be. Where the lights used to have a past, because it wasn’t– people would look out on the block and say, wow, that’s where so-and-so used to live, that’s what this other family used to live. And now they see empty lots. So it sort of was a lot with a past and not a future.

Now with this large lot policy, these lots have been bought up, now have a future for them. And so these neighborhoods, the people who stayed behind, they care deeply about their neighborhoods. They stayed behind not because they’re desperate. But because of family or community reasons, they decided to stay and slug it out through the hard times. And now they’re finally getting rewarded if they own property. They can, if they want to, purchase that lot and create a new vision of what that block could be by repurposing a once vacant lot.

VINCE LARA: Now, you’re obviously excited about the large lot research that you’re doing. Is there other research– and I like to call these moonshot projects, because they’re kind of off into the distance. They might not be attainable currently. But are there things that, given the resources and the time and the amount of graduate research assistants you need, that you think about? That you write down, you scribble on a piece of paper maybe at 3:00 in the morning and you’re like, oh, I wish I had the time to do this.

BILL STEWART:Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, I should step back just a minute and say that my research all revolves around a concept called place making. Where people, families, communities, individuals, they aspire to make their place something different and better than what it currently is. And that’s where the large lot project comes in. It’s about place making in an urban environment.

I guess I would continue on that line, as long as we’re talking about the large lot project, there is another moonshot project that deals with more of an urban ecological nature. Where I really have partnered with my colleagues Carena van Riper in Department of Natural Resource and Environmental Sciences, Paul Gobster, who is a landscape architect with the Forest Service. And Alessandro Rigolon, who’s a planner now with the University of Utah. That’s the large lot team.

There’s another forthcoming possibility, and I hope we get the invitation through the National Science Foundation, to invite us to submit a full blown proposal for what’s called a leader project, or long term ecological change for urban areas. And that’s largely working with ecologists out of Chicago that are based in various universities up there. And they’re looking for ways to couple social issues along with ecological issues. No longer can we study the ecology of a system and not be concerned about what– let’s include people in this ecological understanding.

So, I think it’d be really a neat challenge for myself and my students to do a more stronger coupling of healing communities with ecological communities, and try to understand just a baseline description of what is the nature of that relationship. And to some extent, are there interventions that can happen through policy triggers that the city can do– much like the large lot program– to further facilitate a healthy social ecological resilience? To make human communities more ready to respond to changes in their future.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Bill Stewart. To hear more about Illinois and the College of Applied Health Sciences, find our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and iHeartRadio by searching a few minutes. See you next time.

Tags: A Few Minutes With, Bill Stewart, Department of Recreation Sport and Tourism, Podcast

A Few Minutes With … Pasquale Bottalico

Dec. 17, 2018 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

*Pasquale Bottalico’s research looks at noisy environments, such as restaurants. (Google Images)*

In this edition of “Five Minutes With …,” AHS media relations specialist Vince Lara-Cinisomo interviews Dr. Pasquale Bottalico in the department of Speech and Hearing Science about his study of the effects of ambient noise in restaurants.

Bottalico, in his study, “Lombard effect, ambient noise and willingness to spend time and money in a restaurant,” published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, found that subjects reported a disturbance of their speech when noise reached 52.2 A-weighted decibels (dBA) and that vocal effort began to increase at 57.3 dBA. The sound level of speech increased as ambient noise increased. As background noise increased, it triggered a decrease in the willingness to spend time and money in that establishment. You can read more about Dr. Bottalico’s research here.

Listen to the podcast

Transcript

VINCE LARA-CINISOMO: Hello, this is Vince Lara, Media Relations Specialist at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend five minutes with Dr. Pasquale Bottalico, of the Department of Speech And Hearing Science, to talk about his recent study on ambient noise in restaurants and its effect on the bottom line.

PASQUALE BOTTALICO: So the goal of the restaurant, the idea of the restaurant, is what we can do to improve the situation in restaurant. So my study was actually started because there was a lack in the literature. And I’m always being interested, it’s not the first paper that I worked about Lombard effect. I’m very interested in Lombard effect.

And I started to be interested in Lombard effect, again, starting from classroom acoustics, because the Lombard effect is basically characterized by a rate of voice increase per dB increasing noise in the environment. And the value is 72 for teachers, which is the highest. Generally, in the literature, it’s reported between 0.3 and 0.6. But teacher, 0.72., so they’re increasing their voice even higher.

VINCE LARA-CINISOMO: Every day?

PASQUALE BOTTALICO: Every day, for every dB of noise increasing in the classroom. So this means that restaurant noise– everyone went to a restaurant in his life, and it can happen that after dinner with some people, at a restaurant, you go out and your throat’s sore. And you don’t really understand why. And because the Lombard effect is an unconscious effect, so you are not conscious of the fact that you are actually screaming.

But your voice, your body, and your physiology knows that. And so you will have the effect that your throat is burning. And I found particular the fact that this effect was never studied in a restaurant. And there were not studies correlating it with the willingness to spend money. So I thought it was a good idea to do the study. And I already did similar study for understanding other aspects of the Lombard effect. I was quizzing in the past about at which level of noise it starts, these effects, in other papers.

So I use a similar protocol, but I changed the setting, and it changed the noise. So I tried to recreate a restaurant in one of our sound booths. I had my students, my undergraduate students, that were the partner in the dinner. And we used typical restaurant noise, and we changed the level in a random way, covering a very large interval of noise, so from a medium level to a very loud level. Again, using the range of noise level reported by the literature, in restaurant noise.

And what it came out, that a level between 50 and 55 dB is starting this willingness to leave that place, and also to spend less money to eat in that place, and is starting the disturbance in the communication. And because of that, there is the objective evaluation of the voice, that is starting to increase at about 60 dB of noise. And all of these effects were quite strong.

We are starting to work again on the project. After the forum actually, because I kind of figured out that in this case, we used college students for this study, and I’m considering it like a pilot. But I want to move forward with the elder population.

And so, we know also that we have child in our college that’s interested in new research on aging people. And we have a movement, that is the age friendly in Urbana-Champaign, to make the city more friendly for aging people. And I think that this project will fit perfectly.

So I have a doctoral student in audiology. She’s going to start to collect data next semester. And the goal will be to create a different group in the elder population, normal hearing, and people with a moderate hearing loss, and people with a severe hearing loss. And try to understand better how these vulnerable populations are affected by the problem.

