Month: August 2023

Monika Stodolska named Brightbill/Sapora Professor

May 21, 2023 | Anna Flanagan

Monika Stodolska was named the Brightbill/Sapora Professor in Applied Health Sciences

Monika Stodolska’s research is guided by developing theory in the areas of leisure, culture, ethnicity and race and by pressing social issues such as lack of access to natural environments in urban areas and discrimination

By ANNA FLANAGAN

How does a scholar with a master’s degree in geography and a Ph.D. in earth and atmospheric sciences end up teaching and doing research in leisure studies? 

By pursuing the passion for understanding the relationship between culture and leisure that began in their graduate work.

At Warsaw University in Poland, Monika Stodolska focused her master’s degree on tourism development in Peru and received a post-graduate diploma in Latin American studies. Her doctoral research at the University of Alberta investigated leisure among ethnic and racial minorities in Canada. Since completing her Ph.D., she has continued to pursue her passion as a professor of recreation, sport and tourism, building an outstanding record of scholarly and professional contributions over the last 23 years. In 2022, she was named the Brightbill/Sapora Professor in Applied Health Sciences.

“I have always been interested in Latinx cultures and issues of cultural change that are related to migrations,” she said. “This merged with my interest in how leisure among diverse groups contributes to individual and community health and well-being.”

Stodolska’s research is guided by developing theory in the areas of leisure, culture, ethnicity and race and by pressing social issues such as lack of access to natural environments in urban areas and discrimination. She has investigated how leisure helps minorities to retain their culture, achieve socioeconomic advancement, adapt to host environments, develop a sense of belonging and improve their mental and physical health. She also has examined how crime, low socioeconomic standing and undocumented status impose constraints on leisure.

“Investigating factors that help underprivileged members of our society to live healthy and fulfilling lives is incredibly rewarding in and of itself,” Stodolska said.

She cited two studies as among the most meaningful to her. In the most recent study, Stodolska returned to her homeland to examine the experiences of refugees, largely women and children, who fled to Poland after being displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In what she termed a “truly unprecedented refugee crisis,” more than six million people have crossed the Polish border since February, and almost two million remain. Many of them are living with Polish families. Through interviews with refugees, hosts and volunteers, Stodolska is investigating how the refugees are adapting to their new lives and the role of leisure in helping them deal with war-related trauma, as well as the Polish population’s response to the crisis. Based on the findings of her study, she hopes to write a book and to contribute toward the design of refugee-centered recreation programs.

The other study, funded by the Call to Action to End Systemic Racism and the Urbana Park District (UPD), followed up on a study she and former RST professor Kim Shinew had done in 2017 that identified strategies for improving access to UPD programs and services for diverse communities. The 2021-22 study evaluated the changes the district had implemented and resulted in a blueprint for serving these communities that will be distributed to other recreation agencies in the United States.

Until Shinew’s retirement, she and Stodolska had a dynamic research partnership for more than 20 years. Of the partnership, Stodolska said, “We had different personalities but we worked together seamlessly. Our research interests are very similar, we have similar values, we care about communities and we care about underrepresented populations.” They also collaborated on establishing the Diversity Research Lab in 2001, when scholarship on leisure and recreation among racial and ethnic minorities was in its infancy. Alumni of the lab now hold leadership positions in leisure education, research and practice. Stodolska’s approach to mentoring graduate students is simple.

“I treat them like family. I expect them to form a non-competitive community and to support each other, and the relationships they form are incredibly strong,” she said. 

It is the same kind of environment Stodolska has found in RST, which she calls “truly my home.” While she has received many honors during her time at Illinois—a Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Teaching and Mentoring in Diversity, Fellow status in the Academy of Leisure Sciences, the King James McCristal Scholar Award for Excellence in Research—it is her work with students that gives her the most pride.

“At the end of our careers, we won’t be remembered by the number of papers or the books that we’ve written but by the impact we’ve had on people and whether we’ve used this privilege of professorship to leave the world a slightly better place,” she said.

With all the projects she has yet to complete, the end of Stodolska’s career is far in the future. Wars, poverty and political instability all lead to migrations, and inequality is entrenched in U.S. and Western societies. Given leisure’s critical role in helping underprivileged members of society live better lives, she anticipates being busy for many years to come.

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Welcome to AHS: Meet the Class of 2027

Aug. 23, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

The AHS Class of 2027 gathered in Huff Hall for the first time.

Welcome Week at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign capped off with individual college celebrations scattered across campus.

The College of Applied Health Sciences brought first-year students to Huff Hall for a spirited welcome and resource-sharing session. A few members of the newest freshman class offered their thoughts on why they chose AHS and what they’re looking forward to in the new academic year. 

