The CECH Chats Podcast

00:10:00

Rodney Wilson

Welcome to CECH  chats, a podcast from the University of Cincinnati's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services and Information Technology. In this podcast, we speak with faculty about their ongoing research, chat with students about the work they do in CECH  to learn from staff members about their important roles in the college and more.

Hi, I'm Rodney Wilson, content specialist for CECH . Today, CECH  chats welcomes Tina Stan Chapman, a professor of early childhood education and human development at the University of Cincinnati and a Fulbright Specialist Scholar for the US Department of Defense. She specializes in the development of peer relationships and children with disabilities, specifically preschoolers with specific language impairment, behavioral disorders, and autism spectrum disorder.

Her current research centers on designing playgrounds that incorporate the principles of universal design for all individuals are able to participate and play regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and ability. This interest can be traced all the way back to 1997. During her time as a teacher at Miami-Dade Public Schools, when she observed two of her students who, due to special needs, were unable to enjoy recess on the playground with the rest of the class.

The moment was a catalyst for her research, and today she's designed for playgrounds that are accessible to not only children of all abilities, but also the adults who accompany them. In this episode, Stanton Chapman tells us about designing playgrounds that adhere to universal design. She talks about the challenges of aligning academic research with the business operations of playground manufacturers, bringing zip lines to American playgrounds, benefits of accessible equipment for grandparents, and more.

I thank you for joining us today, Tina.

 

01:55:15

Tina Stanton-Chapman:

Thank you for having me.

 

01:57:03

Rodney Wilson:

To get started, tell us about yourself.

 

01:59:22

Tina Stanton-Chapman:

I'm originally actually from Cincinnati, Ohio. I've come around a bit. I did, I grew up on the west side of town in White Oak, and then I did my undergraduate at USC, but I was in the psychology program and graduated with honors there. And then I moved off to Miami to attend the university of Miami in Florida to work on a master's degree in early childhood special education.

And I also taught when I was there, a pre-K, special education program for a couple of years. And then I went to Nashville to get a doctorate at Vanderbilt in early childhood special ed. And then my first job was at the University of Virginia as my faculty position, where I coordinated their early childhood special ed program.

And later I also added on their severe disabilities program.

 

02:59:17

Rodney Wilson

Were you always interested in education and childhood experience, or is that something that you developed? Well, in college.

 

03:07:07

Tina Stanton-Chapman

I was interested in children's peer relationships, so when I was at UC in the honors program, we had to do a, working on a, like, an honors, capstone project or a thesis, and I joined in. He's no longer here is at the University of Pittsburgh, but it was Robert Noel, and he did a study on ocean ships of children who had chronic illnesses.

And so I joined in and really learned research as a process as an undergrad, which was really unique because not many undergrads get an opportunity to collect data, be a part of a research project, do a poster presentation at a national conference, and then be able to, publicize their work. So I did that. But then when I was going to the University of Miami, I originally wanted to do developmental psychology, but the person I wanted to work with, Annette La Graca, was not accepting students because she was looking at how children because it Hurricane Andrew had just happened in I think it was 92 and I was applying to go there in 95.

She was studying how children, peer relationships were impacted by, Hurricane Andrew. But she wasn't accepting students. But then they they said that there was a person in their education department named Sharon Von, who's now at Texas and does the science of reading that we've had to do in Ohio. But she was there at the time, University of Miami, studying the relationships of students with learning disabilities.

And so I actually switched my, discipline to go into education. And then she, was able to support my tuition and funding and, why was there so I could work on her project, which was a fantastic learning opportunity.

 

05:05:21

Rodney Wilson

All right. And then your PhD at Vanderbilt, can you share some of the work that you're doing in that avenue study?

 

05:13:29

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Sure. So I worked closely with Ann Kaiser. Who studies language development and how parents can do interventions with their, students. At the time, she was working with students who had language impairments, and she was teaching parents how to facilitate language in their young children who were delayed. She focused on 3 to 5 year olds, but she knew my interest in peer relationships.

So she had just gotten a grant from the U.S. Department of Education focusing on, peers, how it could peers implement training, but instead of the adults. And so when I went to Vanderbilt in their early childhood special ed program, she asked me to lead that project on how do we get three, four, and five year olds to be able to help kids who struggle with language impairments to talk?

And so I developed a study under her mentorship on using storybooks to guide both the target child and the peer on how to initiate conversations, how to respond to a peers initiation, or, to play or initiation of talking. How to turn. Because a lot of students with language impairments have a hard time interacting with peers. And usually it's a one word response.

But they don't maintain that. So we worked on how do you maintain player conversation and how do you appropriately get someone's attention. So I did that for four years, and that became part of my dissertation because and quickly learned that she was not interested in the peer work as much as she was on how because her projects kid talk and she does a lot, she developed what's called milieu teaching.

She was more interested in the parent piece, and she has since worked with students with autism and then young infants and toddlers on training parents. But me, she gave me a wonderful opportunity to work with peers, make that my research agenda, and take that off to the University of Virginia. When I first started my faculty work.

 

07:29:01

Rodney Wilson

And as you said, you were at the University of Virginia for a little over ten years.

 

07:34:03

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Yes. 11 years.

 

07:35:18

Rodney Wilson

Okay. And then, what was it like coming back to, Cincinnati, to the University of Cincinnati and coming back to where you did your undergraduate work?

 

07:44:03

Tina Stanton-Chapman

It was a little bit of a learning curve in the sense that, you see, has more first gen students than Virginia had had at the time. And so it was, really work learning to work with students who they haven't had, family members who've gone through college before. So it was a different learning curve because it at UVA, many of lobbyist and Congress and senators from DC, their children went to UVA.

So they had a very different perspective. And they were they always knew that they were going to college. But it you see that always isn't the case with the students that we have. So I also found it not only a learning curve, but it was an opportunity to really get students invested in research. And so I've been able to work with some undergraduate and graduate students on building their research agenda, because some students are interested in that, but they don't even know where to start.

 

08:46:02

Rodney Wilson

Yeah. Well, now we're going to talk about your research, your current research centers on designing playgrounds that incorporate the principles of universal design. Can you explain to me and our listeners what is meant by universal design?

 

09:02:11

Tina Stanton-Chapman

So universal design is an approach that how I talk right now, it's it started out of architecture and it was a lot on how we can make things everyday. Environments work for people with disabilities. And when I actually I got interested in playgrounds because when I first started my teaching job at, I was teaching in my, Miami Dade public schools, there was a I came in to a pre-K program.

My class was 24 students with 12 at risk and 12 students who had disabilities. And so when I went on the playground, I noticed that two students in particular could not interact at all. They they were basically doing nothing. I had one little boy who, was diagnosed with autism, and at that time, which was, I was teaching a 97 idea.

It came out in 1990, and we were still learning how to teach students with autism. It was a basically new category. Our training programs didn't really get us too involved with that. And when this little boy went out on the playground, he never went on the playground equipment. He spent most of his time circling the playground and picking grass, but would not interact with other kids.

And I was fascinated. I couldn't figure out what was it. And then another student I had in my class was in a wheelchair. And prior, to me coming there because I came at the beginning of the year, they were used to the it was hard for the students with an wheelchair to get around because the student was not mobile.

So she crawled in the classroom. And so many of the the teachers there would just set the students in wheelchairs around the, playground, but we'd never let them get out of their wheelchair. And that really bothered me because for that 30 minutes, that student and the student with autism really never had a chance to explore. And, and so I, I that's what made me interested in playgrounds.

But it wasn't something that my mentor at Vanderbilt was going to let me, because she knew better to study as a doc student, because when I got into playgrounds, I realized that it was, it's a business, and it's a completely different beast than research because you're taught I learned that engineers don't necessarily have child development knowledge.

They're trying to build the best, the coolest playground out there. But they weren't necessarily thinking about all abilities. They're just trying to build a product. And so the universal design aspect is I try to think about what are the abilities that kids have that they bring to the playground setting, and how can we make this an, a good opportunity for the students.

And so I realized quickly that playgrounds weren't working for kids, and what the playground industry was focusing on were, mobility concerns that the law under, that guides playgrounds is the American Disabilities Act. Ada. And it's basically just making sure that they can get from point A to point B, but really not it doesn't really care about can they actually interact and enjoy or have interest in that environment.

So I forget the universal design aspect is really focusing on what are they bringing and how can I optimize that. And so one thing I did was think about sensory disabilities because that was missing. And so instead of thinking of a deficit approach, which was currently going on, I was thinking about what can what can we do that is going to capture their attention.

 

13:06:20

Rodney Wilson

So kind of getting in to the idea of accessibility, what are some examples of pieces of playground equipment that, would fall under this, this category of intentionally accessible?

 

13:19:29

Tina Stanton-Chapman

So at, West Fork Park, which is what I did, it's on the west side of town. That, was the first time really anybody had focused on sensory. And so they're, a colleague that does, playgrounds with me. He is on the, installing in manufacturer side. And so we kind of got together to think about, how can we build a sensory maze.

And so there wasn't any products out there at all, because at the time, playgrounds, manufacturers weren't thinking about, anything to do with sensory. So we went to this place out in Salt Lake City. They design panels for businesses. It's more art that has textures on it, and they're colorful. So we got this crazy idea to go out to Salt Lake and kind of pitch our idea.

Could we use these panels that are good for outdoors and put them with some kind of mechanism to build a sensory maze? And we went out there. At first they were apprehensive about the project because they said, this is art, this isn't what kids play with. And so we had to do a little convincing and then one of the, higher administrators within the company had a nephew with autism.

And when I when we met with him, I explained, look there, there's children that just don't benefit from a playground. And many from the research I did from 2011 to about 2017, and I had some publications. I think I sent some of those to you. What parents and caregivers and professionals in, in education were saying were missing from playgrounds that the playground industry wasn't paying attention to.

And he latched on to what I was saying, and then he was able to convince people to allow us to use these panels to build a maze. And so that was the first project that we piece of equipment that we developed. We figured out the mechanism to put them together because the panels were just these plexiglass type, panels, and we worked with another company to get them to figure out how they can do, some kind of connecting mechanism to, to form the maze.

And then it's kind of exploded since then because from my research, some of the, manufacturers wind of what we were doing, and then now you see the focus on sensory in a lot of their catalogs. Now, is all of it accurate, what they should be doing? No, but it's a better attempt.

 

16:09:06

Rodney Wilson

And he also designed a park. Rebecca Park in Indiana is. Yes. Does that one also contain a maze?

 

16:16:07

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Yes. It's a little bit different. That started because, the police, chief at the time of Greensburg, his son had, was going to therapies at Children's Hospital. He has significant autism. And when he was there, they asked him, oh, you go along 74. Have you ever tried taking your son to Westport Park?

And he hadn't at the time, and he had reached out to me because I was on at the time on their website to any questions to reach out to me. And he did. And he said, I want this something like this here. And it's really hard because I can't get a grant to do construction. So a lot of these, like Westport was done out of, funding from property taxes.

And so they they put out a bid and they were able to secure they, they chose our project over other projects. But it's not something I can just write a grant for. So, the police chief and Greenberg said he wanted to fundraise, and he got together a lot of families to get that together. But it was it was the sensory maze that he.

No one has seen anything like that before, and he wanted to have something similar. He was a little bit smaller because there were, there were new, pieces of playground equipment that came out that he wanted to add there, too. So we went for a smaller maze than what you see it was for.

 

17:51:09

Rodney Wilson

Okay. And that was for you. Take your elementary education students out there as well. It's an educational tool. In addition to being a community resource and a resource for, research.

 

18:04:03

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Yes. So we go, every September because we also in education have universal design of instruction, thinking about how teachers can set up the environment, not focusing on the students disabilities, but focusing on their abilities and interest. And so I use West Fork as a means to show if you do it well, you can't really tell that what this playground is or what their instruction is, is really also for students with disabilities like West Fork is really, you know, for students with disabilities.

But when you go to the park, many of the the patrons there, including parents and the administrators, didn't know that we were going to be mainly a playground for students with disability issues.

 

18:53:12

Rodney Wilson

And you've written about the need for collaboration between academics and the professionals on the manufacturing side. And you mentioned that just a couple of minutes ago. And I know you've done some research into that as well. Have you come to any potential solutions for kind of bridging that communication gap?