VINCE LARA-CINISOMO: My thanks again to Dr. Bottalico. This has been Five Minutes With.

Tags: A Few Minutes With, Pasquale Bottalico, Podcast

Podcast: A Few Minutes With … Brandon Peters

Jan. 06, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

*Brandon Peters (Photo courtesy of Division of Intercollegiate Athletics)*

Vince Lara of the College of Applied Health Sciences speaks with Illinois starting quarterback Brandon Peters, a graduate student in the Recreation, Sport and Tourism department of AHS.

Peters, who got his undergraduate degree at Michigan before transferring to Illinois, talks about why he picked RST and what he enjoys about the classes.

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Transcript

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today, I speak with Brandon Peters, starting quarterback for the Illinois football team, and RST grad student.

I’m talking with Brandon Peters, who’s the starting quarterback for the Illinois football team. So Brandon, how much did graduate programs– in terms of deciding where you wanted to continue playing– how much did the academics part of it, and how much, honestly, did the football playing part it have a play in your decision?

BRANDON PETERS: I would say football was the main focus for me. But, you know, when I came on my official visit, they kind of laid out the academic plan for me. And, you know, kind of weighing my options. Illinois being the university that it is, they offered the RST program for me to be in, and sport management was always something I was interested in at Michigan. And I just thought it was a great opportunity to come to Illinois, also at the academic level.

VINCE LARA: Now, you’re taking some online courses, what I had read. But you’re on campus obviously a lot. Have you run into any of your professors? Or have you had a chance to interact with any of them?BRANDON PETERS: Not yet, but I’m going to set up a meeting with the RST– I forget. Tiger?

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm.

BRANDON PETERS: (Prof.) Tiger. Yeah. I’m going to set up a meeting with him, and just get to know him a little bit, and talk to him.

VINCE LARA: Now obviously, football’s the goal. Right? Ultimately, whether it’s the NFL, CFL, XFL, or whatever it is. But if that doesn’t happen, or even thinking post-football, do you have any ideas? Like, maybe RST hopes? You know, like you can work as a GM, or you can work in– you’re doing sport management as your focus, right? So what have you thought about post-football?

BRANDON PETERS: I really haven’t thought much into it yet. I still have another year to play. When it gets to that time, I think I’m going to think at it in more depth. But like you said, I’ve always thought about staying in the sport world, since I’ve always been so close to it my whole life. I think this will definitely help me propel myself into the future when I get to that point.

VINCE LARA: You’re from Avon, Indiana.

BRANDON PETERS: Yeah.

VINCE LARA: So did the proximity of Illinois play a big factor in deciding to come here?

BRANDON PETERS: Yeah. I mean, the other school that I had a lot of interest in too was Miami, Ohio, which is even closer than Illinois. Being able to stay at home was a great opportunity for me. And then just to be even closer to my family, and they could come to even more games. You know, my elders, my grandma and grandpa can travel well to games. So you know, it’s nice to have that.

VINCE LARA: Definitely. One last question I have for you. What classes are you taking right now?

BRANDON PETERS: RST 515 and 512.

VINCE LARA: 512? What are those courses like?

BRANDON PETERS: Organization and marketing.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Brandon Peters. This has been A Few Minutes With.

Tags: A Few Minutes With, Podcast

A Few Minutes With … Susannah Scaroni

Oct. 01, 2019 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

*Paralympic medalist Susannah Scaroni (Getty Images)*

College of Applied Health Sciences media relations specialist Vince Lara speaks with two-time Paralympian Susannah Scaroni, who is training at Illinois for the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

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VINCE LARA: Hello, this is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend a few minutes with Susannah Scaroni, two-time Paralympian who’s looking for her third trip to the games in 2020 in Tokyo.

Well I’m speaking with Susannah Scaroni, who is a 2020 Paralympian hopeful, we’ll say–

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Yes.

VINCE LARA: –if that sounds right to you.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Yes.

VINCE LARA: And you also competed in 2016 in Rio, so this will be your second games.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Also 2012.

VINCE LARA: Wow, so this will be your third.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Hopefully will be the third.

VINCE LARA: Hopefully it will be the third for you.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Yeah.

VINCE LARA: Well, let’s talk about where you got your start in racing.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Well, I grew up in a little tiny farming community in eastern Washington. And I was fortunate enough to be close to Spokane, Washington, just about an hour away. But there’s an adaptive sports program for youth there. So I learned about it through Shriners Hospital and immediately fell in love with it.

So I started out on the ParaSport Spokane team. And when you’re in that world of adaptive sports, you learn about the University of Illinois. They have been just such a powerhouse with wheelchair athletes for decades. So I applied to come here, and here I am. And I love it.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, that was going to be my next question is that you’re from the Pacific Northwest, and you ended up here. So obviously coach Bleakney’s reputation preceded him, and that was part of why you decided to come here.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Absolutely. Yeah. So I went to school a couple years in Montana before I came here, just based on financial reasons. But the second year I was there, coach Adam, he gave me a call and was like, hey, I don’t know– are you still interested in coming?

Because we have this other funding opportunity now. And so I was. After even two years of training on my own and doing my own thing, I still loved racing. I had my racing chair out there with me and decided to transfer over in 2011.

VINCE LARA: That’s amazing. Now, we talked about you were in 2012 and 2016. So let’s say you’re one of the veterans on the team. Because a team, you have people as young as 19.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Right, exactly.

VINCE LARA: So do your teammates come to you for advice, and is that mentor role something you like?

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Yes and yes, and especially more recently I’ve been realizing more and more that we have new waves of freshmen coming in, and I’m in my third year of grad school now. And just being able to be this wealth of knowledge for a whole host of reasons, whether it’s living independently at college, whether it’s navigating accessible areas on campus, or I’m really passionate about nutrition. So there are some questions about nutrition and training and not doing certain things downstairs, like being tiny. All of these experiences are things I love to share with the new athletes that come in.

VINCE LARA: Now, this being potentially your third, do you look ahead to 2024 already? Or are you saying to yourself, this might be my last one? Especially when you are in school.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: That’s a good segue into that question because I have thought about this. But one thing I also really love in my career is the role model aspect of it. So right now we’re at a really cool part of wheelchair marathon awareness because Abbott World Major Series has a wheelchair division now. And I can still foresee myself continuing to push that wave of women wheelchair racers while the next group gets up to that point.