Mustafa Siddique, hailing from Naperville, Ill., had a lot of fun with the “festive” atmosphere of University of Illinois Welcome Week, where it felt like everyone was there to lend a helping hand. 

Mustafa is studying interdisciplinary health sciences on the pre-medical school track. The College of Applied Health Sciences won out in his school choice for its real-world usefulness.  

“It kind of gives you a perspective into the specific field that you’re going into instead of just science as a whole. So I thought AHS was a good choice,” he said.  

Arely Soto, from Aurora, Ill., was exposed to a wide range of therapists through her mother, who’s a social worker. After speaking with a speech pathologist and learning about her career, Arely decided speech and hearing science was the path she wanted to follow. 

Experiencing Illinois Sights and Sounds, the capstone Welcome Week event that teaches new students Illinois traditions, was an early highlight for her. Especially taking a huge picture with her class packed into a “Block I” on the Memorial Stadium field. 

“I’m really excited for RSOs to start, to get involved and see what the schools offer in general.”

Dallas Miles, from South Holland in the Chicago suburbs, said his family always encouraged him to do something in the health field. 

“I’m glad I’m here now,” said Miles, who’ll be studying interdisciplinary health sciences in his freshman year. After Welcome Week, he’s got plenty of Illini merchandise—shirts and stickers galore. 

Dallas’ vision for his career vision orbits around health technology, “making stuff like hearing aids and heart monitors” to help patients day-to-day, he said. 

Allison Pines is from Highlands Ranch, Colo., but she’s a “religious Cubs fan” through and through. In fact, she declared for recreation sport and tourism with a concentration in sports management in the hopes of becoming an analyst for a Major League Baseball team. 

“I was really impressed with the prestige that the concentration in sports management held, it’s something that I’ve been dreaming of for a very long time. The fact that I found a prestigious program at a school I’m passionate about drove me to Applied Health Sciences,” she said. 

“Sports management is my declared major but I may get involved in kinesiology or other opportunities this college has to offer.” 

Illinois freshmen Sam Rausenberger from Carterville and Mihir Patel from Vandalia share an interest in the human body and how it works. Majoring in kinesiology at AHS seemed an easy choice for both of them. 

“I like sports and fitness and I like helping people,” Patel said. “Physical therapy spoke to me, basically, I feel like that’s something I can do.” 

Both freshmen are interested in the physical therapy path, specifically in the world of athletics. 

“I took a health class my freshman year which was required and I loved learning about the skeleton and muscles and all the movement,” Rausenberger said. “I didn’t take another class like that until anatomy in my senior year, we did the bones and learned in-depth how muscles move and how they work. I was super interested in that and knew this is what I want to do.”

After putting their names in for student organizations at the AHS Student Welcome—and in Patel’s case, catching a prized Illini shirt thrown into the crowd at Sights and Sounds—both are excited to explore the U. of I.’s opportunities. 

“I’m definitely looking forward to getting to know more people and knowing the campus, what I’ve seen so far. It’s a beautiful campus. I just don’t know my way around yet,” Rausenberger said. 

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu
 

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Service to the profession marks John J. O’Neill’s legacy in Speech and Hearing Science

Aug. 22, 2023 | Bruce Adams

John O’Neill is credited with playing “a major role in the transformation of Speech and Hearing Science” at Illinois
(Illinois archives)

The Department of Speech and Hearing Science’s history of cultivating a spirit of leadership through mentoring and service to the profession owes much to John J. O’Neill.

O’Neill interviewed to chair the Division of Speech and Hearing Science in the Department of Speech at the 1958 American Speech and Hearing Association convention in New York. Already known for his expertise in clinical psychology and rehabilitative audiology, O’Neill left Ohio State University for Illinois in 1959, where, as the new division chair, he instilled the expectation that faculty and students would match his dedication to service. Upon his hiring, O’Neill was charged with further integrating the speech and audiology areas, developing the graduate program, obtaining grants and centralizing the department under one roof. He tackled all this as he widened the department’s contributions to speech and hearing programs across Illinois and beyond. Department faculty, graduate students and undergraduates contributed to training, clinical work and the efforts of professional associations at the local, state and national levels.

In his obituary, published by the News-Gazette on July 5, 2009, O’Neill was described as having “played a major role in the transformation of Speech and Hearing Science at the University of Illinois to its current status as the nationally ranked Department of Speech and Hearing Science and served as the first head of the department from 1973 to 1979.” O’Neill published more than 80 journal articles and technical reports and was the author or co-author of four textbooks. Although he retired in 1991, O’Neill remained active in SHS, serving for years as the department’s format checker for theses and dissertations.