 

19:11:17

Tina Stanton-Chapman

I will say it's been somewhat of a challenge because, in education or psychology, we've always been told that there's a research you have to do, and this is how you study a phenomenon. It was you have to do a rigorous task, then you have to replicate it. Well, that doesn't really happen in the playground industry. So I learned that when they test playgrounds, they basically an architect comes up with a design, an engineer makes a cardboard rendering of it.

They set it up in their like, office like business office space, and then they have their kids try it out and if their kids like it, then they go forward with it. There really isn't a scientific test. So I had to learn really quick that a lot of time. And when I was interacting with some of the people, through who reached out about, the maze and what they could do, what aspects of it could they do as part of their, designs?

I could tell they didn't know a lot about child development principles. So, for example, some of them were thinking that kids at 12 months were doing their alphabet, and that's not the case. And our kids learn by looking at pictures. A lot of the playground equipment for younger kids was a picture, and kids are supposed to come up with a way after looking at that picture, how to play, and I was trying to explain that doesn't happen.

They need hands on activities, and so it's worked in some ways because now there's, Miracle Play Systems has a housing, set that they use. It's different from the one we used at Westport because that was new. But they asked me for input and I said, well, instead of having houses that parents can't get into, you should think about expanding it to adults can play.

You need things that kids can spin turn. It's not just looking at a picture and being in. They're not going to be creative. They're too little to do that. Yeah, that happens when they're eight, nine, ten, but not at two, three, four. They need something to touch. And so that's been a little different. And then many times once they put the playground in, it's never tested again.

No one asked, how is this working. Could we improve on it? What's good, what's bad. And so they're slowly taking in research that I've done at West Fork saying just because it looks good and some kid like it, not all kids like it. And so it's been a back and forth process. I didn't dissipate all of that when I did this.

 

22:09:12

Rodney Wilson

The research is fascinating. Looking through some of the the studies that you sent over, one thing that really jumped out as we think of accessibility in terms of access for children and children with disabilities, but also, the grandparent study finding that grandparents were more likely to engage with kids in their play, and it actually increased the length of time the grandparents kept their kids at playgrounds to play.

Could you tell me a bit about that study and your findings? And were you surprised by anything?

 

22:41:21

Tina Stanton-Chapman

And as I was doing my initial research to find out what was working and what wasn't, what a lot of, parents and grandparents were saying was that usually communities build one big structure and don't have multiple pieces of equipment, and what we were finding in that work was that some kids, some grandparents, they can't they don't have the ability to climb like they used to.

And so a lot of the complaints that they were having about currently available playgrounds was having high structures that their grandchild could climb up, but then if something happened, they weren't able to go retrieve their child or help them problem solve to get them down. Sometimes a child would go up, realize the slides too high, don't want to come down, and then they cry and the grandparents stuck until they get.

Unless they get an another adult who's able to go retrieve their grandchild for them. And so that we realized that the playground industry wasn't tapping into grandparents. And we we know from now there's a lot of research showing that with millennials in particular, that they're not using as much child care centers. They're using their, the, their child's grandparents to watch their children, especially in those birth the five years and grandparents are taking their kids to the playground.

And so it wasn't anything that was tapped into. And so we thought it would be a great opportunity, along with focusing on disabilities, if we thought of more ground level equipment, because grandparents weren't saying that they didn't want to participate and play half the time, they said, the most I can do is sit on a bench and watch and hopefully everything goes well or just follow them around.

But as soon as they climb, I can't get there. So we we knew there we should tap into this because there is a population that they're watching their grandkids. They want to play with their grandkids. We just need to find the activities that they're able to do that the child's already going to be interested into. Now, that doesn't mean West Fork does have a tall structure, because not all kids like to be at ground level.

But there are multiple things that was for, for example, that they could do that grandparents can participate in. And so that that worked. We we didn't really I was really shocked by this study, how much grandparent I didn't anticipate. I thought maybe they'd participate and play for about 15, 20 minutes and then let the kids run off. But what my doc students and I found is that 45 minutes, 30 minutes, they keep coming back to the same environment because they do want to play.

They still have that ability to move around. It's just that they they can't go high comfortably.

 

25:36:27

Rodney Wilson

Your research also found that, children just generally preferred these universally designed playgrounds, and they choose to spend more time on them than a community alternative.

 

25:48:16

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Yes. So what we were finding is, like most communities, they invest in a really large structure sometimes at having a swingset to accompany it because they spend their budget on that. That big structure takes up their whole budget. But not all kids are able to climb. Not all kids are able to use their upper body strength very well.

 

26:12:04

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Not all kids like to be up high, so we were fine by having a number of different activities. And that's the one thing, because West Fork really wanted a swing set, a large structure. And when we did our proposal to them and said, look, we have all musical instruments that are metal that actually hold tune, but the musical instruments also, the chimes that are there, they vibrate so hard that people who are deaf can actually feel music and we brought in a zip line, that at the time we didn't have any in North America.

We had that shipped in from Poland, and it was considered like a risky type play, but it was different things that if you didn't like one thing, you don't have to play on that, that you could do something else. And there was enough there. By having those seven play zones, that there was something for everybody at that they could do that.

Could they maybe not do everything that that works. But there was other things that they could do. And I found that the kids were getting really imaginative, too, like the sensory maze at West Fork. They've never changed the, the configuration the way it is. They could change it if they wanted every so many months to have the exit and entrance at a different place.

They did it because what they're finding is that grandparents or parents would bring picnics there. They had picnics within the maze. They're playing hide and seek. They're doing other things before besides just doing the entrance and exit. And so they didn't they didn't want to change it. But by having all those multiple activities, kids want to stay longer.

And if they're crying, it's usually because their their parents or caregivers are telling it's time to go, which is a good problem to have. We ran into other problems that we didn't think about. I don't know if I talk about it a lot in my articles, but parking was an issue. Green Township had enough spaces, but on nice days you could have over 100 kids there.

I mean, we've counted over. I think the highest we got was two, 20, 226 kids at one time. That's not including their parents. It's just the kids, which is huge. And there wasn't enough parking. So a lot of parents park. There's a, neighborhood across the street that they were parking in in Green Township was going to buy property, a house that was next door.

And we said that might not be a good idea because we already have 200 kids. With the current available parking, you might double that. And we already we've seen when it first opened in 2017, we had by 2019 already think eight years of wear and tear in the playground. Everything's under warranty and we're able to fix it. But there's it's overused and we didn't want them to find out because when you have many, many kids, then other behavior problems come out.

 

29:19:20

Rodney Wilson

And you found that style of play was affected by the different approach to designing a playground. Could you talk a little bit about that?

 

29:27:15

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Yes. So most of the research on playgrounds just looks at how kids play. But what I noticed was in most of it is done on school playgrounds. And one thing that was bothering me was people say, well, kids always like playgrounds, but I knew from the students I had at school, not all kids participate on school playgrounds. So I wanted to figure out what is it.

And so I took I had a my participant do a school playground, and this same participants came to West Fork and I wanted to and they didn't come together. They had come at different they played together on the school playground, but when they came to West Fork, they didn't time it at the same time because I wanted to see how did they play.

And what I found was you do see different types of play, but it's based on the context, who's there as well? A lot of times they know the kids, they know their peers. They're more willing to engage in talk because they know what those abilities are. But when they were sent to like West Fork, for example, they didn't know all the kids.

A lot of times they were strangers. And some of the kids, if they didn't have those outgoing skills, they didn't jump in and play with other kids. They kind of watched what was going on. Despite having the skills that they could do. They could do that because I saw it happen at the school playground. It's just that the context of who was there doesn't necessarily always lead to that cooperative play.

Now, if you read a play break ground manufacturers catalogs, we're going to say all of this equipment leads to cooperative play. But in my mind, it's context. Who's there? Who's on that equipment. How are going this student is and you find more of the cooperative type play and school environments. But it's not because of that equipment. It's because of the kids who are there.

Whereas West Fork, you have all that equipment, but if they're not willing to engage with other kids, they're not going to do it. And so we could see the kids had the same skills, but they used them differently depending on the context.

 

31:35:20

Rodney Wilson

They're saying, well, at the end of all this, the goal is to get kids outside and playing, as opposed to some of the indoor alternatives that are always threatening that kind of play. Can you share that with me and our listeners about why it is important to get kids outside enjoying the fresh air and each other.

 

31:53:23

Tina Stanton-Chapman

In the playground environment is an excellent opportunity to get kids to be around kids of all ages, because when you see the school playground, they tend to be on recess with same age, same ability level peers. In general, when they go to a community playground, they see kids of all ages, abilities, races, ethnicities. They get to see a lot of diversity.

And so going outside this gives them the opportunity to socially interact and see how different diverse people interact to test their abilities, because that one kid could not be able to do a, there's a turf hill there, they may not be able to climb up at the first time, but going out there multiple times, they build their skills over time.

 

32:45:12

Tina Stanton-Chapman

And it gives them to challenge themselves. And I really like the social interaction piece because staying at home, it's with the same siblings, same parents. It's a bit they may not always get that type of play. And interestingly, when we the structure that came at West Fork, there was a system that you don't use. We didn't even advertise it, but it came with the structure.

It's called it was baby. And what it was is that, they were the playground manufacturers were trying to get kids to do physical activity, but they would use a parent's or their own cell phone and they would take a, they could use the QR code that was on the playground and would tell them to go over to the slide and do five jumping jacks.

But we didn't advertise that because we wanted kids to get away from social media and their cell phone devices. It's there. And it became a it's at West Fork, but we wanted kids to play and to socially interact, to, to be able to challenge themselves. And that's not always done on social media. So I think the outdoor play gives them all those opportunities.

 

34:03:00

Rodney Wilson

You've done a lot of interesting research on this playground. What are you studying right now? What are you looking at?

 

34:10:06

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Right now I'm going to start looking at the because I have videotapes of some kids on playgrounds. I want to look at what I've never looked at the interactions that take place on the playground. So I want to do some comparison. I did it with the one study comparison with the school versus the community playground. But I want to actually look at how are we building language and social skills on playgrounds, like if you have a well-designed playground environment, does that help improve language and social skills on the playground?

So my team is going to start transcribing all that data, and then we're going to code it to see how kids build their skills over time.

 

35:00:23

Rodney Wilson

So have there been any challenges to your work that you've faced as you do this design work and the research associated with the playgrounds?

 

35:11:20

Tina Stanton-Chapman

No, I think the hardest thing is trying to bridge the business world with the research world, because I think there's many opportunities out there to collaborate with the manufacturers, but they get hung up on research, takes too much time, to really study what works and what doesn't work. We're there on a business plan. We got to make our money and get going.

And what I'm finding is that a lot of the now they're coming out with a lot of if you look at some of the manufacturers catalogs now, they're doing these caged type, structures which look really nice, but they, they're using my framework because they, they're aware of what I do. They don't necessarily always want to talk to me, but they get Ahold of these academic journals and they're saying the terminology that I use saying kids of all abilities can play on that and that I can look at it and say that that's not true.

That's not going to happen. So I'm trying to figure out and I don't know, that's my next how do I tackle that? Because a lot of communities don't have experts like me or someone else who they can reach out to to get, okay, should we buy this or not? They just go to a manufacturer who gives them a salesperson who's willing just to sell them anything for that for their budget, and they're going to max out their budget if they have $250,000 to spend on the playground, that sales person is going to make sure they do it, but not necessarily is that equipment going to be beneficial for the community?

And I find a lot of times communities will build a playground and then they're disappointed. So I haven't quite figured out how to tackle that any. If you have any ideas, let me know. Because I get it, I get community officials call me all the time at you saying we are unhappy with this and we can't do anything about it now.

We wasted our money. What can I do? And so then I give them word on what they could do when they build their next playground. But that might not be for ten, 15, 20 years, because these playgrounds are built to last for a long time. So maybe helping communities more. And I'm one person trying to do it. It it's been challenging.

 

37:40:17

Rodney Wilson

I am definitely interested in hearing more about your findings as you continue to learn from these play spaces. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your work with our listeners and the community today.

 

37:52:26

Tina Stanton-Chapman

Great. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

 

38:02:04

Rodney Wilson

Thanks for listening to this episode of CECH  chats, a presentation of UC's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services and Information Technologies Marketing department. CECH  chats is edited and produced by me, Randy Wilson. To learn more about the college and its programs, visit us online at CECH  that you see that Edu. While you're there, check out the CECH  headlines page for recent stories, past episodes of CECH  chats, and more.

Until next time, thanks for joining us.