But it kind of sort of depends on where that is. There’s a lot of women I race with that are all within the same age. And so I wouldn’t want us all to stop at one time, and then all that really hard work just kind of go down a little bit. So I might see how it goes, see where the rest of the world is and the rest of the US females, and keep racing. I’m also not entirely sure yet.

VINCE LARA: OK. Well, what are your plans– well you just talked a little bit about your plans. You’re training to become a registered dietitian here at Illinois.

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Yes.

VINCE LARA: And so what’s after sport?

SUSANNAH SCARONI: Yeah, well, that’s a great question. The way I sort of foresee my career goals, I would love to be a sports dietitian with US Paralympics. I think it’s great to– nutrition is a basic field. But when you can apply it and adapt it to para athletes, I think having been one will add a really nice element to the advice I can give in the future. So I want to just try it out and see what it’s like being a sports dietitian.

And I haven’t completely thrown out the possibility of continuing research. There’s a lot of things that need to be studied in para athletes still. So I’ve really enjoyed sports physiology as well as nutrition science in my grad school program so far. So I think I could see that being a possible future thing to do as well. Yeah.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Susannah Scaroni. This has been A Few Minutes With.

Tags: A Few Minutes With, Podcast, Susannah Scaroni

A Few Minutes With … Alexa Halko

Jan. 6, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

2016 Paralympian Alexa Halko, training at Illinois for the 2020 Games in Tokyo, speaks with College of Applied Health Sciences media relations specialist Vince Lara-Cinisomo about Illinois’ Paralympic training site, the Disability Resources & Educational Services unit and her future plans.

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VINCE LARA: Hello, this is Vince Lara in the communications office at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend a few minutes with Alexa Halko, 2016 Paralympian training for the 2020 games here at Illinois.

All right. I’m with Alexa Halko, Paralympian. Alexa, now, you competed in Rio in 2016. You were the youngest US athlete there.

How is it going to be different now that you’re training for 2020? And do you feel like you’re more of a mentor in this role? Is it any different for you at all?

ALEXA HALKO: Yes, I believe it’ll be different, just because I’ve had more experience to get to know the sport a little better. I’ve been in it for– I started Paralympic-wise in 2014. So I’ve really gotten to be around more experienced athletes. And I feel like that will just keep building on itself, obviously, over the years. So I think that’s what will be different in 2020.

VINCE LARA: What did you learn from 2016 that you’re trying to apply to your 2020 training?

ALEXA HALKO: I learned that you’re going to have hard years. After 2016, it was such a frenzy. I was like, well, this is awesome. It’s your first Paralympic Games. You don’t even know what to think after that.

But the year after, in 2018, I didn’t have the best year. And I kind of just went with it and just stayed with it. But it kind of showed me that you’re not going to have the best years every year. You just got to go with it and just keep going, I guess.

VINCE LARA: Now, you loved basketball when you were growing up. So how did you transition into racing? What got you into that?

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, so I actually played basketball and track at the same time. So it wasn’t really like an, oh, I’m choosing basketball over track. Even though I do love basketball still, track was just my main one, I would say, my main sport, just because I liked the solo part of it. I like a team, and that’s super awesome. But for me, I feel like just going solo and just doing my own thing is what I like.

VINCE LARA: OK. Yeah. Now, you were born in Oklahoma. Your family moved to Virginia. How did you end up here at Illinois?

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah. So I actually have been looking at this program since I started, because it’s commonly known that this is, like, the best program you can be in for the wheelchair track world. And so it’s always been an aspiration for me to come here since I was, like, 14. So I feel like I was just hoping and just keep training so I would come here.

VINCE LARA: Did you have any interaction with Coach Blakeney at all beforehand? Or was that something that was talked about in Paralympic circles, like, oh, Illinois is a great program?

ALEXA HALKO: Well, yeah, it’s always known to be the best program you can go to. So yeah, it is commonly known. And I would always see Coach Adam at competitions.

So I would always see him. And he would always be with the Illinois team. So I would hang out with them and know them. So it’s always been, I see them. And I’ve been aware that they’re around.

VINCE LARA: How much of your deciding to come to Illinois was based on even academics, beyond what DRES has in the wheelchair racing? Did you factor that in as, Illinois is a great school, too?

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, no, for sure. It’s awesome that I can continue my education, but also be at such a great training program. And that just works, because I don’t want to just drop everything school-wise, but still keep going with my dream of racing and continuing my Paralympic, I guess, career. So I think it’s just the best of both worlds, because what could be better than this setup?

VINCE LARA: Absolutely. What are you studying at Illinois?

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, so I’m a communications major.

VINCE LARA: OK. So this is perfect.

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, actually.

VINCE LARA: That’s great. Now, you’re still so young. You’re 20?

ALEXA HALKO: I’m 19.

VINCE LARA: You’re 19.

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah.

VINCE LARA: So what’s next for this? How long do you expect you’ll compete? And then after that, will you coach? Do you see yourself as more of a mentor role?

ALEXA HALKO: I’ve never seen myself as a mentor, to be honest. I think coaches are awesome. I just never have put myself in that position.

I do like outreach and seeing the new kids come up, so maybe possibly in the future. But yeah, we’ll just have to see. I definitely just hope to keep training, keep competing, and just see where it kind of goes from there.

VINCE LARA: Well, how long do you think you’ll compete? Do you see 2024? Do you start to look and say, this is probably the last one I can do?

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah. I feel like if you’re in these cycles, you’re just thinking about, oh, the next games. You get in such a cycle mindset. And so I think I’ll go probably until 2024, maybe later. I’ll be here till 2022. And then whatever I do after that, I’ll probably stay here maybe.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, there’s grad programs.

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, no, exactly.

VINCE LARA: Got to consider AHS.

ALEXA HALKO: Yep. So yeah, it might just go on from there. But we’ll see.

VINCE LARA: What do you think about beyond sports? What’s the career for you? So you’re studying communications now. Do you hope to break into that field?

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, I definitely was thinking about something Paralympic-wise in communications. I think that would be really cool, just because I know a lot of the Paralympic track world-wise. And I feel like doing something with that, not just completely blowing it off– doing something with would be really cool, because I’ve been so in this world for a while.

VINCE LARA: With the USOPC or something in that range? OK.