In a 2010 tribute at the Annual John J. O’Neill Lecture, Tanya Gallagher, a former dean of the College of Applied Health Sciences and an alumna of SHS, called O’Neill a “highly respected researcher whose landmark work advanced the field of aural rehabilitation, a skilled administrator who built one of the leading speech and hearing science programs in the nation and helped our national association take its place as one of the major scientific and professional organizations.”

Gallagher—who received her master’s degree and Ph.D. from SHS, said, “Dr. O’Neill had attracted some of the brightest thinkers of our field to this program, and the intellectual vitality within the small white house that housed the program then [the old Lorado Taft house] was palpable and energizing. It was the place to be, where it was happening, and we knew it even then.” 

Another SHS alumna, Judith LeDuc, had a similar feeling about O’Neill. 

“I first met John O’Neill when I came to interview him about the Speech Science Program at Illinois. I walked into his office, and there he was, with his feet resting on his desk. I thought, ‘My kind of guy!’”

LeDuc, who got her master’s degree in 1971, went on to work as a speech-language pathologist at the University of Illinois Medical Center and developed both outpatient and inpatient hospital-based pediatric programs, as well as a private practice. 

“I was interested in child language, and he assured me that the faculty at Illinois brought a wealth of knowledge and research to the program,” said LeDuc, who has also been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, Rush Medical Center  and DePaul University. “He was passionate about the field, dedicated to serving, and somehow was always able to hold the department together, as faculty and students paraded through.”

John Deck, who got his master’s and Ph.D. from Illinois, credited O’Neill for his guidance and direction and said O’Neill encouraged him to take a job as a speech pathologist at the Danville VA Medical Center in Illinois. Through the years at Danville, more than 500 graduate and doctoral students from the division (and later, department) of SHS gained clinical experience. O’Neill was Deck’s Ph.D. advisor, and, as Deck said, “We would discuss important legislation affecting funding for the profession. Conversations Dr. O’Neill and I had about legislation struck close to home … During our discussions, I discovered that no one among the Big Ten schools in speech and hearing did more to help create traineeships for graduate students than John J. O’Neill. So many of us have benefited from his efforts and his legacy.”

O’Neill and Deck, who later worked at Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, worked to secure traineeships with stipends for speech-language-pathology and audiology students. 

O’Neill was also a pioneer in forming the Illinois Speech and Hearing Association in February 1960, and he was a co-founder in 1966 and past president of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology, which helped establish the department’s national reputation in that area. In 1969, he served as president of ASHA. He was a charter member of the Council on Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders, a member of numerous ASHA committees and boards, and ultimately a recipient of ASHA’s Honors of the Association in 1979.

O’Neill’s activity with these associations transferred to his students and colleagues as well. LeDuc, for example, said O’Neill “encouraged us to attend Illinois Speech and Hearing Association meetings, as well as ASHA annual meetings. It was soon after graduate school that I began to serve on ASHA’s legislative council, and ISHA’s program and local arrangements committees. My work on ASHA’s boards and councils continued for more than 40 years. For most of my career, I served the underserved. It was that O’Neill voice in my head.”

The SHS faculty today continue in that spirit. Faculty serve on committees within ASHA, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation and the Acoustical Society of America. They are officers in the Eastern Illinois Speech-Language Hearing Association and the Illini Chapter of the Illinois Association of the Deaf, and they serve on Advisory Boards of the Illinois State Board of Education, the American Tinnitus Association and the National Down Syndrome Society, among others. 

“As we celebrate the department’s history and the contributions of its pioneering faculty, we also affirm our commitment to giving back to the community, serving the professions, and honoring the legacy of those who came before us,” said Department Head Pamela Hadley.

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Student Spotlight: Kaley Graves, from patient to practitioner

Aug. 22, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

Audiology wasn’t initially Graves’ field of choice—she graduated from University of Illinois Springfield in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology

Third-year audiology doctoral student Kaley Graves is missing the first week of classes this fall, but she has a great excuse.

Thanks to her sterling accomplishments as a budding audiologist, she’s on an all-expenses-paid trip to visit one of the premier hearing aid manufacturers in the world: Oticon’s headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“I had to reread that email six times to make sure it said ‘Denmark’ and not ‘Denver, Colorado,’ or something,” Graves said. It’ll be her first time out of the United States.

Earlier this year, Graves was selected as one of six recipients of the American Academy of Audiology Foundation’s Empowering Student Scholarship, sponsored by Oticon and awarded to students who show “exceptional promise” as future clinical audiologists.

“I have hearing aids in both ears, so I’ve been the patient my entire life,” Graves said. “Now I’m on the other side of the booth and can be the clinician, which I think is so fun.”