00:10:00

Rodney Wilson:

Welcome to CECH Chats, a podcast from the University of Cincinnati's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services and Information Technology. In this podcast, we speak with faculty about their ongoing research, chat with students about the work they do in CCH to learn from staff members about their important roles in the college and more.

Hi, I'm Rodney Wilson, content specialist for CCH. Today, CECH Chats welcomes assistant Professor J.Z. Bennett of UC School of Criminal Justice. A self-described Temple made student, Bennett earned his BA, Ma and PhD in Criminal Justice from Temple University in Philadelphia. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and he joined the School of Criminal Justice in 2022, where he quickly made an impact with his research into, among other areas, juvenile life without parole and his work with the Urban Youth Leadership Academy and the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program.

Bennett tells us about serving as an editor for the recently published Black Freedom Struggle and Urban Appalachia community centered book featuring various perspectives on black freedom work being done in Pittsburgh, the largest urban center in Appalachia. The book features a number of contributors from artist academics, high school students, to organizers, and is organized around five themes central to the exploration of Appalachia as a place and the impact of Carceral City on the region.

In this episode, Bennett also talks with us about growing up in Philadelphia and a family full of law enforcement officers, as well as experiencing personal tragedy in a city that struggles with the effects of gun violence. He also shares about his experience graduating high school at 15, becoming a first generation college student while still very much a minor, and more.

02:00:24

Rodney Wilson:

All right. Well, thank you, J.Z., for joining us today on the CECH Chats podcast.

02:05:29

J.Z. Bennett

Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

02:08:27

Rodney Wilson:

Yeah. So to start things off, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? You grew up in Philadelphia?

02:16:

J.Z. Bennett:

Yeah, I grew up in Philadelphia. South Philadelphia, to be exact, which I considered the best part. We have water ice, cheesesteak, pretzels, home with the Philadelphia Eagles, Super Bowl winning champions. So I always like to make that distinction. You know, all the parts of Philadelphia are great with. South Philadelphia holds a special place in my heart.

02:34:08

Rodney Wilson:

All right, well, what was life like, for you growing up in Philadelphia?

02:39:19

J.Z. Bennett:

You know, life was very, you know, interesting. My family actually, we grew up close by the tire market, where Rocky ran through, when he went away to art museum. So Philadelphia has a lot of culture, has a lot of history. But one of the things that really kind of shaped my experience is that, you know, there's no, you know, really no high in this.

But the gun violence in the inner city is really high. And so, you know, one of my friends, was actually, killed in the Drive-By shooting the same day he accepted his college acceptance letter. And that experience, kind of left a profound mark on my life. We both played football together. And so, you know, I started to think about, you know, how we could do things different, you know, thinking about opportunities, thinking about structures.

And it wasn't, too long ago that I had the opportunity to go to college at 15. And that was a really remarkable experience because it was the first time, as I saw education as a way out and kind of think about his life and his legacy. One of the things I committed myself to doing is really think about how do we open up opportunity structures for inner city kids?

How do we think about education as a way other means? I'll, you know, at the time I had played football, I also had went to, a gifted school for musicians. I was a classical French horn player in the Kimbolton, a youth orchestra. I thought music, you know, obviously was a way out, but I never I saw education really like the power of education, the transformative power education way out.

And so going to college at 15, it was kind of like being a kid in a candy store. And I always tell my students, you know, yeah, as a 15 year old is like 2009, probably shouldn't have had a college ID. But it was just awesome. It was just awesome. It was really this awesome place where you can connect with professors and, people all exchanging ideas.

And it was something that just changed my life, really greatly.

04:24:17

Rodney Wilson:

All right. So tell me a little bit more about the opportunity to go to college at 15. How did you arrive at this, this moment? Were you just a really passionate student? Were there programs that enabled you to do this?

04:37:18

J.Z. Bennett:

Yeah, that's a great question. I at the time, you know, I wasn't like a it wasn't like a super A student, but I think I just was a really good student. And I always say I think the Philadelphia school district, they were like experiment with children. I love it. And I say that jokingly, but basically what happened is now we come to know them as middle colleges where, you know, individuals who start in ninth grade once they finish high school, they have an associate degree.

But before they were middle colleges, they were actually, they wanted to see if children in high school could go to college. It was dual enrollment at that time, and be successful in college. So when they said, hey, hey, we have a new program, you know, it's a very serious program, you know, if you're interested. But, you know, you have to kind of be, you know, series because it's like your college transcript and it could follow you, for your life.

So I really didn't really know what I was kind of really getting into. I just knew I wanted something different. And so I took my first course, there when I was 15, just to kind of see you. And I was like, wow, I really, really awesome. I had a professor, named William Carlo Rouleau, who we just, we actually just met for lunch, because he had such a profound influence on me.

At the time, he was the chief inspector of a large police department, close to Philadelphia. And I just thought the world of him as a criminal justice student. He used to call me his son. He took me to work with them. And he is the one who really shaped me into thinking, you know, I can be a professor, and I can really do it.

And so going to college, with the dual enrollment program is the college credits count towards high school. So after the first year, I was pretty much that high school because I had finished, high school with associate degree. So, I would go to school for like part of the day and then like, the rest was just, because I was taking so many college credits at the time.

And, yeah, that was really how I started at 15.

06:28:17

Rodney Wilson:

I'm seeing you did all of your higher education at the university. Is is that where that opportunity led you?

06:36:03

J.Z. Bennett:

Yes. Yeah. So I, I'm so proud to be a Temple-made student. It's so interesting. It was kind of a bittersweet moment, when I left because that was just my world. In my environment, for so long. And it was so funny. I remember, like, even before I came to University of Cincinnati, you know, I was applying to a job to, like, you know, have a personal email, and I was like, kind of email wasn't really that vague back then, but I've been at the same place for so long.

I was like, oh my goodness. I never thought about that. I never thought about what leaving was. But it was a place where I grew up. And it meant the world to me to be a Temple made student. I learned so much, from those professors. And I remember even in my interview, they say, you know, you've been here so long, you know, why do you, you know, leave.

And I say I'm really interested about, you know, gaining new thought partners, learning new things. Cincinnati has a lot to really offer at the time, really big leader in corrections, which a lot of my research, but also learn new people and new places and making community. I think a lot of my work was very locally based, and we'll talk about the book later.

And so it was an opportunity to really understand just a different geographic environment, right? Being in the Midwest, which has like urban, suburban, rural and has is very interesting. Cincinnati, Kentucky, overlay. Right. The airport I always tell people you're like, you know, back, okay. I'm like, actually, the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky, which is very new to me, but it's such a is filled with so much great history.

Right? Ohio River, like National Freedom Center, one of the things that was like super awesome to me and I, it was kind of like a divine moment where I knew I didn't make the right choice in life. People were telling me about, you know, I should go to the National Freedom Museum. And since then I was like, okay.

And so when I moved there, you know, I didn't have anything to do. I started to check it out. And a part of my research is I studied men and women who were given life sentences to children. They had an exhibit there called Marking Time. And one of the participants that I knew, was artists. And when I went there, I'm like, oh my goodness, this is artwork.

I know this artwork. And I took a picture and I called them and it was really a full circle moment. And since then, it's just been an awesome experience. To think about, you know, the Philadelphia context and moving into the Midwest and really understanding the history and really kind of, Linda, my research capabilities there.

08:48:21

Rodney Wilson:

And, when did you know, during your time at Temple that you wanted to pursue criminal justice as a field of study?

08:57:20

J.Z. Bennett:

I always knew that I wanted to do criminal justice. I tell you a really funny story. I never knew that I wanted to be a professor. In higher education. I actually went to Temple to play football. But it's so funny. I'm the only male in my family. In my family not to be a law enforcement officer.

So my grandfather, my uncles, my my brother, everybody is a law enforcement officer. So I wasn't a criminal justice because I was going to be a law enforcement officer. So, all the law enforcement officers, they I don't have a real job, because I'm on the desk, but, you know, it's just a different perspective from where I sit.

I didn't know I wanted to be a researcher. When I wanted somebody to play football. I kind of knew that, you know, I didn't really see a great future. And then I wound up stumbling on a program called the Ronald McNair Scholars Program, which is, named after the black astronaut, Ronald McNair, who, lost his life in the challenger explosion.

And they named the program after him. But it was help. First generation college students and underrepresented groups, leave, learn how to, finish undergrad and go into a PC program, into teaching and provides. You are the resource. And that was the first time I had really heard, about a program like, wow, you can get a PhD.

And and so when it was time for me to graduate, it was go to the police academy. And I think at the time it was like around 30 some thousand dollars or go to school, which is the amount of money you get the summer and the breaks out. So I said, you know, I'll try school. But that program has meant like really a lot to me.

Actually, yesterday I got a certificate because I'm a faculty mentor now for the Ronald McNair Scholars Program here at the University of Cincinnati. And, one of my mentees, she's actually joining, CECH as a master's students down. And she's on her path to becoming, and a professor and into a research as well, which has been a full circle moment for me, as a first generation college student to, like, really receive and then to also provide and give back in the program that has meant so much to me.

10:56:14

Rodney Wilson:

And then at some point, you were also a co-founder of the youth or the urban Youth Leadership Academy?

11:01:23

J.Z. Bennett:

Yeah.

11:02:13

Rodney Wilson:

Can you tell me about this program, where the idea came from, the purpose and, some outcomes?

11:08:10

J.Z. Bennett:

Yeah. So kind of connecting back to the story I told you about my friend earlier. I was always trying to understand how do we open up the opportunity structure? You know, really think about how do we provide pathways to higher education? For me, you know, being a first generation college student, nobody in my family had ever went to college.

I was I thought that you had to be like Albert Einstein. I would hear people go to college. My man. You got to be like, you know, genius. You know, like, how do you like, where do you start? And so Temple some and we have a version of Urban League Academy here at University of Cincinnati, which I talk about.

But being at Temple and being in Philadelphia, you learn if you ever been to Philadelphia, we have a lot of colleges and universities that are nested within the community. Like like not only Temple you have, like Saint Joe's, you have the University of Pennsylvania, you have Drexel University. And so like Temple University is or is sits in the middle of North Philadelphia, and you have children who walk past the university every day and never see it as a place of, you know, a place of economic opportunity or a place where they can kind of change to direct their, their lives.

So at the time, I had a job, I was I was working in the mayor's office, in Philadelphia. And when Barack Obama was president, I was over the My Brother's Keeper initiative and also the Office of Black Male Engagement, to think about how to think about the trajectory of black men in the city. Doing that work, I got an opportunity with Temple to say, hey, we used to have this leadership program.

It wasn't called. I forgot what it was. Call it. It was had another name in it. Like, we want to start it back because at the time, this is probably back in 2015, 16 ish. We were, really concerned about high school dropout. People were really concerned about high school, even though the rates were better than before. It was still tragically bad.

Yeah. And so they were saying, well, how do we address high school dropout? So Timbo said, we had this new leadership program. We want you to run it. We know the work that you would you be willing to, you know, come back in a capacity. And I said, oh my God, this would be awesome. And so initially we thought it would be a high school program, you know, address a high school dropout.

But when we start to think about that space, it was very crowded. And it was a lot of programs that were already doing that work. So we thought what could be new and different. And so it was interesting. Is that just kind of like how he used high school sits across from University of Cincinnati at Temple. They're actually two middle schools that like sit on our campus.

And one of the things that we have realized that Philadelphia has a very interesting educational landscape where we have like, special mission schools, like kind of like public private schools, all these different schools. But in order to get into a competitive, high school, you have to have taken algebra and pass algebra in eighth grade.

And one of the things that we had learned was contribute to high school dropout is that these middle schools, these public middle high schools didn't even offer algebra. So there's a whole list of schools that students can't even apply to. And so we kind of set out to really solve that problem and create what we call the urban leadership Academy is that how do we think about, getting people to college and beyond and starting in middle school?

And I wish I could show you the picture. I probably could pull it up. But a student, maybe. I don't feel like I'm getting old, but, student we had, her name is Amani Howard. She, And it was in eighth grade. She just finished her master's degree from Temple University, and we've had her. We were working with her always since eighth grade, to till now.

And and she's from North Philadelphia, which is Temple University. You know, her cousin is going to Penn State. And so the whole program was how can we work with kids from this community and see the university as education, as a way of a means out and really create a pipeline to where success a lot of people talk about when we talk about the book and a little bit about the school to prison pipeline, a pipeline by which students enter education, spaces but get funneled into criminal justice spaces.