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, maybe.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm. And now that you’re here at Illinois, where do you see your future beyond school and work? Do you feel like you could settle here because of how great the training site is?

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah. I’m not really set on a certain location to live. Just because this program is so awesome, I know so many people who have stayed here just for the program. And that makes me think, hey, maybe that might be a good option, because so many people have succeeded from staying here. So it would be a good option, for sure.

VINCE LARA: What would be your advice to somebody who aspires to reach the Paralympics or even compete? Maybe they don’t make the team, but they’re in the training process for it.

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, no. Definitely study, not in the school sense, but study your favorite racers. I think that’s kind of something that helped me. I just was observing my favorite racers and just–

VINCE LARA: Who were your favorite racers?

ALEXA HALKO: So I always looked up to Tatyana (McFadden). She’s the best woman–

VINCE LARA: And now you get to train with her.

ALEXA HALKO: Yeah, exactly. And that’s been an aspiration, because this is the program to be in, and then to race against or compete with some great teammates. But yeah, so just observing and just– people say it all the time– but just do it. Just keep going with it.

You’re going to have hard years. And it’s not going to go the way you always want it to go. But it’s just about staying with it, because that’s what’s got me here. So I’m going to keep going.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Alexa Halko. This has been “A Few Minutes With.”

Tags: Alexa Halko, DRES, Paralympics

Podcast: A Few Minutes With … Daniel Romanchuk

Jan. 06, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Vince Lara, media relations specialist at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, spends a few minutes with Daniel Romanchuk, 2016 Paralympian who’s training at Illinois for a spot in the 2020 games in Tokyo.

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Transcript

VINCE LARA: Hello. This has Vince Lara and the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today, I spent a few minutes with Daniel Romanchuk, 2016 Paralympian who’s training at Illinois for a spot in the 2020 games in Tokyo. All right. I’m speaking with Daniel Romanchuk who is a 2020 Paralympic trainee hoping to make the team for the Tokyo games. So, Daniel, you started with the Bennett Blazers. But I want to go back a little bit before that. When did you know that sports was something you wanted to do?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Ooh. So I started with the Bennett Blazers when I was two years old. Sports has always just been a part of my life. So I’m not sure if there was ever really a moment where I was like, oh, I want to play sports. I got started in wheelchair racing with the Bennett Blazers when I was, I believe, around four years old.

VINCE LARA: Wow.

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: And, so yeah. With that program, a lot of kids just tried everything. You didn’t have to really stay in anything, but you’d try it to see if you’d like it and kind of just go from there. If you liked it, of course you can stay in it. Also I think a little bit with your question, their motto is actually, tell kids they can before they’re told they can’t.

VINCE LARA: Wow, that’s great.

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: We’re athletes. And so there’s never really been, to me, oh, well I can’t play basketball. I can’t do this. There’s really never been any of that really in my life.

VINCE LARA: Which is great. You’re from Maryland, which is where the Bennett Blazers are located. But how did you end up training here at Illinois? And is it a testament to Coach Bleakney that you ended up here? Had you known about Coach Bleakney before getting here?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: So I grew up in the Mount Airy, Maryland, about a half hour outside of Baltimore where the sports program was located. And then it was just over four years ago that I was training all on my own. We’d eventually gotten in contact.

We had asked the high performance director, at that time, are there any training facilities or anything that I maybe can go train at? Because I wanted to try and make the 2016 games. And so after them kind of looking around a bit, we got put in contact with Adam Bleakney. And so he had let me come out and train, at first kind of intermittently. And then we moved out here.

VINCE LARA: Wow. When you say you were training on your own, how did you even know how to train?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: I would say my mom did a lot of that. So we would just basically go out to there’s a cul-de-sac that I would just do repeats on. It was a slight hill. And so I would just go out and do repeats of about 200 meters long. And then, eventually, just going out on the road.

I would just kind of push. I especially did not know any training methods. I didn’t know anything about taper or any of the phases or anything of training. And so we would just kind of go out on rides at that point.

VINCE LARA: Had you watched the Paralympic Games, and is that what gave you the idea, oh, I need to do 200’s or whatever training you had done on your own?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: I would say really it was kind of my mom that, at that time, was sort of guiding training. But yeah, they are one of the very few sports that I actually watched– the Olympic and Paralympic Games. So yeah. I don’t remember when I first watched it, but I do remember Beijing, and Tatyana McFadden, Josh George, and a number of other Paralympic racers, and other sports, as well.

So a number of other athletes had come through the Bennett Blazers sports program. And they had come back. Even after they’re gone off to college or whatever, they would come back every once in a while to kind of just come back– of course, say hi, and then just help the next generation along. And so that’s something I like to do when I can, is to get back and help bring along the next generation.

So I wouldn’t necessarily say when I first saw the games that I wanted to go. I’d probably say I just kind of known about them through other older athletes. And I’ve always been one to just push myself to see how far can I go? How fast can I go? And I think a lot of this just happened at such a young age. I don’t really remember too much of it.

VINCE LARA: OK. Well, you spoke about Tatyana. And you spoke about giving back. So, at this point given your experience in the marathons that you’ve had and the 2016 games, do you feel yourself as a mentor to some of your younger teammates? Because some of them are as young as 19, let’s say Alexa Halko. So what kind of role do you see yourself in now, while you’re competing, but also as one of the more experienced members?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: I mean I think I’ve been very–

VINCE LARA: Fortunate?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Yeah, to have older athletes and mentors that have helped me get to where I am. And so I certainly want to help any athlete and help them just reach their potential.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm. Now, you’ve competed in several world majors of the marathon circuit. And does that training help you with the Paralympic Games, or do you consider them really kind of separate?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: As far as the marathon at the games, that certainly does help. You’ll see a lot of the same racers. Courses of course vary, but I would say it does help with the marathon.

VINCE LARA: You’re also now training for Dubai. Is that a springboard also for 2020?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Yep, the last world championships just leading into the games. And so that does have a lot of things to do with the games. Slots can be earned for the country at the World Championships. I believe if you end up in a medal spot, you earn a spot. So it certainly is a big event going into the 2020.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hmm. So now you’ve talked about potentially enrolling at Illinois, maybe 2020, 2021. What do you think comes after sport for you?