Graves grew up in Monticello, Ill., a half-hour drive from the University of Illinois campus. Audiology wasn’t initially her field of choice—she graduated from University of Illinois Springfield in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

That career path didn’t fit, but Graves found her way into intriguing research projects that focused on hearing and visual cues. One of her undergraduate mentors encouraged her to apply for a behavioral neuroscience position at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, also in Springfield, where she studied the development of tinnitus in lab rats.

Graves went on to perform hearing research for a decade, but she craved more human connection on the job. A suggestion from her own doctor set Graves on her current course.

“I was admittedly kind of a pain in the butt to my current audiologist about all the things that she was constantly doing to my hearing aids and all of the things that she would do on a daily basis with her patients,” Graves said.

“And she eventually was like: ‘You should probably just get into this field. You’ve already got the hearing background, go deal with people—it’s more fun.” Graves’ mother was especially encouraging of her daughter’s new career path. When her parents first discovered their child had hearing loss, “it was terrifying,” Graves said.

“[My mom] said for patients, especially families that have young kids who are finding out their child has a hearing loss, it’s going to be huge for them to see their doctor has a hearing loss and can be successful in life.”

Today, Graves keeps busy as president of the Student Academy of Audiology chapter at Illinois. The registered student organization doubles as a networking site for SHS students and an outreach arm for the department.

A few events they’ve taken on: Hearing safety stand-ups at the Urbana’s Market at the Square, free hearing screenings in the SHS building, and recently, cerumen (earwax) removals for the ClarkLindsey Village retirement community.

Especially for older adults, earwax buildups can be a primary cause of muffled hearing, Graves said. Graves and another member of her graduate cohort cleared residents’ ears while a handful of first-year students in the audiology program cleaned their hearing aids.

“Being able to do a minimal amount of work over two hours to improve their quality of life was huge,” Graves said. “So many people left that room super happy.”

Her audiology work extends to Illinois’ student population as well. Graves has booked a hearing safety presentation in the fall for the student bandmates of the Marching Illini.

“The first thing that I’m really going to try and drive home to them is to please wear ear plugs when you’re out and constantly practicing,” Graves said. “We were taught first year what the acceptable levels of noise exposure are over X amount of time. If they’re out practicing for four hours and it’s about 90 decibels, they need to do something to mitigate the effects of those loud noises.”

For now, though, Graves is preparing her Denmark itinerary: visiting Tivoli Gardens, one of the world’s oldest amusement parks, and seeing the Danish Crown Jewels. “I’m super excited to go be a tourist,” she said.

Of course, she’s ready for her Oticon visit. “They do a lot of innovation, they do a lot of workshops, they do a lot of Ph.D. student type-things,” Graves said. “I am just really, really fascinated by what I’m going to see behind the scenes at their research center.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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Lynne Barnes appointed to lead Master of Health Administration program

Aug. 01, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Longtime healthcare executive takes lead role in AHS

Lynne Barnes

Lynne Barnes, past president of Carle Foundation Hospital, has been hired as director of the Master of Health Administration degree program in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois.

Barnes’ appointment officially begins Aug. 1, succeeding interim director Laura Rice.

Raised in Catlin, Ill., Barnes was hired by Carle Health in January 1977 straight out of college as the system’s first occupational therapist. She directed several departments and worked numerous administrative roles before finishing her Carle career as president of the Urbana hospital.

“Throughout her career, Lynne has served the community and distinguished herself as a leader in healthcare innovation,” said Kim Graber, head of the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. “Her background in clinical operations and occupational therapy, along with her distinguished experience as president of Carle Foundation Hospital, will provide graduate students in health administration with unrivaled leadership.

“Lynne has boundless energy and will help take our program to the next level.”

Barnes will continue to teach as a part-time clinical professor, a role she’s held at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2007. A frequent community volunteer, Barnes is board chair of the Stephens Family YMCA and Experience Champaign-Urbana, and previously served as a member of the United Way of Champaign County and Urbana City Council.

Barnes oversaw the growth of Carle Foundation Hospital’s therapy programs and clinical operations, leading the flagship location in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic before retiring in Feb. 2022.

Barnes earned her bachelor’s degree in the emerging field of Occupational Therapy from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1976, later obtaining her master’s degree in public administration from Illinois in 1988.

The MHA program was established in 2017 and accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health in 2019.

The opportunity to educate the next generation of healthcare leaders compelled Barnes to take the MHA directorship. She will work to develop the department’s new online MHA program and strengthen its position in the graduate landscape.

“The support has been terrific,” Barnes said. “I have no doubt we will be able to achieve these goals. I enjoy teamwork and I have already experienced that it is ‘all hands on deck’ to continue to improve and optimize our educational opportunities for our students.

“After decades of working in healthcare, it’s really exciting for me to have the opportunity to impact the careers of future healthcare leaders.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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College of Applied Health Sciences
110 Huff Hall
1206 South 4th Street
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 333-2131