But I always believe that we create we can create the inverse and create pipeline as a success. And that really is with the urban leadership Academy about it's not really about being the best, program, but more of a model and a framework for how we think about those pipelines. Now we have a version of Urban Leadership Academy that, happens at the University of Cincinnati.

We partnered with the Cincinnati Reds. Their goal is to create major league citizens, right? They want to work with kids in inner city to help them get to the major leagues. But on that way, we're providing our education opportunities and we had got a grant from Department Education to also work with youth who were gang impacted to think about creating the pipeline for people who, may be in a gang surrounded by a gang or lived by a gang.

And think about how the university may be a spaces education, tool for them as well.

15:42:14

Rodney Wilson:

So you're also actively involved in the inside out prison exchange program here, you see. Can you tell me about that as well?

15:49:20

J.Z. Bennett:

Inside Out is a phenomenal, phenomenal program. I probably, I, I, they don't like to say this, but I, I consider myself an inside out lifer. Like, I took a class as an undergraduate student. I was a part of the think tank, which is like the only a couple that operate in the world. I'm inside of instructor.

So I'm inside out training instructor as well. But Inside Out was a program that, was founded in 1995 by founder Laurie Pompa at Temple University. Temple University was the first university. Take college students and take them outside of the classroom and go into incarcerated spaces to learn with people who had lived, experience, and that process in that is really important.

Our program is really, really important because if you are a policing scholar, you can go to a police district, can do a in law and kind of talk to police and kind of understand the structure. If you're into the courts, you can kind of go courtroom like any citizen can just go to a courtroom, kind of watch the proceedings, talk to lawyers.

But when you think about corrections, which is a big function, you think about, you know, we have almost two point to 2.3 million people incarcerated. That number balloons almost to 6 or 7 people. When you consider people on probation and parole, and people can go their whole career in criminal justice and never interact with anybody who's ever been incarcerated or even go to a prisoner in jail.

And that was my experience. That was my senior year. I was about to graduate, and one of my favorite professors name is Terry Trip. She still teaches is and our program, she's got a new award. And she said, I'm teaching this, this class where, you know, we're going to go inside of, a jail I want to show.

And I was like, I don't know about that, but I the trust you. So you know, hey, it's my senior year. We went into a women's facilities and the class was understanding women's issues, and it was an experience that just changed my life profoundly. I had members of my family who was impacted by incarceration, but just physically being able to go into this space, learning that people were better than the worst mistake they ever made, talking to people who had the handcuffs separated from their family just really changed my approach and my research agenda.

And, understanding that people didn't get to talk to people who were incarcerated. And I feel like it really changed my life. And so when I got the opportunity, I got trained by the program to teach Inside Out, coming to University Cincinnati. I was the first professor to bring inside out to our department. The students have love it.

They we, It was so funny. The media had reached out because they were is is safe. You know, they had so many questions. How does it work? And, the first time I took the class, the facility I was in did allow the media to come in. And so they just kind of interview the students and they saw the papers working with the facility.

That I teach in the River City Correctional Facility, which is like ten minutes away from, the campus, which they're phenomenal. They're super awesome, a great partner, Mr. Donald Jones and everybody who runs that program, it was like, yeah, the media can come in. We would love for them to kind of come in. And so it was funny, the reporter, you know, she was asking all these questions before she came in.

And then when the media came in, she said, oh my goodness, I, I see the impact. I could talk to these guys for hours. Like I could be here for hours is so fascinating. You know how it is. But that's the transformative power of inside out, this idea that we're moving beyond the walls that separate us. But understanding the proximity that, you know, in this human experience, we're all kind of humans, right?

And we're trying to understand each other, do profound social differences. Now, obviously, we have inside and outside students, but we all come from different cultures, genders, ages. And that's really the power inside out. And I think that's what's even needed like in these times. Right. How do we understand each other to do profound differences. And I think that's one of the things that the class really brings out.

So more so than the incarceration aspect, what we learned is that, wow, we can really learn from one another, in a space is just super awesome.

19:34:19

Rodney Wilson:

You mentioned how that impacted your, research agenda. And, you do a lot of work in the area of juvenile life without parole. Can you tell me about how you arrived at this area of study and some of the research work you've done around it?

19:50:29

J.Z. Bennett:

Yeah, it's a fascinating story. So it really was to inside out. So inside out. Most of the people that I take inside our classes are people that have life sentences. And so, you know, I was going to prison, you know, consistently every week and teaching classes, doing workshops. And I go to the prison one day, and Philadelphia is a prison in Graterford, which is now closed.

It was the prison they, created after Eastern State. So Eastern State Penitentiary was the first, prison in the world. And enacted that it was in Philadelphia to create greater for, you know, to make it better. But it's closed now. And they created Phoenix and so was going to great for prison and working with the guys. And, most of them, you know, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.

And, you know, we're going we always kind of, you know, make like make a little find before class. We make a joke, say, hey, we're going home next week. I'm like, come on. Like, let's, you know, we got to start class. Like, no, we're going to leave. We're going home next week. I'm like, what are you talking about?

They're like, we're juvenile lifers and I know about lifers. I said, well, they was it was a juvenile life. Or they're like, oh, you know, we were actually given sentences as like children, like some of them with 13, 14, 15. And I just was so, astonished. Right. So I'm like, okay. Like so I go home and I started doing it, I started researching and I started going to and I realized that, wow, okay, juvenile life was a thing.

Like, you get a life sentence under the age of 18. Some of these people are 30, 40 years. So I started researching some more and I learned that, Pennsylvania, my home state, had the most juvenile lifers in a world like like, how can that be? So I started researching it more, and I'm like, most of the juvenile lifers, even though it's like five over 500, like all 300 or so, 3400 come specifically from Philadelphia County, where I'm from.

And so that really set a fire and ablaze for me because I just couldn't believe that this happened. And I didn't hear about it and I didn't know about it. Especially being a black person and a person of color, I just I saw it just, rejected me. And so, one of the things is when they started to be released and come home, I was working with the group because I was working with them when, you know, was at the prison.

And so it really just, you know, they needed reentry support, right? They were coming home for the first time, men and women, you know, we're doing 30, 40, 50 years. And so they felt comfortable with me. And and after a while they asked, you know, would I be willing to kind of document their story and really tell it to a larger audience, which I was really honored because I didn't think I was qualified or, like so many people they could have talked to and that really kind of really championed, my voice for them to really kind of bring in light to, life sentences.

And no other developed country in the world does this except for United States. And so, that was really kind of how I got down that trajectory. So it's been really awesome. I'm a part of a research team, a national research team, that studies juvenile lifers. One of the things that is really important for people to know is that juvenile lifer is a new term, is a new phenomenon, and people don't use the term 2006.

And the implications was that that these children were not seen as children, that they were counted as adults. So when the national team we started working, we actually didn't have an accurate count of who was a juvenile lifer because they were counted as an adult. So the team for the first year, we went from state to state, actually getting actual people talk and talk about it and approximate.

But we actually got an accurate count of who was a juvenile lifer, which is really important and making sure people were counted children. The second year we did a national policy analysis because even though states were required to release every sentence, just like any kind of constitutional advancement, like abortion rights or whatever, every state is left to their own devices as to how they do it.

And so we provide just a dashboard about how they're going through different states. And, we're finishing a third year of our project where we're doing the second ever survey of our juvenile lifers, nationally, the first one was done in 2012, but it just were people who were just incarcerated. Obviously there were no release mechanisms. So we're doing the first ever.

It's the second ever survey of people who were incarcerated, the first ever survey, obviously, of people, who are out now. So it's been really fascinating. And it's really been really humbling experience to really understand this. And to think about how we, chart a path forward in our correctional system.

24:13:08

Rodney Wilson:

You mentioned earlier that you served as an editor on a book titled Black Freedom Struggle in Urban Appalachia. What are some central themes of the book? And, how did the idea for the book come about?

24:26:02

J.Z. Bennett:

The idea from the book came about. So after I finish, my PhD at Temple University, I knew I was going to become the Cincinnati, and I had an opportunity, to become a postdoctoral scholar, at the University of Pittsburgh and the center for Urban Education and Direction and our, team, our DNC, the second.

And I thought that experience going to really great because I spent a lot of my research experience on the kind of the east side of the state of Pennsylvania. But Pittsburgh is really Midwest is Appalachian inside the I can get a lot of experience. And so when I joined as a postdoctoral scholar, they had organized a conference around kind of school to prison pipeline issues and what they consider urban Appalachia.

This idea that, you know, in an inner city is very different Philadelphia, New York, Chicago. And so I was like, less Appalachia, like, you know, how does it work? And understanding the nuance. And so we really trying to understand the region and the issues that persist around incarceration, carceral, incarcerated kind of coal mines. That's how I really the project started.

And the book is so awesome because we really wanted to create a book that was really community setting. And so the book is added in the book. It has academic authors, community authors, high school students, youth authors, activists, poets, and really talking about this area that does not get enough attention. And I think one of the things, oh, now, you know, given the vice president, you know, he wrote his book, Hillbilly Elegy.

But before that, urban Appalachia or Appalachia, as you know, in this area, it has so many is very diverse, but there's so many myths and mis construction about what it is and what is it. And so we really want to get the voices from the people to really talk about, Appalachia and what it means. And also to talk about cars, rally and these issues that we have and our education system.

And so that was really some of the core themes of the book. And so they are different. And it's also, art too. So every section is curated art arts really for people to understand the region. And some of the issues that persist in the book was really important because a lot of times you'll say, like people like, okay, Kentucky and, you know, Cincinnati, and how is the Midwest and what's going on and how is it?

And people don't understand how diverse and how the issues are, and also how big the region is. Right. And what does that mean for a lot of people who live in that region politically, right, economically and how it contributes, you know, into everything we do in our nation.

26:44:02

Rodney Wilson:

What did it look like for you serving as editor for this book, did you seek out the authors? Did you? I know you worked with them.

26:51:15

J.Z. Bennett:

Yes, it was it was a really, cool and interesting experience the first time. What is the first book that I've ever, produced so far? I have several more under contract, which I probably a crazy person. But most of the authors we had, we knew because we had invited them to what they call the Shift conference, which is the center for Urban Education Summer Education Forum.

And so it was really that conference that we had invited all these people from all over to talk about the region. And so when we created the call for the book, most of those authors, not all of them, but most of them came from that conference. But, one of the great things about being the editors that you can, really shape and really develop the essays.

And so it was it was really awesome to work with all the authors. And, you know, at first it it was a lot because you're trying to because the book is not. We went back and forth to how we were going to organize the book. I think that was the most interesting part. So most books just, you know, they if you have the edited book, they might say, okay, we're going to do it by contributor type, which means we'll have academic authors, will have all the poets we have, or the artists will have the community activists.

But that really didn't feel like in the spirit of the book we wrote. And so as an editor, one that we spent a lot of time we curate the book. The book is not is curated by theme and not, Arthur's tribe. So you may see a youth all day first, followed by an academic author or the author or vice versa.

And so, that was really important to us, as we really thought about the, about that.

28:25:18

Rodney Wilson:

That came out in March?

28:27:10

J.Z. Bennett:

Yes, it came out in March. Okay. So still new.

28:32:15

Rodney Wilson:

I also wanted to mention that you'll be presenting a keynote presentation in the coming months at University of Cincinnati. So our listeners should keep an eye out for details about that between now and the beginning of the fall semester. Well, I thank you, Jose, for chatting with us today. The new book is titled Black Freedom Struggle and Urban Appalachia.

It's out. And, University Press of Kentucky. And where can people look for that title?

28:57:27

J.Z. Bennett:

I think they have it on Amazon as well. Barnes and Noble, but also, University of Press Kentucky site. And so they can look for it's called Black Freedom starving or Urban Appalachia. So they can go to University of Press Kentucky website, but it is also on Amazon as well. And so people can view their.

29:16:10

Rodney Wilson:

Again, thank you so much for joining us today.

29:18:15

J.Z. Bennett:

Thank you for having me.

29:25:28

Rodney Wilson:

Thanks for listening to this episode of CECH Chats, a presentation of UC's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology's marketing department. CECH Chats is edited and produced by me, Rodney Wilson. To learn more about the college and its programs, visit us online at cech.uc.edu. While you're there, check out the CECH Headlines page for recent stories, past episodes of CECH Chats, and more.

Until next time, thanks for joining us.