DANIEL ROMANCHUK: Certainly like to stay in the sport to whatever degree, as long as I can. One thing I’ve learned in racing and just otherwise is I don’t know what God has planned for me. And so I try not to make a plan too much and to hold too tightly to it. Because I can make a plan for a marathon, and chances are it’s going to fall apart somewhere along the way. So I’m not sure where I’ll end up, but I’d certainly like to stay in the sport.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Daniel Romanchuk. This has been A Few Minutes With.

Tags: Daniel Romanchuk, Podcast

A Few Minutes With … Brian Siemann

Jan. 13, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

2020 Paralympic Games trainee Brian Siemann chats with Vince Lara of the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois about how he got involved with racing, coach Adam Bleakney and working at Disability Resources & Educational Services at Illinois.

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Transcript

VINCE LARA: Hello. This is Vince Lara at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend a few minutes with Brian Siemann, two-time paralympian who’s training again in Illinois for a spot in the 2020 games in Tokyo. Brian, good to talk to you.

So you’re a graduate of Notre Dame High from New Jersey, the school that also produced Star Jones, famously, among others. And you started taking part in racing when Coach McLaughlin introduced you to it. Did you think that sports wasn’t something you’d ever be able to do to take part in before that?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sports to me was kind of this foreign concept that, you know, I didn’t really know of any opportunities that existed nor did I really see any kind of representation of athletes with disabilities competing anywhere. So it’s kind of one of those things that when you’re– when you’re growing up, you just sort of kind of resigned yourself to the fact if you don’t see it, then it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind. And you just look for other opportunities or other sort of interests that, you know, are kind of calling to you. And so when I was asked by coach McLaughlin if I wanted to come out for the racing team, it was very much a shock because sports, again, was something that I had never considered myself doing nor did I really consider myself excelling at it at all. So it was definitely a memorable day, to say the least.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, and how quickly did you come to enjoy the sports part of it? I guess– was it racing that you got into first?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Yeah, yeah. So I got into racing. And so basically, the high school coach McLaughlin had said to me, you know, I’ve never coach an athlete with a disability before. And I was like, oh, cool.

Well, I’ve never done any sports before. And so he was like, we’ll just kind of figure this out together. And so basically, my high school raised money for my first racing chair, which cost about $5,000, which is a huge– looking back on it now is a huge– was a huge sort of gamble that they took and kind of a leap of faith in me just to kind of have me be included on this– on my high school track team.

And then I just started racing. I did the same workouts that all the able-bodied runners did. And so it was just– I was just another member of the team, and I just used a racing chair instead of my legs.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, that’s great. Now you know, being from the east coast, did you know about Illinois’ training facilities, and was coming here about DRES and about the ability for you to continue to train?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Absolutely. But at first, it was not the case. So being from New Jersey and having no exposure to sports, I had created sort of this four year plan for myself where I was going to graduate from high school. And even when I started racing, I had said, like, OK. I’ll do this through high school, like, you know.

But it was never anything that I envisioned happening much later on and, like, continuing to do now for, oh my God, nearly 16 years at this point. And so I definitely did not consider that. But as I started to train, I think around my– like, towards the end of my sophomore and junior year, as you go to these local competitions with other athletes with disabilities, you start to– Illinois is a term that’s frequently mentioned.

And so you start to– you know, again, I never– I was living in New Jersey. I was by the shore, by New York City. The idea of coming out to the Midwest and cornfields was like the last thing I ever wanted to do. But I was actually– I was recruited out here. I came up for a visit I want to say my– like, the beginning of my senior year, I came out for a track camp that the university program runs for younger kids with disabilities.

I came out, and I did like the whole visit. I saw alma mater. And then I went– I trained with all of the other U of I paralympians.

And as soon as I came home, I was like, this is where I want to go. Upon just, like, getting around campus, just seeing just the culture around this entire university towards disability is something that is noticeable right away even for someone who has no exposure to it. And so oddly enough, so I submitted my application. I did– I think it was like the early decision thing or whatever.

And so around that December 1 or whenever that is, I remember I got– I was, like, frantically checking my email. And I was really frustrated because it was– we’re east coast time. And so I had to wait until 6 o’clock and not 5:00, even though it’s, you know, the same thing. but–

VINCE LARA: Right.

BRIAN SIEMANN: My didn’t view it that way. And so I was, like, frantically, like, refreshing my email. And I actually accepted my offer of admission before even telling my parents that I got in.

VINCE LARA: Oh wow.

BRIAN SIEMANN: I remember just telling them, like, oh yeah, I got in and I’m going just because I knew that this was where I belonged.

VINCE LARA: Now you predated Coach Bleakney, correct?

BRIAN SIEMANN: No, he had been here for– I want to say about four years before I started. And so he recruited me.

VINCE LARA: OK. So did you know about him, and was his reputation that wide that even in the East Coast, people knew, oh yeah, you want to go, you know, train with coach?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Oh yeah. So with Adam, it’s really funny. So we kind of have this running joke where once I started to learn about the Illinois program my junior year or so, I mean, even before I came out here, you started to see– like, I learned about the accolades of Adam Bleakney.

It was like I wanted to impress him. And so he would always come to these junior national competitions and everything. And I still remember my conversation with him.

And I always ask him now. I’m like, do you remember, like, where we met and what we talked about? And he’s like, yeah, yeah, of course. And he has no idea. And so it’s kind of this recurring joke between us that he remembers me when I was a kid. And now he’s been stuck with me since 2008.

VINCE LARA: Now you’ve competed twice in the Paralympics. Do your teammates, at this point, come to you for advice? Because you know, there’s a pretty nice gap between you and, let’s say, Alexa or some of the younger members. And is that a role that you enjoy?

BRIAN SIEMANN: Yeah, so I think we have a really welcoming sort of environment. I remember when I was the young kid sort of what that was like to be– you know, we’re kind of really lucky here. We’re surrounded by phenomenal athletes. And so I remember kind of feeling slightly intimidated but just sort of how welcome I was made to feel by the older teammates that I still am friends with to this day. And so it is something that I do take very seriously when new students come in that I try to be that open sort of person that kind of talks to them and kind of lets them kind of learn from some of the mistakes I made maybe. Or just to have someone to talk it was always kind of– is something that I do cherish a lot.

VINCE LARA: Mm-hm. Now you got your masters here. Now you’re working in DRES and student services. So do you allow yourself to think what’s next beyond sport and what your next step would be?

BRIAN SIEMANN: So taking this job as an access specialist at DRES really sort of was kind of what I was thinking as what’s my next step after sports. And so I’m very fortunate in the fact that working at DRES gives me the opportunity to still train and train for 2020 and also still work with students, which is what I love doing. And so that culture, really, I don’t think I can do this anywhere else. And that’s kind of– this is the perfect sort of position for me. But it really did come out of this desire to sort of– and it’s a desire that’s really kind of– it’s a message that’s instilled by Adam because he wants us to look beyond sport as well and then to look towards like having healthy, active lifestyles through sports but also then having something set up after the fact because that’s something that a lot of athletes struggle with if they don’t have some sort of plan in place.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Brian Siemann. This has been “A Few Minutes With.”

Podcast: A Few Minutes With … Kevin Richards

Feb. 13, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Kinesiology and Community Health assistant professor Kevin Richards spends a Few Minutes With AHS media relations specialist Vince Lara and speaks about his pedagogy research and the socialization of teachers, primarily in physical education.

Transcript

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today it’s been a few minutes with Kevin Richards, Assistant Professor in the Kinesiology and Community Health Department of AHS, to talk about his pedagogy research and the socialization of teachers.

Kevin, what inspires your research? Let me ask it this way. What led you to do what you do?

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s interesting because a big thrust of my research is socialization. So, basically, you’re asking me what socialized me into the research that I do. But so I did my undergraduate degree back in Massachusetts in physical education. And I had every intention to go out into schools and to become a K-12 physical education teacher.

But back east, you have to have a master’s degree within five years to keep teaching in schools. And so a lot of people did like the night– the night school thing, and that just wasn’t for me. So I decided that I was going to look at graduate programs so I could just knock out that master’s degree in one shot, and then focus on teaching after. And that led me out to Purdue University, where I did my master’s and built the relationship with my advisor, Tom Templin.

And Tom studied socialization. And he was one of kind of the forefathers of that area of research in physical education. And I just got really passionate about that area of research through talking with him. So, you know, the main thrust of my research through the work that I did on my PhD and then, you know, and the majority of my career since focuses on how we recruit, prepare– recruit and prepare teacher– individuals to go into the field of physical education.

And then once they’re out in the schools, what are their lives and careers like? Physical education tends to be a marginalized subject in a lot of schools. And so I do a lot of work looking at marginality and how that affects teachers’ understanding of themselves and their relationships with others.

VINCE LARA: So, basically, to streamline what you’re saying is, you’re trying to build the best teacher you can, is that fair to say?

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yes, in a sense. You know, we look to recruit people into our programs who are diverse in terms of things like traditional markers like race and ethnicity. But then also in terms of their background experiences. Physical education’s been traditionally a discipline that potential recruits really see to align with coaching.

So those who want to coach extra curricular school sports sometimes come into physical education with these really solid, developed backgrounds in team sport. And they see physical education as kind of a conduit to continue that. But not every kid who is out taking physical education in schools loves sports. So we try to recruit more diverse students.

But then also looking at the methods that we use in our physical education programs to give those students the knowledge and skills that they’re going to need in order to become effective practitioners into the future. But, also, you know, we focus a lot on dispositions, because, you know, while they’re in our classes, we can hold them accountable. So we can grade them. If they don’t do what we tell them to do, you know, we can fail them even.

But the reality is that once our students transition out of our programs out into schools, we lose that control. And so at that point the true marker is, you know, have they internalized these beliefs to the extent that they’re going to use them even when we’re not watching. And so, we really try to work with students to help them develop ideologies that align with best practice, but are grounded in their own experience, and that they’ll follow through on.

VINCE LARA: What are some of the challenges, you know, physical education teachers– there’s some stigma around that, right? So what are some of the challenges of getting kids into the program? And what do you do to try to, you know, defeat some of those stigmas, if you will?

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yeah, yeah. That’s– it’s a really good question. And it’s timely, because this has actually been one particular area that I’ve been focusing on quite a bit in my work right now. But, you know, there are a lot of those negative social stigmas. And some of them, you know, are grounded in fact. You know, unfortunately, there are some physical education teachers, especially at the secondary level, the middle school and high school, who teach using ineffective practices.

The colloquialism in our field is that they roll out the ball. So they just kind of throw a ball out and let the kids play. It’s not educational. It’s not purposeful. And I think that sometimes people think about physical education and they reflect upon their own past experiences or maybe what their kids are going through in school, and they use that as the marker to evaluate the whole discipline. But, you know, of course, physical education can and should do so much more than that.

And so we really try to work with, you know, on the pre-service teacher side of it, develop teachers that are ready to step out into the world of schools, and teach using effective practices. And then a lot of my work has then also looked at those teachers who are in-service, working out in the schools, and how can we help to improve their work conditions and reshape their ideologies so that they’re using best practice. And then you have kind of this streamlined approach in the ideal situation where pre-service teachers are stepping out into schools that are ready to embrace the practices that they’ve learned.

And then, you know, this is all kind of a cyclical process, because the next generation of teachers are going to come out of those schools, and they’re going to see physical education as it’s presented to them by their own teachers, and use that as the basis for evaluation to determine whether or not they think physical education is for them. And so if we can get better physical education in the schools, then we’ll have better recruits coming into our programs.

VINCE LARA: One segment of your research, I noticed, deals with helping teachers deal with stress.

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yeah.

VINCE LARA: So what methods do you use to research that?

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yeah, yeah. So I was initially trained as a qualitative researcher. My advisor, Dr. Templin, was very qualitative. I joke, in that, I don’t think he’s ever, like, calculated a mean in his career, like it just wasn’t his bag. Now I’m exaggerating, he has. But he’s very qualitative. So that’s how I was originally trained.

But then I did a postdoc at Purdue with a woman named Chantal Levesque-Bristol. And she was a cognitive psychologist that used primarily quantitative methods. So I kind of got a mix of both, and have really come to appreciate mixed methods and multiple methods working together. A lot of my studies are designed using sequential approaches.

So we might do a large scale survey of teachers, you know, and get hundreds of responses, asking them questions about stress and burnout, and, you know, protective factors like resilience and perceived mattering. And then we’ll take a sub sample of people who complete that survey, and then do qualitative interviews with them.