00:10:00

Rodney Wilson: Welcome to CECH chats, the brand new podcast from the University of Cincinnati's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services and Information Technology. In this podcast, we'll be talking to faculty about their ongoing research, chatting with students about the work they do in CECH, learning from staff members about their important roles in the college, and more.

Hi, I’m Rodney Wilson, content specialist for CECH. Today CECH Chats welcomes Professor Dave Kelley of the School of Human Services. Kelley is a renowned Sport Administration professor and coordinator of the Online Master’s Degree Program here at UC. He began his career as a teacher, coach, and athletic administrator in Ohio's Vinton County Local Schools before forging a path in academia. Kelley has over two decades experience in higher education and has significantly impacted the sport administration field through his innovative teaching methods and extensive professional expertise.

Author of a 2012 book about sports fundraising, Kelley has a new work releasing soon titled Internship Playbook: Skills and Strategies for Sport Industry Success. The book aims to distill Kelley’s extensive experience with sport administration internship work to share guidance for students looking to gain an advantage in pursuit of a rewarding career.

In this episode, Kelley talks with us about the role sports played in his early days, growing up in Pittsford, New York, as well as his journey from public school roles into academia. He reveals how he arrived at the idea for the intern playbook and shared one tip he considers essential for anyone completing an internship. He also tells the story of how he came up with the idea for the Cincinnati Public Schools All-Star Showcase, an annual basketball event that benefits Project Connect’s mission of advocating for and helping CPS students experiencing homelessness.

01:59:12

Rodney Wilson: All right, so to start things off, can you tell me and our listeners a little bit about yourself? I read that you grew up in Pittsford, New York, correct?

02:08:18

Dave Kelley: Yeah. So, that's just outside, suburb outside of Rochester, New York. Primarily, growing up in that area. I was very engaged in sports at a very young age. Participated primarily, in basketball. And became a really, decent basketball player. During my younger years, and throughout high school. And actually got recruited, to play collegiate basketball.

And, but unfortunately, an injury occurred, during that time. And really, you know, the focus then sort of shifted to, well, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? Because, you know, basketball was an activity that I really enjoyed, but I knew that that was not going to be a professional career for myself.

In terms of being realistic. And so, I really started getting into the coaching, components of, that and while I was a junior and senior, at Saint Bonaventure University and all the in New York, is where I started, my coaching, I guess you would call practicum, type of experiences where, I coached the JV or junior varsity basketball team and was also an assistant to the varsity basketball team.

And actually the, my final year, my senior year, Archbishop Walsh went 17 and one. Our only loss, was in the state finals to Bennett High School out of Buffalo, New York. And so, you know, it was a it was a great experience. And eventually, because of my prior, recruitment and relationship, with Syracuse University, led me to, start working on my master's degree, at Syracuse University, while I also served as the, graduate basketball manager, of the Syracuse men's basketball team.

So, that was a even a more exciting type of experience for me, where I learned the ins and outs of more of the day-to-day operations and administrative side of things. And that's what really, was compelling to me. And so, when it came time, to, making a selection, you know, what do I want to do?

With my career, choices and that sort of thing. I really gravitated towards physical education and sport administration. And so, eventually, made my way to, Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio. And moved there. And then started pretty much my career in coaching, teaching health and physical education and also, started working on my PhD, in educational administration and sport administration.

05:54:20

Rodney Wilson: So I was wondering what the influence of sport was on you early in, in your life. And it sounds like you just kind of found your way into academia through your love of sports and the influence they had on your life.

06:07:19

Dave Kelley: Yeah. And so actually it was when I got to Ohio University, I actually by accident ran into my future mentor Doctor Andy Kreutzer. And so primarily, the industry was set up so that from an academic standpoint, my master's degrees, as well as even PhDs for that matter, were primarily done for those that had an interest in collegiate, athletic administration or working at the professional sports level.

And my whole dissertation research was more on the interscholastic side of athletics, or high school. And so therefore, one of the interesting components that I thought, you know, that based on my research was that it's interesting that, you know, the largest segment of the sport industry was largely being ignored from an academic standpoint, meaning the training of interscholastic athletic directors.

You know, there's, you know, at that particular point in time, there was over 18,000 high schools that were basically administering, over 8 million or, you know, we're at, well, 7.6, but rounded to eight, roughly 8 million student athletes, that participate in extracurricular activities across the United States. And I thought to myself, you know, this is a huge opportunity, to really make sure that the individuals that are administering these athletic programs are properly trained, in athletic administration, because the typical pathway for an athletic director back then, was they used that you sort of, taught for a while, you coached for a while, and you sort of retired into the position of athletic director. And I sort of decided that, you know, I don't think that that's the most appropriate pathway that that, not that it's inappropriate, but that there could be a different type of pathway. And so why not educate people early on so that when they do matriculate through and graduate from college or graduate with a master's degree, now they can really, hone in on being more effective as an athletic administrator, because that's exactly what they've been trained in.

And typically, athletic administrators, were not necessarily trained, to do things like scheduling to do things like the hiring and firing of coaches. They were not trained to do, transportation schedules. They were not trained to do, risk management plans, and emergency action plans. They were not trained to do fundraising activities, and reaching out to corporate sponsors for, money to help support the athletic programs.

So those are the areas, that, I researched and ultimately developed into curriculum specifically for interscholastic athletic directors. And my idea, coming out of Ohio University back in 2002 was, how can we do this, but not necessarily make it inconvenient for the athletic administrator? And so how can we do this online? And so, I was one of the pioneers, that, came up with the idea of online education for high school athletic administrators.

10:18:20

Rodney Wilson: And then you came to UC in 2009, and that was that's the year that the Sport Administration program was founded. Can you tell us about the founding of the program? What was it like getting that up off the ground, and what were the thoughts behind it in the early days?

10:36:06

Dave Kelley: Sure. So, Bob Meyer was the founder of the Sport administration program. Bob is retired now. But he was the one, that brought me on, to teach a lot of the classes as an annual adjunct instructor. And eventually, I was brought on, in a full time role, by, I believe 2011 or 2012, I think it is.

I can't remember exactly, but at any rate, we had 48 transfer students across the campus that came into the sport administration program in 2009 to now we've grown to over 500 majors. We are roughly the 10th largest baccalaureate program on this campus. Which sort of speaks to the enormous growth that we've had over the past 15 years.

And so we've had, sort of a steady flow of faculty that have come and gone. But we're at a critical mass of faculty at this point right now with two recent additional hires. We have, at last count, with this most recent hire, we now have nine full time faculty members. And we also use quite a few adjuncts as well.

But, at any rate, that's sort of the genesis as to how the sport administration program began. I remember how, you know, it was very shoestring budget. I mean, I literally, in, in my office, I used to do my lesson plans, on top of the microwave oven next to the coffee maker. So, you know, now, you know, I have a fairly, you know, decent sized office.

So it started off with humble beginnings, but, has grown into a very significant, component on our campus.

12:43:29

Rodney Wilson: And you just recently celebrated 15 years of the program? You mentioned it's been going on for that long.

Can you talk about the impact that, you see the program having on the industry? I know that, the sheer volume of high school administrators is undeniable. So if you could just talk a bit about the impact that you see this program and your hard work over the past 15 years having on, high school athletics?

13:13:29

Dave Kelley: Sure. You know, one of the things that, again, it's it's, you know, I'm living out my, my dream and my passion, of what I did my dissertation on. And so, as a result, it's it's it's proven to be, you know, quite fruitful. Many of my students who have come through the program have now become gainfully employed in the industry to the extent that, pretty much, every student, who now is an assistant athletic director or athletic director.

I could point out, that better than half of the schools in the Cincinnati public schools have graduates from our program. That in the Greater Catholic League, which includes schools like Saint Xavier High School, Elder High School. As well as, LaSalle High School, among the others. All have graduates from our program. Where LeBron James went to school up at Akron, Saint Vincent-Saint Mary High School.

We have a director of athletics that's up there. So we are spread out all across Ohio and including as far east, because since we started our online master's program in 2017, now we've really have made a a even greater footprint across the country. We had, or have a, director of athletics in New Hampshire, which is as far east as you can possibly go.

And we also have a gal who is a assistant director of athletics and Kalaheo High School and Kalaheo wide. So as far west as you can possibly get. So, we're very, I'm at least I am very pleased, with how everything has transpired. And, and in addition to them coming through the program, from a curriculum standpoint, they also have the opportunity, as an ancillary benefit of becoming certified with our national organization, which is the NI triple A, or what's known as the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.

And so there are two designations or levels of certification that students can get. One of it's, based on years of experience, which is the certified athletic administrator, or if they don't have any years of experience as an athletic administrator, they can be certified as a registered, athletic administrator. And we've had many students who have taken the opportunity to get not only their master's degree, but then also become certified through the and I triple AA as either an R, A or CAA designation.

And really, the benefits of that is that it really helps them during the job hunting process because any building principal, any superintendent of schools, or even diocesan administrator worth their salt is going to know what the need is and what it stands for. And so when they see that our students are coming out prepared and certified. That really speaks volumes to those people looking to hire.

17:11:08

Rodney Wilson: And you're also a driving force behind the Cincinnati Public Schools All Star showcase, which just took place a couple of weeks ago. Can you tell me about that event and your involvement with it? And I guess what it means to you?

17:25:14

Dave Kelley: Sure. So to give you a little bit of context, I was actually, visiting back home in Pittsford, where I attended Pittsford Sutherland High School, and we're playing our cross-town rival, Pittsford Mendon High School at the University of Rochester. And that cross-town rival game was called the Rainbow Classic. And basically, it was a select game, to raise funds for the gala Sano, Children's Cancer Center.

And so I thought to myself, after attending that event, you know, what can I do to sort of bring that idea back here to campus and get our students involved? And so I brainstormed with the Cincinnati Public Schools. In terms of getting our students involved in things like ticket sales and sponsorship sales and, you know, all of the organizational, logistics that have to occur during an all star event, such as the, skills competition and then transitioning to the three point shooting contest and transitioning to the games themselves and the transit options that have to occur, to the slam dunk contest and that sort of thing.

And so working with the CPS folks has been absolutely outstanding. And so one of the beneficiaries that I wanted to figure out was, you know, because of the previous one that I told you about, you know, in Pittsford, they went to the Golisano Children's Cancer Center. Well, within the Cincinnati Public Schools, they have an organization of 501-C3 called Project Connect.

And they serve the roughly 4000 homeless students in the Cincinnati Public Schools, community. And so right then and there, I knew we had our, organization that we were going to support. And so therefore, the birth of the Cincinnati Public Schools, All-Star Basketball Showcase presented by the University of Cincinnati, was launched in 2022.

And was held at our own 5/3 arena. And to date, we've raised $60,000 over the last four years for Project Connect so that they can provide emergency housing. Because, you know, there's kids sleeping in cars, or in storage units, and things of that nature helps them with clothing and food insecurity.

And so this is such a win-win for us, because it gives our students an opportunity to not only hone the skills, and take what they've learned in the classroom about event management, and implement it into a showcase like that, but then also, the community service aspect to it in terms of the impact that it's made for Project Connect.

20:51:03

Rodney Wilson: That's wonderful. Let's talk about your book. You have a new book out. It's your second book. The first book was Sports Fundraising Dynamic Methods for schools and universities and youth sport organizations. But the new title is Internship Playbook, Skills and Strategy for Sport Industry Success. How did you arrive at the decision to write a book about internships?

21:15:02

Dave Kelley: Yeah. Because number one, I've been doing that now for roughly the last 14, 15 years. In terms of helping facilitate, students with, practicum, opportunities, which would be during their freshman, sophomore and junior years, as well as them helping them facilitate their capstone, internship experience. And so I also happen to teach, or actually facilitate rather, the capstone, internship experience.

Which I'll be doing this summer. For those students that are registered for the summer. And so over the years, I've gotten multiple, multiple opportunities. And still every day, my email inbox gets jacked up from organizations like the Cincinnati Reds, the Bengals, the cyclones, the Dayton Dragons, I mean, you name it. And then a variety of different high schools.

And so looking for interns to help, with their organizations in their operations. And so, much of what I wanted to focus this book on was to help them be proactive in the process of, getting an internship. Because at the end of the day, it is a very competitive field. A lot of people that I know, not even sport administration students, but students out of, say, the Lindner College of Business or any other, type of program that's on this campus.

Many of them want to work in sports, too. And so therefore, the I wanted to provide them with the essential best practices of the reality of trying to get into the sport industry. And so, things such as, you know, how to present a proper cover letter are crafting your resume so that you're really accentuating, your sport related experience, as opposed to just listing your regular job experience.

Nothing to take away from a person, who, happens to, you know, be a barista at Starbucks. But that's not necessarily going to get them a job in sports. Really accentuating that sport related experience through internships. As well as practicum opportunities. And while as volunteer opportunities like the all star showcase that I just previously mentioned, will certainly help them, you know, with, putting relevant experience, their, resumes and then I also talk about how to prepare in terms of mock interviews.

And I also talk about building connections and helping secure the internship and how, you know, you just when you first meet someone that you shouldn't come right out and ask for an internship, that, you know, you sort of have to build a relationship with that person first, you know, sort of similar to the way, you know, when I first met my wife, you know, I didn't ask her to marry me on the first date, you know, so sort of the same thing.

You don't ask for an internship the first time you're meeting, someone's you sort of want to, cultivate and eventually, make that a relationship before you make the ask.

25:23:29

Rodney Wilson: All right, so this is primarily aimed towards students, but do you do you feel the book also has value for young professionals or other academic programs?

25:35:20

Dave Kelley: Yeah, I think also it can also be applicable for even employers. I look for job descriptions as to what the internship happens to be. And, you know, what are those bullet pointed items? That a student, or a young professional, would be responsible for. And so oftentimes if I'm working with a local high school, not so much the professional sport organizations like the Reds or the Bengals, they've, they've pretty much got that down to a science.

But primarily with, smaller sport organizations such as used in high school. They'll come to me and ask, you know, well, what are, you know, can you help with that? And so I'll usually sometimes share with them. Well, here's a sample of a, internship job description. And, you know, obviously, you would fix it. Manipulate it to, modify it, to fit your situation at your school.

But at the end of the day, you know, put the internship description that lays out everything that you want them, to glean, from that internship. And that's another thing that I also, cover in the book is that supervisor intern relationship and that ultimately, I want them to transition from just the supervisor intern to more of a mentorship for those particular interns.

And so what that does, that what exactly that looks like, is what many of the chapters within the book, cover, and then how you transition from being an intern and what to anticipate when you enter the sport industry itself, and then what does then there for professional behavior look like in the sport industry? And the key personality traits that are needed in the sport industry are certainly key components that I cover within the book.

28:01:15

Rodney Wilson: So it's fair to say at this point, you're not going to succeed in the industry without having pursued an internship or a co-op experience.

28:10:29

Dave Kelley: Well, I'm not saying that you're not going to succeed, but you are going to increase the odds of securing a job in the sport industry by pursuing a lot of the things that I mentioned in the book. Because it is such a highly competitive industry.

28:34:21

Rodney Wilson: I know that you're recognized as an expert on revenue generation. Do you see any overlap between these two topics? Internship, obviously, it sets you up for and potentially provides income revenue to your personal income stream. But were there any points that kind of overlapped for you?

28:53:16

Dave Kelley: Yeah. In fact, many of the graduate assistantships, that I've created, for our master's students, as well as internship experiences with some of the local high schools that we have, do definitely overlap. So, one of which, an internship at Saint Xavier High School for as a, anecdotal example. I worked with one of their development officers, Ralph Nardini.

Speaker 2

To create an opportunity where the student would work during the day. On fundraising and development type of activities. And then in the afternoon and evening time, they would do more of the sport related, activities. In terms of setting up and breaking down, for events and event supervision and and so on and so forth, so that they have a really full experience of what it's like to be an administrator.

That is, you know, working that 400 hours of their capstone experience. That they're getting, you know, fundraising, relationship building, event management and all of those other components that, are necessary to help them and that I think and this has certainly been very true. Of all the feedback that I've received from not only my students, but also, employers, is that many of the students who have gone through that type of internship where there are revenue generation components or and fundraising and the like, coupled with the event management and other things that that gives them a leg up.

In terms of entering into a, assistant athletic director or athletic director type of position because, as you know, I've said this to my students and I told him I'd say this til I'm blue in the face until I retire. If you can demonstrate to any sport organization that you can generate revenue for them, you know, they'll they'll hire you, you know, regardless, of what it is.

And one really excellent example of that in my master's class, Applied Financial Management Strategies in Athletics. I literally put the students through the grant writing process. And so I partnered them with local high schools and their athletic departments. And so there's a team of about 5 or 6 students that are online master's students that will work with the athletic administrator and they will more or less agree upon a particular grant that they will go after.

Well, in one particular example, and there's quite a few that I mean, I go on for hours here because, it's been so successful. But to give you one example, Milford High School just outside of Cincinnati, here, their director of athletics, Aaron Zucker, was working with Josh McDaniel and his team. Josh, being the, student that I had in the master's program.

Well, Josh and Aaron came to the agreement that his team would be working on the NFL grass roots grant through the Cincinnati Bengals to replace their natural grass field with field turf. And that was a $250,000 grant. And so ultimately, Josh and his team worked on it from cradle to grave, gave it over to Aaron to apply. Aaron applied and was awarded the $250,000.

Fast forward a few months where Aaron had a need to hire a new assistant athletic director and he hired Josh McDaniel based on the fact that he was able to secure that $250,000 form. So not only did it benefit him, you know, in terms of the class, and that it ultimately led him to, being gainfully employed as the assistant athletic director at Milford High School.

34:01:05

Rodney Wilson: Awesome. Well, obviously, we want everybody to buy the book and learn your wisdom through the written page. But and there is one bit of advice that you could give people regarding sport internships. What would it be?

34:15:12

Dave Kelley: Yeah. One of the things that, I really want my students, and this is why I always have a check in point. During the midpoint of their internship, is really getting a sense of. Are you asking appropriate questions? And are you sort of not faking it until you make it kind of mentality? You know, if you don't understand something, make sure that you tell your supervisor that, hey, this is something that I'm not used to or I don't understand.

Or can you provide me more clarification as to why you want done? Don't be afraid to ask those type of questions for fear that you might not be knowing, of of what to do. And so, you know, for them to understand that this is a learning experience and that they shouldn't fear, asking question of their supervisors.

I would say that's probably the, a number one, type of thing that, I try to at least discuss with my interns, as they matriculate through, their aggression towards the end of their internship, I check in with them at the midpoint to see. Are you asking relevant questions? Are you, then developing a relationship with this individual or person so that if they were to talk about your work ethic and your work product, would they recommend you?

And that sort of thing.

36:00:02

Rodney Wilson: So finally, you mentioned earlier the importance of certification available to the University of Cincinnati and, in March, you yourself earned this certified master athletic administrator, recognition from and I say, can you share the process of attaining this and what it represents for you?

36:20:12

Dave Kelley: Yeah. Basically, the CMA designation demonstrates, the highest or most elite level of certification that the any triple AA offers. The there is a list of criteria or guidelines that you have to meet in order to be eligible for the CMA, and they score it on a rubric. And so years of experience as an athletic administrator is one component of the rubric.

Another component of the rubric was, how how often have you attended, the National Conference? Another component of the rubric was, have you presented, information? Regarding athletic administration at the national conference or at state conferences or local conferences? How active are you, in your local and state associations, that sort of thing.

And then there's a series of courses that you take in terms of risk management to title nine and sexual harassment to all the different types of, managerial strategies, and best practices, as well as, from promotional, type of things to social media, components, in those courses to there were 500 level courses, 600 level courses and 700 level courses.

And there was, I believe, 14 total courses that you had to take, in order to be, again, eligible for that. So, as I refer back, you know, you had had to have the, years of experience component to it. You're scored on that. You had to have the attendance at the national and state level conventions presentations, and then you take all the courses and then ultimately you have the option of doing a project or a presentation.

I chose to do the presentation. I actually, because fundraising is within my wheelhouse. I chose to, do a presentation called Fundraising Diversification in Interscholastic Athletics. And so I had to do a 45 minute zoom presentation in front of a team of critics, athletic directors as a team of I think there was like 6 or 7 critics that were there.

To listen and ask questions of me at the end of my presentation, before, I was able to, attain that status. So it's quite an involved process, but certainly definitely worth it in my estimation.

39:43:29

Rodney Wilson: Well, congratulations on attaining that.

39:46:05

Dave Kelley: Appreciate it.

39:47:09

Rodney Wilson: All right. Well, I want to thank you, Dave, for chatting with me today. The new book is titled Internship Playbook Skills and Strategies for Sport Industry Success. It's out soon from University of Cincinnati Press. And, how can people keep up with the status on the book and purchase it once it's out?

40:06:21

Dave Kelley: Yeah, I, believe that the UC Press, once they do come out with it there will be a link, which will certainly be shared among our social media at the University of Cincinnati, as well as it will be embedded within the Langsam Library. And there will be a few outlets that will help promote the book.

Through things like social media and through the library and some other platforms.

40:46:14

Rodney Wilson: We'll be sure to send out a social media update from CECH marketing as well, so we'll make sure people know about it. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

40:54:13

Dave Kelley: All right. Take care. Thank you.

41:03:03

Rodney Wilson: Thanks for listening to this episode of CECH chats, a presentation of UC's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services and Information Technologies Marketing department. CECH Chats is edited and produced by me, Rodney Wilson. To learn more about the college and its programs, visit us online at CECH dot UC dot edu. While you're there, check out the CECH Headlines page for recent stories, past episodes of CECH Chats, and more.

Until next time. Thanks for joining us.

 

00:09:27
Rodney Wilson: Welcome to CECH Chats, the brand-new podcast from the University of Cincinnati's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services and Information Technology. In this podcast, we'll be talking to faculty about their ongoing research, chatting with students about the work they do in CECH, learning from staff members about their important roles in the college, and more.

00:34:13
Hello, I'm Rodney Wilson, content specialist at CECH. On the debut episode of CECH Chats, we're hearing from faculty members and students from the School of Criminal Justice about their work under the Department of Justice, Office of Violence Against Women Grant Award in 2020 for the project, titled Language Access Barriers to Justice Among Victims of Violence Against Women with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, and to collect data, do interviews and focus groups around the experiences victims with intellectual and or developmental disabilities face when reporting violent crimes. While future episodes of CECH Chats will focus primarily on one-on-one or small-group conversations, for this debut episode, we have something special: A wide-ranging presentation moderated by project lead, associate professor Brittany Hayes, featuring co-principal investigators Ráchael Powers, also an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice, and associate professor Amanda Simmons from the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, in UC's College of Allied Health Sciences.

We also heard from co-investigator Leigh Anne Kingsley from the ARC's National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability. The ARC is a national organization that promotes and protects the human rights of individuals with IDD. Students at the undergraduate, master's and doctorate levels involved in various stages of the grant-funded work are also included in this conversation.

02:01:14
Brittany Hayes: Well, thank you so much for having us, Rodney. We are really excited to chat with everyone today about our project on reporting barriers for victims with disabilities. The PIs on the project are myself, Doctor Brittany Hayes, as well as Doctor Rochelle Powers and Doctor Amanda Simmons, as well as Leigh Anne Kingsley from the ARC, which is the national association for individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

So this project is multifaceted, and we're really excited to have eight students here with us today to talk about their experiences working on the project and with those three parts. We have a systematic review, which is just a fancy way of saying we are looking at the literature that's been done on reporting barriers for victims with disabilities and organizing it to look for themes within that research.

We've also looked at policies on law enforcement and victim service agency websites across four states, and those states include Ohio, Florida, New Jersey and Arizona. So four states from the four regions in the U.S. Cooper will talk a bit about that. Rebecca and Jackie will talk about the systematic review. And then our.

Big, big, big heavy lift of the project was we conducted a 152 interviews with practitioners, caregivers and individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and to the eight students who are here with us today, are going to talk a little bit about their research interests, but then the different roles that they've taken on the project, what something that Doctor Powers and Doctor Simmons and I are really passionate about is this idea of tiered mentorship, where we have students who are further along in different programs being able to provide mentorship and leadership to undergraduate researchers, master's students, and first year PhD students, but then also first year PhD students be able to provide that mentorship for undergraduates and master's students. So we really are trying to get students not only experience with research, but also experience with project management on that end. And so I'll I'll open it up to who would like to share their experiences of working on this project.

04:26:24
Cooper Maher: First, I'm happy to say I'm happy to speak. My name is Cooper Maher. I'm a fourth year PhD student. I'm in my final semester here at the University of Cincinnati School of Criminal Justice. My role on the project, I was mainly involved in some of the data collection for our victim service provider agencies and also of our law enforcement agencies.