But what I’m really excited about is we’re taking all of this information that we’ve learned over the last few years studying teacher stress, and we’re putting it into practice. We got some funding through a small seed grant to develop a professional development program for teachers in local Champaign-Urbana area.

We’re calling it the Dream Project. That’s developing resilience and enhancing appraisals of mattering. And it’s kind of the culmination of the last six years of my career learning about stress and burnout in the relationships among these variables, and how teachers experience their work life, and then putting that to practice to try to do something about it.

VINCE LARA: You also look at social and emotional learning in physical education. Would you elaborate a little bit on that?

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yeah, yeah. So that’s kind of a sub area or a second, maybe not sub area, but it’s kind of like a second tree of my research. So I had a colleague when I was going through grad school together– grad school named Michael Hemphill. And Michael and I– or Michael was very interested in social and emotional learning using this one particular best practice model called teaching personal and social responsibility.

And so TPSR, as we call it, is a way to teach within a physical activity context that views physical activity as kind of a mediator or a vehicle to get kids talking about personal and social responsibility. So there you have that hook of physical activity that a lot of kids like. It draws them in. And then that opens the door to say, OK, well, yeah, we’re going to focus on skill development. We’re going to focus on activity. But we’re also going to help you learn to be better people.

And so we focus on goals like participation and showing good effort, respecting the rights and feelings of others, self direction, and some goal setting, leadership and helping other people. And then the ultimate goal of all of that is to take lessons learned in the gym and transfer that out into other aspects of your life. So you know, you learn about respect in a physical activity program where you can use that in school.

Before I came to the University of Alabama, I was at– or excuse me, before I came to the University of Illinois, I was at the University of Alabama. And while I was there, a doctoral student and I, Tori Ivey, we ran a after-school program that focused on social emotional learning through physical activity over the course of three years, and learned a ton about best practices and best ways to do that.

And so then moving up here to Illinois, myself, Naiman Kahn, who’s another faculty in KCH, and my wife, Felicia Richards, who’s an instructor in our department, have been collaborating to take a summer program that our department’s actually offered for like 60 years. It’s one of the longest running summer programs, physical activity summer programs in the country. It used to be called Sport Fitness.

And so we took that and made some modifications to the structure, and rolled out a revised version of the model that we’re now calling IPAL. So it’s Illinois Physical Activity and Life Skills is what we are calling the program now. And that– that’s kind of a framework that we’re going to use this summer to roll out a couple of different summer program offerings using physical activity as kind of the hook, but really trying to get at those social emotional learning goals.

VINCE LARA: Is that program one of the reasons why you chose Illinois?

KEVIN RICHARDS: You know, I chose Illinois for a lot of reasons. I really like the people I worked with at Alabama, had great relationships down there. But Kim Graber and Amy Woods who are in pedagogy area with me, they’re leading scholars in the field. And Kim was actually on my dissertation committee. So we have this relationship that goes back a ways. And then, you know, Amy and I have collaborated over the years, too.

So those pre-existing relationships are a big part of what drew me here. But then, you know, or at least piqued my interest. But then after having come onto campus and see everything that Illinois has to offer, I mean this is a magical place. I really love it here. And, you know, my wife and I couldn’t be happier with the decision we made.

VINCE LARA: Now research obviously is a big part of why you’re at Illinois and our institution, obviously. But you know you also have to teach.

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yeah, yeah.

VINCE LARA: So do you– is there a particular class that you enjoy more than others?

KEVIN RICHARDS: Yeah, yeah. And people who listen to this might find this a bit surprising. But I love teaching actually. You know, it’s a huge part of my identity. I look forward to it. It’s not a burden. I love interacting with students. And the way that my teaching appointment is split here is that I teach one physical education majors course, so I still have my connection with the PE majors.

I teach a rotating course for our doctoral students. And then actually my favorite course is– it’s KIN201, Physical Activity Research Methods. And when the course got turned over to me, Neha Gothe and I actually collaborate on it. I teach it fall, she teaches in the spring. And when the course got turned over to us, you know, I think that it was a good idea, but it needed some fleshing out and development. And it’s been really fun to do that over the last couple of years with Neha.

And, you know, we’ve got the course to a position now, where the feedback that we’re getting at least, is that the students really enjoy it. We use kind of a lecture lab format. So they– you know, a large group lecture, where we can kind of talk about these concepts. But then the students break out into lab groups, where they get more kind of intimate contact and attention.

And, you know, I love talking about research. And so sparking that interest in the minds of our undergraduates, I think is a really cool part of our job. And so, I just got an email the other day actually from a student who was able to take something that we talked about in class a few weeks ago, and apply it in her life, reading a research article, and she wrote to me to tell me about that, which I thought was really cool and that really speaks to what I hope students get out of this class.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Kevin Richards. This has been A Few Minutes.

Tags: A Few Minutes With, Kevin Richards, Podcast

Podcast: A Few Minutes With … Naiman Khan

Dec. 12, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Kinesiology and Community Health assistant professor Naiman Khan speaks with AHS media relations specialist Vince Lara about his research on the impact of diet on cognitive health.

Listen to the podcast

Transcript

VINCE LARA: This is Vince Lara in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today, I spend a few minutes with Naiman Khan, an assistant professor in the Kinesiology and Community Health Department, to talk about his research in the disciplines of dietetics, body composition, and cognitive neuroscience.

NAIMAN KHAN: First of all, thank you for having me. It’s a real pleasure to speak with you today. When I actually started doing, starting my training, I was interested in practicing first. So I was interested in becoming a registered dietitian and working in the field– so focusing on clinical nutrition.

And all the way through my master’s degree, that was the plan. So I did my master’s in nutrition. And then, I did a dietetic internship, which is the clinical training. And during that time, I realized that I really enjoyed the research on campus. And after I received my dietetic credential, I returned to do my doctorate– and then, focused on research.

And but that– you know, my training in dietetics was still very useful in sort of shaping the questions and my approach for my research agenda. So it’s still very beneficial. But that was a point at which I decided to pursue research.

And, of course, there are different ways to do research and different types of institutions. I really enjoyed teaching. And especially during my graduate training– I was working with different schools and teachers across the state of Illinois. And I really enjoyed the education component of my research. So I wanted to work at a place like the University of Illinois that gives an opportunity to do both research and nutrition.