So again, going through those four states that Doctor Haynes described Arizona, Florida and New Jersey, Ohio, and collecting some open source data from these organizations, as well as, sort of supervising and managing some of the other students on the project that have been involved with those in those capacities. So sort of that tiered mentorship idea as well, I've been involved in that with honestly, pretty much everyone that you're seeing on this call right now has been involved in that process, and that's been really fulfilling.

To be able to see, how that's been going and to be a part of that and to be able to, help how I can I guess with that, that tiered mentorship, beyond that, I've really been involved in a lot of the interview, transcription and qualitative coding, which has been, really exceptional experience for me, just to be able to get access to some of those tools and some of that, research experience that I might not have had otherwise.

And honestly, just being able to be a part of this project as a whole has been really fulfilling for me. To back up a little bit, one of my main research areas of interest is understanding fraud victimization and fraud victim decision making. And one thing that I didn't really get a chance to realize until I became a part of this team and was, brought onto in this project, was just how important disability, in particular intellectual and developmental disability is in terms of understanding risk and decision making among fraud victims.

It really plays a crucial role, and I don't think that's really talked about enough. And being able to be a part of this project has really, opened my eyes to that.

06:09:15
Brittany Hayes: Thanks, Cooper. I feel like this is a great transition to Kristonn, who was one of the students who was entering the information for this policy analysis, across the four different states and the different agencies. So, Kristonn.

06:27:19
Kristonn Stubbs: Yes. So good day. Kristonn, I'm a first year PhD student. My interest is in bio social and human behavior at the time when the project started, at least when I got on, I was a massive student and doctor has payment is, you know, great idea. She was like, hey, who wants to get involved with research? And I was like, oh yeah, research is going to be my first time.

And then when I got into it, it was just me sitting down for a few weeks. Just one zero one zero one zero, just coding was very, repetitive. And Cooper had always come to me and be like, hey, how's it going? And I'm like, ones and zeros, ones and zeros and but the best thing about it was, doctor who sent me, when all the numbers were compiled.

And what is that I exactly did and seeing that on paper, seeing that and, and a diagram seeing what I did was like, wow. And I think we don't really get to see that, you know, how the results came about, what was the whole process? And so that was a big thing for me. And I got me hooked on to under research.

And then I also got to meet, Cooper, who's I thought, yeah, he's leaving. He won't admit it, but, like, we're like, best friends now and all that was possible. Do this project, you know, a massive student getting in contact with a four year student. And Cooper has helped me out a lot. And it was just a great thing being exposed to exposure and being exposed to present in the field and seeing the end result.

07:58:29
Brittany Hayes: Thanks, Kristonn. I always say that a student in the program is a much more accurate reflection of the experience. I don't like to admit it because I am so young, but my graduate student days are very far behind me, and it's usually much more helpful to talk to somebody who's closer to that experience as you're making that decision to come for the PhD program.

Thank you. Kristonn, I'm going to pop over to Jacquie Burckley at the University of South Florida. She is currently the lone University of South Florida person on the team. But Doctor Powers, we did get her from there. So, Jacquie, do you want to talk a little bit about your experiences?

08:43:06
Jacquie Burckley: Sure. Yeah. So I am the lone voice from Florida. I represent, my name is Jacquie Burckley. And as Doctor Hayes said, I am a, criminology major and the PhD program at the University of South Florida. And I kind of was brought on to this project, through Doctor Powers, who is my major professor. She ended up abandoning me for Cincinnati, but that's okay.

It was for a good reason. And it kind of what what Cooper and Kristonn has said so far. This is the most unique working experience I've had in research. Right? So since I, I've been working on my PhD for a few years, I do have a bit more research experience than maybe some of the master's students do, on this call and, and a part of this team.

But this research experience has been much more unique than what I've had previously. If not just for the size of the team, but for the interdisciplinary nature of the team. I'm very much used to working with, you know, other criminology students and criminology professors, and we all have very similar interests, and that's a good thing. But being exposed to a variety of interests from a bunch of different approaches, either inside and outside of criminology, has kind of really helped expand my own approach to my research.

And it just gives me more of a unique perspective on the research I'm doing in this team or outside of this team. And it's also really given me some really great lifelong friends. I'm hoping you all come down to Florida and visit me. But the the I'll talk a little bit about the project that I am primarily working on.

It along with the, the nature of this project is that we've all kind of had our hands in a lot of different, smaller projects that have stemmed off from our larger research question and how this grant started. But the first and primary project I've worked on is the systematic review of, you know, the disability research, what is out there that we want to know about disability and gender based violence.

So, we've, started, you know, collecting like what what what questions do we want to ask? You know, what are the key terms we're looking for? And I've done, a systematic review or a scoping review before, but this one was much more unique in that when I thought we were starting, we were actually starting. I feel like we had 9 or 10 different, step zeros.

And that's just because the nature of disability research in itself, right? When we're talking about the language that we're using, what kind of specific word choice do we want to use? You know, there's not a lot of, there's some overlap across different disciplines, but there is not an agreed upon term for individuals with ID or cognitive disabilities or learning disabilities.

And what falls in and out of that. So every time I feel like we made progress, it was another well, have we considered this approach? And I feel like we had 9 or 10 different step zeros. But it was a good thing because I think our final product ended up being very specific, very intentional, and we have a lot of avenues to go after that intention.

So I, I've certainly enjoyed my time working here. I hope that this project and this team, you know, is a part of my long-term career. As you know, I love to stick around. I love this team so much.

11:56:10
Brittany Hayes: Thank you Jacquie. And I you know, you hear our voices, but on the screen everyone is smiling and shaking their heads and it's just really great to see. And that's something that's been really crucial to the team as well, is that we are doing research on a really difficult topic, and we've been able to come together and navigate the complexity of this work, but understanding why we're doing this work as well, I'm going to toss it over to Doctor Simmons and Doctor Powers to piggyback off of some of this interdisciplinary conversation, and then switch over to Leigh Anne McKingsley from the ARC, who is our practitioner partner on this project, to talk about their experiences and working and really how this idea came to be.

12:46:08
Ráchael Powers: So my name is Ráchael Powers, and I'm an associate professor here in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. And my research focus is on violent victimization and a lot of that gender-based violence. So sexual assault and intimate partner violence. And and then I also do some work on on hate crime as well.

And so we're this project came out was in part, data analysis and projects that me and Doctor Hayes were doing with the National Crime Victimization Survey. So we know that less than half of violent victimization are ever reported to the police. Right. And for individuals with disability, there's disproportionately less likely to be reported to the police. And for individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities or also sometimes referred to as cognitive disabilities, depending on the agency collecting the data, it is even less likely to be reported.

And so Doctor Hayes and I were exploring this with secondary data. But like any good research project, you wind up with more questions than you do. Answers. And we quickly realized that there's a lot that secondary data couldn't give us with regard to exploring the barriers to reporting. And so in those conversations is where this project came out, right, that we need primary data collection to explore these barriers to reporting.

And not only that, but we need qualitative data because quantitative data just wasn't cutting it. And so Doctor Hayes and I, who were both large lead quantitative researchers, decided to embark on a qualitative primary data collection. And then we knew we needed help, both in terms of methodology but also in terms of substance. And so we cobbled together this team that included Doctor Simmons, who I'll kick it over to next, and and Leigh Anne and the four of us together became like a captain Planet, like we all together became a whole researcher to be able to tackle this project, Doctor Simmons.

14:40:15
Amanda Simmons: Yes. Thank you so. Much, Ráchael. What a great, what a good what a great analogy. I don't I love that. So I am Amanda Simmons. I am a faculty member over in the College of Allied Health Sciences. And I'm actually a speech language pathologist by trade. And I usually tell folks I kind of fell into this research team.

I'm an educator, track faculty. So, predominantly support clinical in, in, like, the education side of things here. But my background is heavily focused in augmentative and alternative communication. So what we like to call AAC, these are communication supports. I tell folks twinkled  to wrinkle right across the lifespan and across diagnoses. I have had the pleasure of falling into this amazing research team, to kind of be the communication support person. I also have a decent amount of experience doing, qualitative research. So it really was, kind of a marrying of, of this team. I've also had the pleasure of bringing on some of some of the students that I get to work with.

So, there's three master's students in the speech language pathology program who couldn't join us today because they're all in full time clinical placements. So they are out around the Cincinnati area working as speech language pathologist. But Paige, Caitlin and Elizabeth have been fabulous additions to the research team and continue to work in support, efforts.

Kind of behind the scenes, cobbling it together, when they're not working clinically full time. So with that, I will pass it over to Leigh Anne from the ARC.

16:24.63

Leigh Anne McKinley: Thank you, Amanda, and I'm so happy to be here. So I work for the ARC of the United States. The ARC is a national organization that advocates with and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We have about 550 chapters throughout the country, and I've been working there for 29 years, focused on people with intellectual developmental disabilities that come in contact with the criminal justice system in some way.

And so through that work, of course, we do a lot around victims issues. And I met Doctor Hayes on a project that was, led by the University of Cincinnati. Now it's led by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. That was addressing crisis response and intervention training for law enforcement. One of the things that came up was the need to look at trauma informed policing.

But they understood that people with IDD often are traumatized and that can be linked to victimization. And you already heard Doctor Powers explain just how often people with IDs are victimized. And so that was something I've known ever since, pretty much. I started the ARC. We didn't have data back then on that. Canada did, but we did not.

Yeah. Then we got the National Crime Victim Survey. So we were able to start knowing the actual data around that. So this project is so important. And I mean, I'm thrilled to be involved. And it's helped me understand how we can apply research to these very critical issues that many people don't even get. They don't know this is going on.

It's very hidden in our society. So we really need to bring those stories forward and the data as much as possible to get, you know, the resources, right, to get society to understand and and accept that it's happening and then that we can create tools to address it. So that's what we're trying to do. And it's really exciting work, because we know that what we're doing is going to make an impact.

It's like the best thing ever. So just glad to be part of it.

18:43:09
Brittany Hayes: Thank you, Leigh Anne and are so happy you're here, and we're lucky to have you as part of the team. I pop it over to Dani Gerving since she brings a practitioner background to the to the PhD program that she just started, and she can speak about that transition from being a practitioner, working in the field to then being the researcher of the practitioners.

19:08:19
Dani Gerving: Thank you, Doctor Hayes. Hi, everybody. I'm Dani. Let me just start by saying I have loved getting to be a part of this team. I couldn't have asked for a more collaborative and supportive and patient team for my first semester in a PhD program. It's been awesome. Like doctors, he said. I came from six and a half years of field experience working with, Homeless Response System. I did know the Arc before this project, because I got to partner with them on a couple of different things.

So it was a very exciting step for me to get to join this project and get to see research in action. The point of joining a PhD program is to prepare for the next step. Right? And for me, I'm hoping my next step in my career will be focusing on research. So getting to see some of the things that I've gotten to learn through classes in action.

And getting to help on this project was really just awesome. I got to help with interviews and then with some data management behind the scenes, and both of those incredibly rewarding and getting to connect with the population that this project is doing the work for was just so informative and just so rewarding. For my first semester, I couldn't have asked to have a better start in a program.

20:36:19
Brittany Hayes: Awesome! Thank you Dani. We're lucky to have you, but you are now serving your research dream of working with.

20:44:23
Dani Gerving: So I'm getting to conduct interviews again with a different population, which is phenomenal. My research interests broadly criminological theory, but heavy emphasis on, certain populations, including individuals who are affected with substance use disorder.

21:03:19
Brittany Hayes: Awesome. Thank you. Dani, it's really just showcasing that the students here at the University of Cincinnati are getting that first hand experience. They are conducting the interviews. They are going out into the field and they're doing that hands on work. And as much as Doctor Powers and I like to sit in our jammies and analyze our secondary data, right.

It really is important that as a community-based action research team, that we are engaged with the communities that we're collecting data with. I will pop it over to Martha, who started at the same time as Dani and also was stolen from Florida.

21:43:04
Martha McCullough: Thanks, Doctor Hayes. Hi. My name is Martha McCullough. I am a first year PhD student in the School of Criminal Justice here at the University of Cincinnati. I also am from Florida. I did follow powers all the way out to Ohio, which was a very exciting feat. And one of the main reasons why I wanted to work with powers is not only is she a phenomenal mentor and support to me in this program, but she mentioned this project and I have a bit of experience with qualitative work.

My research interests revolve around public opinion and wrongful conviction. I've also done other aspects of victimization, from human trafficking to hate crime. Other realms there. And when she mentioned qualitative, I was just as excited to get started on this project, but also knew very little about the community and how it integrated with the system. So that was something that was truly invaluable to me, that I was able to open a new realm and a new aspect of an interdisciplinary work that I wasn't familiar with, but I was able to be a part of, and nothing was more important to me, especially coming to this program that I had mentors and faculty and support who believed in qualitative work and believed in the power of qualitative work. So being able to lead interviews, being able to facilitate being able to transcribe and code and really understand that process was so important to me. More importantly, I saw so many parallels in the previous work I've done, particularly in looking at like the barriers to the system and how victimization and reporting victimization can be very tough in terms of understanding how the system works for anyone, including individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

So again, this work has been truly invaluable. I've absolutely loved it, and I've got to make a lot of new friends and peers and mentors along the way. So again, joining a program that I knew one faculty member and being able to join on such a large project was so exciting and such a privilege that I have all this research experience, all these papers experience, all these things that I can integrate into my classwork and not only have such peer and wonderful peer mentorship, but some great faculty mentorship as well.

So I can't emphasize enough how much I love this project and how much I love this team. I'm very, very fortunate and lucky.

24:02:14
Brittany Hayes: Thank you. Martha. I'll pop it over to we've got three students left, and every Monday we spend time together coding in a little essentially windowless room. For those of us that do the coding session, we all say it is the best time of the week. It is the thing that we look forward to the most. I'm going to switch over to Rebecca first, though, because when Rebecca came on the project and started here at the program, she was really interested in consent, which isn't necessarily criminal justice related, but it is.

And if we can teach consent, then you don't need me. And that would be fantastic, because that would mean the world is a better place. And so when Rebecca got involved in this project, I remember her thinking, I don't know where this fits in. And then I could she can hopefully speak about our coding experience and we were just coding right before this.

And she's like, oh, this is all of it. So Rebecca, I'll pop it over to you.

25:06:26
Rebekkah Gross: Yeah for sure. Thank you. So I, came from, psychology background. So I do have a good, bit of qualitative coding, obviously, as I'm quantitative too. But I switched from psychology to criminal justice because I really felt like this theoretical work I was doing in psychology wasn't enough. I wanted to make more of a difference and make that difference now and not decades later.

So, criminal justice was kind of a perfect fit for me. Something that I really wasn't totally considering before. But I would not. This is exactly where I'm meant to be, and I love the opportunities that I am getting here, and I'm doing exactly what I want to do. Like Doctor Who said I am extremely passionate about consent.

Definitely prevention of sexual violence. And I really think that education and sexual health education, consent awareness is kind of the key to that. I always say I want to work with people before they are victims or survivors or offenders. I want to work in the very beginning of everyone's lives to kind of teach that consent awareness and that kind of education.

It's just very near and dear to my heart. But I also think it will make a really big difference. And seeing that through the interviews that we've conducted, with law enforcement, disability community members, victim advocate, agencies, individuals with ideas, it's very clear to me that there is a very glaring gap in consent education and sexual health awareness or education.

But I have been able to really kind of hone my skills with qualitative work, with helping people, transcribe like, doctor his lunch in that tiered mentorship. I, I, I love teaching and having that kind of opportunity to mentor others in something that I absolutely love, like qualitative work has been really awesome for me, and it's made me not just a better, mentor, I think, or a teacher, but also a better coder and researcher too, because I've realized the things that I can work better on and things that, I maybe take for granted with my learning or how I learned qualitative work and and things that I can just kind of better explain. So that has been really amazing for me, and I really love that aspect of this project. But yeah. So, teaching others how to, transcribe how to code, just being in that nitty gritty part of the research project where you feel like you have no idea what you're doing, or there's so many things that can be applied to one sentence for coding, for example.

But kind of working that out and having that team meeting every week has honestly, like doctor has said, it's my the highlight of my week. It's three hours and kind of like a fishbowl and I love it so much. We get to talk everything about this project, everything that we've kind of talked about with all of our participants and kind of comes to fruition in these, coding sessions.

And I'm just excited to kind of start the next step. I did want to mention that my favorite thing about qualitative work, and something that I think it's just so incredible with this team and this project is, these people tell us their stories. They take time out of their schedules to talk about sometimes the worst parts of their lives.

And it is such an honor and an opportunity to be able to talk with them and listen to them and hear their stories and give voice to them and bring that out to other people in the community and and see what what we can do with it to make it a better experience and hopefully eliminate some of this kind of violence and just increase prevention.

29:24:20
Brittany Hayes: Thank you, Rebecca. And it's really poignant to circle back on that, because we spent a lot of time talking as a team about what our goal was, and it's enhancing access to justice for everyone. And you can see how so many of the students points come back to that overarching why of the goal and the reason and the motivation behind this project.

So thank you, Rebecca. And this is a great transition to Mary and Choi, who are really doing the nitty gritty part of transcription. And it also just showcases how students are finding the support within the project that best aligns with their overarching career goals, where they're at in their education journey. And I think that's of most interest to them.

And so Choi is finishing up the master's program. Very is an undergraduate researcher. She's not the only one we've had on the project, but she's who we have right now. And we'll be starting that master's program next year. And they can talk a little bit about that transcription and the mentorship from folks who have had a lot more experience with the qualitative coding.

So Choi or Mary, what if you would like to pop in?

30:41:18
Hye Sun Choi: Hi. My name is Choi. I'm currently in my second semester in my master's program. And I got involved with this project like early January, so I'm a little late, but, with like the transcription side and nitty gritty, I definitely agree. The process itself is very tedious, but there's so much to learn from. I had zero experience with qualitative.

I fortunately had some quantitative experience, but this building from ground up approach that we're doing, I've had no experiences. And I wasn't the one conducting the interview, so I'm just looking at it after everything's been done. But listening to these stories and what they are saying at least three times in the, for the transcription, things get engraved in my head.

I'm like, oh my gosh, okay, I never thought of it that way. Or, you know, I didn't know. And it sucks. I didn't know. So I'm even though I wasn't involved in the early on of the process, I still get to learn a lot from it. And given that my interest is in, victimization of minority, this project fits right into it, and I'm going to be really honest and say I didn't even consider, the community as minority until I started this project.

It's kind of shameful, but it wasn't it wasn't in my head until I started this project. So I'm really grateful that, you know, my research, like horizon, has really expanded on, you know what I could be doing in my future career. And I also really want to speak on the peer mentorship side of things. I really love our coding sessions because I'm not coding, I'm just transcribing.

But any questions? I have, I would, like take my headphones off and ask a question. Everyone's like, what is it? And, everyone's like, hands on trying to help me get their things. And the best part about it is that they're always, like constructive in their feedback. I send an email like, hey, can I get this reviewed?

And that it comes back with a list of things that I could improve on. And I, I feel like this project, it's a lot of busy work, but the fact that, members of this team is are willing to, like, take the time to go through things properly and make sure that we are all on the same page.

I think it's really important. And like back to the transcription part. My favorite thing about this is that the enthusiasm of our interviewees, I think at the end of each interview, we say that we are going to gather the results and we ask, are you willing to, would you be okay if we contacted you again with the results we have?

They all say, yes. Yes. As I come in now, we want to know. So just like the reassurance that I know this project won't end after we, gather our results, that's when it's really going to start. I feel like that gets me really pumped up about it.

33:57:25
Brittany Hayes: Thank you, Choi. And you don't have to be a shame, because when Doctor Powers and I started looking at this question, gosh, it's five years, five, six years now, we were also ashamed that we had like, we had overlooked two. And so there's some really great literature out there that disability hasn't been centered in our conversations around criminal justice, despite the fact that one in four individuals will have a disability at some point in their life.

And so it has been largely overlooked by the entire field, until relatively recently. So you are not alone. And this is for listeners. If this is the first time or thinking about you're like, oh, wow. Like it takes that light bulb moment to then go ahead and start making that change. And so we're all just grateful for Leigh Anne, for being patient with us on our learning journeys throughout it too.

34:54:29
Leigh Anne McKingsley: I just have to say that that is why getting those stories is so important. Yeah, because because of the nature of the disability, it's hard for people to get their stories heard. So thank you. I just want to say thank you to all of you. You do better when you know better, right? Like I did the same thing I, with the same process.

35:17:21
Brittany Hayes: Thank you. Liane, pop it over to Mary.

35:22:25
Mary Grady: Hello. My name is Mary Grady, and I am a fourth year undergrad, so, yes, this is my first time working on a major research project or really anything research related. How I got involved with this project was Doctor Hayes pitched it to me one day, while we were somewhere, and it was definitely a light bulb.

35:47:18
Brittany Hayes: Mary! We were in Scotland!

35:52:18
Mary Grady: I know I didn't know if I should disclose that. But yes, we were in Scotland for the abroad trip and we were sitting around having drinks and she'd go in and I'm like, this is an interesting research topic. And it was definitely a light bulb moment for me because it definitely makes sense, because individuals with developmental disabilities or intellectual definitely have a disadvantage on reporting crime and victimization and just like how to help them get help after such a traumatic incident.

To beg you back off the Choi, we pretty much transcribed. So I just go through all the interviews and just like de-identify a lot of information so that it can be traced back to these individuals to protect them, but it also it's a it's very informative to just hear their stories, and they all have pretty much the same experiences, but it's in a different way of how they experience it.

36:56:21
Brittany Hayes: That's great, Mary.

36:57:05
Rebekkah Gross: Transcriptions is literally the heart of this. We wouldn't have anything to be able to cold or anything if we didn't have transcriptions. We've we've all started there. We're all we all are at that nitty gritty point and we all build up and it's it's really is a learning curve. But you are doing incredible work. Incredible. It's been awesome to see how everyone has improved from the start to now. Myself, included.

37:26:07
Brittany Hayes: Thank you Rebecca. That was absolutely fantastic. And you all really reinforce that peer mentorship. But I know Doctor Powers and I, really want to circle back to that, the role of students in this project. And I will say that the absolute best, most rewarding part of this job is working with students, seeing students growth and seeing students, and how they contribute to the project, but then evolve their interest, their skills over time.

So I'll pass it over to Doctor Powers, who can also speak a little bit more about this.

38:22
Ráchael Powers: Yeah, absolutely. I think we've heard some really great testimonials and experiences from students about what they got out of the project, but I think it's really important to highlight that a project like this, the success of it is really contingent on our early career collaborators. So every single student has brought something amazing to the team energy, effort and expertise.

And I think we heard a lot of that today. But I want to make it really explicit that this project works is because we have our early career collaborators. And so for prospective students who might be listening to this, wondering if they're going to go to grad school or wondering if they have anything to offer in the research space, the answer is yes, right?

You have stuff to offer. You belong in the room as the next generation of scientists. And so I just want to make that really, really clear that this is not a one sided, benefit.

38:54:27
Brittany Hayes: So you might be asking yourself why you see. Right. You're thinking about where my educational journey could take me. Who you see offers amazing research opportunities and an incredible level of support. And so while this project is grant funded, as you can tell, there's a lot of students involved in this project, and that support came from the university in various different ways.

We have Mary here, who is an undergraduate receiving course credit. We've had other students who used the honors program to obtain course credit and salary work. We have received support from the university in disseminating these findings to the community, and that has been really key to the project and the project team. And that we will produce the research report.

But that is not an accessible medium for the community that we work with. And with that, we have launched with the university and with the community overall to create accessible materials and plain language. And so where can you plug in? You can see that there's lots of different ways to get involved, and that might be through here. Of course, it might be through conducting the interviews.

It might be entering zeros and ones into the computer. If you really like to stay at home in your jammies like I do. And so you see presents a lot of different opportunities, not only for your education, but for gaining that research experience as well. And so we really thank you for taking the time. But we also really thank the students and the community members that we worked with Doctor Powers, Doctor Simmons, and Leanne and I might be the leaders of the team, but we're the really lucky ones who get to work with students and work with community members to really help us understand what those reporting barriers are and come up with better solutions.

So thank you.

41:06:21
Rodney Wilson: Thanks for listening to this episode of CECH Chats, a presentation of UC's College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology’s marketing Department. CECH Chats is edited and produced by me, Rodney Wilson. To learn more about the college and its programs, visit us online at cech.uc.edu. While you're there, check out the CECH Headlines page for recent stories, past episodes of CECH chats, and more.

Until next time, thanks for joining us.