VINCE LARA: Now, you mentioned nutritional neuroscience is what your research focuses on. And what led you to study that?

NAIMAN KHAN: Well, that fascination of, sort of, merging those two disciplines started when I was a graduate student. I had a assistantship in the University of Illinois Extension program. And my job involved really working with teachers and children in elementary schools that had at least 50% of the population receiving free or reduced school lunch. And we were focused, of course, on that. In that study were focused on nutrition education.

But I spent a lot of time in schools. And it really got me thinking about academic achievement and cognitive health markers in children and whether our nutrition could be used as a way to meet that health gap that we know exists in many different communities.

We know that there are some implications of– some households, some schools do better than others. And we know there’s some variability in how well children do in school performance. And I just wondered if nutrition could be something we could leverage to do that.

And that fascination led into a postdoctoral position with Chuck Hillman, who was a– Dr. Hillman, here at the University of Illinois, was doing work in pediatric exercise neuroscience. And that was where I received my neuroscience trainings working under him.

VINCE LARA: So you focused on diet and physical activity as well as the link to obesity and cognition. So I think, traditionally, people might see the brain and the heart as separate– but what did you find when you looked at the interactions of those things?

NAIMAN KHAN: Yeah, so the philosophy sort of varies depending on which scientist you speak to. Traditionally, yes, people have studied the brain separately from physical health– so cognitive health has been separate from physical health. But the reality is that they’re co-dependent. We have evolved as a species to mature.

For example, from a developmental standpoint, cognitive development is in synchrony with physical development. And they really inform each other. And it turns out, if you look at the data, the epidemiological data, in particular, all the markers that affect cardiovascular health, chronic disease, those things– for example, sedentary behavior, and even poor physical activity patterns, poor diet, elevation in blood markers that increase risk for heart disease– these same factors are also predictive of cognitive health in individuals. And we see that quite a bit in the older adult literature.

And what we’ve been interested in examining is really– when does that start? When do we start seeing that link between behavioral patterns and these health factors that we know are important for living a healthy life? When does that– they start actually having an impact on cognitive measures?

And so far, we have been able to demonstrate this in young adults. We’ve shown it in preadolescent children and even in younger kids now. So we’re doing some work in four and five-year-olds where we’re seeing some very similar patterns. So it would be consistent with the hypothesis that health behaviors like healthy nutrition and physical activity, and of course, maintaining a healthy growth status, a healthy body weight– these factors seem to be important for cognitive health even in early childhood.

VINCE LARA: You recently did a study that got some really good publicity on the link between children’s cognitive processes and water. So what led you to study that?

NAIMAN KHAN: Really, what inspired that is that—our laboratory is interested in looking at diet quality. So at least, I don’t think that there’s only one way to eat healthy. And there are multiple aspects of our diet that we used or leveraged to even do that for a healthier lifestyle.

And we know that water is a marker of high diet quality. And that’s been demonstrated. Most of the foods that are higher in water tend to be fruits and vegetables and water consumption. Hydration is vital. Adequate hydration is vital for survival. And that’s been known for a long time.

So we were interested in– previous work in our lab had looked at dietary fiber. We had looked at dietary consumption of cholesterol and some fatty acids. And another marker of diet quality is also water consumption. And so that’s what led to that study.

And then, we also realized that in the literature, there’s very little known about hydration in children and its implications for cognitive health. What’s alarming, really, is that recent epidemiological data even suggests that majority of children in virtually most countries, but even in the United States, specifically, are chronically in a state of hypohydration, where then, we don’t think they’re adequately hydrated, based on some really good markers in urine.

So we thought it would be important to determine whether this chronic state of hypohydration has implications for cognitive health. And if we did provide children with more water to drink and modulated water intake– to determine whether that would actually affect certain aspects of cognition.

VINCE LARA: Did you find or have you found that it’s a lack of understanding the importance of water? Or is it a lack of access to water?

NAIMAN KHAN: So it’s a combination of both. And when it comes to kids and children, the challenge is that they’re more likely to have involuntary dehydration. But they depend on adults for much of their food intake. It’s the same thing with beverages and water.

So unless adults are paying attention to making sure that kids have access to water– it’s being provided to them, it’s likely that children also then have increased risk for dehydration. And that’s a awareness that we just need to have in our communities and in families and schools to make sure children are having access to water.

And then, the other aspect of it is also the research gaps. As scientists in the area of behavioral sciences, we haven’t really done a lot of work with water. Even though it’s such a vital and essential nutrient to survival, it is often taken for granted. And we really haven’t figured out or conducted randomized controls for trials to really determine what is the adequate amount of water necessary to really be healthy in all the different domains of health.

The current recommendations are really just based on, sort of, population patterns of what we think is adequate. But really, we don’t know how much water should be consumed for particular outcomes of health. So in that regard, it’s really a challenge of both sides– it’s awareness, access. And also just– so as far as a research priority, it’s just not been something that we’ve really done a good job at.

VINCE LARA: Now, we’re conducting this interview in your lab. And you can see– your lab was buzzing out there. So what kind of things are you working on that are upcoming that you’re excited to talk about?

NAIMAN KHAN: Well, we have a lifespan approach in the laboratory. So we’re conducting studies in– from four and five-year-olds all the way to older adults. And as I mentioned earlier, there are many ways of living healthy. And if you just look at diet alone, there are many factors of diet that could contribute to cognitive health. And the same thing could go with physical activity and fitness as well. There are multiple components of activity that could be predictive of cognitive health.

So the work that we’re doing in the laboratory is multidisciplinary. And that’s really exciting for us. We like to merge that knowledge in and across disciplines. So it’s hard to pick a particular area that I’m really excited about because it’s all very exciting to me. I have a lot of different interests.

But I can tell you about some of the recent studies we’re doing. Some of them focusing on younger children– so four and five-year-olds. We are interested in determining whether the factors that we have shown are predictive in early adolescence– so true also in younger age in terms of diet quality, aerobic fitness, and the effect on cognitive health.

We’re excited about that area of research. There isn’t a lot known in that area. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, we’re focusing in the area of multiple sclerosis and trying to understand how a diet can impact some of the symptomology and quality of life in multiple sclerosis– which we’re excited about because there’s some potential to really have an impact on people’s lives.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Naiman Khan. This has been A Few Minutes With.

Tags: A Few Minutes With, Naiman Khan, Podcast

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