PUBLISHED ON Dec 08 2015
Professor of Special Education Suneeta Kercood has been awarded nearly $25,000 by the Dental Trade Alliance Foundation to develop a video-based training program to teach families of special-needs children about oral healthcare and prepare them for visits to the dentist.
“There is a huge disparity in oral health care of children with intellectual/developmental disabilities,” Kercood said, “and after having spoken to numerous parents and medical practitioners, there is a great need for parent training, as well as training medical/health professionals to care for this special group of children (especially navigating through their physical and behavioral challenges).”
Throughout 2016, Kercood is collaborating with Dr. Ana Vazquez with Fishers Pediatric Dentistry, who specializes in providing services to children with special needs on the project.
She said oral health often is overlooked in the hierarchy of needs of children/adults with intellectual/developmental disabilities.
“Oral health is important, not just for basic activities related to food intake or communication, but can have implications for secondary health conditions, social interaction, and long term care, and thus needs to be addressed,” Kercood said.
Since 2002, the Dental Trade Alliance Foundation has awarded just over $1.5 million in grant funding to 74 projects designed to increase access to oral health care.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
Professor Kercood Receives Grant for Oral Hygiene Training Program
PUBLISHED ON Dec 21 2015
At first, the concept seems difficult. How do you help third-graders understand what service means?
But for Early and Middle Childhood Education Professor Arthur Hochman and his early elementary education class, the challenge is often the most important part of the lesson plan.
For a little over five weeks this semester, Butler students were paired with Crooked Creek Elementary School third-graders in groups. The Butler students were responsible for creating lesson plans and guiding the elementary schools students through projects to discover what service is.
“Every semester I like to work with a local public school in coming up with something special that's going to have a feeling of culmination and importance, so that these third-graders will have an experience they will never forget,” Hochman said.
In past years the projects have varied. Students and children have organized a flash mob to honor a teacher or come to Butler for a day to present research they've done.
This year, the lesson took a different turn as the third-graders worked together to create their own magazine called Helping Hands. It was published within another local kids magazine, Inspired.
Kat Welch and ’17 and Allison Behling ’18 are two of Hochman’s students who worked at Crooked Creek.
Under the guidance of teachers such as Megan Shuck Rubey ’12 and Kristen Vannatta, they helped students create artwork, conduct interviews, and come up with ways to serve their teachers.
Welch’s group created an autograph book for one teacher and wrote a poem for another.
“It was neat to see how it was really important to them that the teacher liked it and that it was special for them,” she said. “We made a point to teach them that it was anonymous. At first they struggled with that, but then came to realize it's more about the act of doing than getting recognition.”
Hochman said the children are motivated to work on a deeper and higher level when there is an incentive of being able to achieve something important, such as serving and creating an actual published magazine.
“It’s the idea of getting kids to do work that’s in context, that’s real,” Hochman said. “It gives you an impetus to do great work, as opposed to ‘You need to learn multiplication so you can learn division so you can learn algebra,’ which when you’re little feels a little hollow.
“But if it’s ‘You need to do a good job because you want to do a good job because there’s something at the end of the tunnel that’s meaningful for you,’ as a third-grader there’s power in that.”
After finishing the magazine and sending it in for publication, the Butler students returned to surprise their third-graders on the final day. The students gathered to see their final product projected up at the front of the classroom, and a special guest even came to visit: Trip, the Butler bulldog mascot.
Together, they celebrated their published magazine and the new bonds formed between the Butler students and their third-graders.
“We had third-graders crying,” Hochman said. “The attachments are very real.”
“It was very sweet,” Behling said. “But I think I was even more excited about Trip than they were.”
Not only did they come away with new friends, Behling and Welch said they came away with teaching experiences they will never forget.
“For me, I loved seeing the progress that was made,” Welch said. “The first or second day we were there, we asked them what service was. They all said out of order signs or drew stores. But by the end of the project, they talked about how it was important to do things anonymously for others.”
Behling said she noticed even more changes in herself.
“I kind of went in expecting for me to have my place, for everything to go my way, and obviously that doesn't always happen, especially with kids,” Behling said. “My biggest takeaway was not everything has to go right the first time and sometimes you just have to try again.”
Sounds a lot like the Butler Way.
PUBLISHED ON Feb 27 2013
Butler University Associate Athletic Director Jim McGrath has been selected for induction into the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Hall of Fame.
This honor is presented to members of CoSIDA who have made outstanding contributions to the field of college athletic communications. McGrath will be inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame at a luncheon and ceremony on Thursday, June 13, in Orlando, Fla.
McGrath has served as Butler's sports information director since 1981 and assumed the title of associate athletic director in 1989 after four years as an assistant athletic director. In his current role, he is responsible for overseeing media relations for Butler’s 19 intercollegiate sports, and he’s the individual sport contact for men's basketball, football, men's soccer, softball, men's and women's golf and men's and women's cross country and track. During his tenure, he has covered more than 2,000 Butler athletic events.
Since assuming his post at Butler, McGrath has served as the host SID for four NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Final Fours and one Women's Basketball Final Four, as well as nine NCAA men's first and second rounds tournaments. He’s served on the NCAA Media Coordination staff for the Final Four since 2008, and he’s been a member of the NCAA Media Coordination Advisory Board since 2012.
McGrath has worked in press operations at amateur national championships in boxing, swimming and track and field. He was a press officer at the 1982 and 1983 United States Olympic Committee National Sports Festivals and the 1986 U.S. Olympic Festival, and he served as a press officer for the United States team at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis. He co-chaired the Media Center Development and Operations Committee for Pan American Games X and served on the media coordination staff for the 2002 World Basketball Championship.
McGrath arrived at Butler after a 10-year stint as sports information director at his alma mater, Augustana College (Rock Island, Ill.). While at Augustana, he served as the host SID for five NCAA Division III national basketball championships. He was publicity director for the Ed McMahon Quad-Cities Open professional golf tournament for five years, and he served five years as the director of communications for the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin. While at Augustana, he received 30 publications awards from CoSIDA, including 10 Best in the Nation certificates.
McGrath received the “Helping Hand” Award from the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association in 2010, and he was inducted into the Butler Athletic Hall of Fame in September 2012. He also joined the Augustana College Tribe of Vikings Hall of Fame with the 1972-73 men’s basketball team in fall 2012.
A 1971 graduate of Augustana, McGrath and his wife, Judy, have three sons, Chad, Scott and Christopher, and five grandchildren.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
(317) 940-9822
McGrath Named to College Sports Information Directors' Hall of Fame
Global Warming? Climate Change? How do we talk about what’s happening? Butler prof looks to set the rhetoric record straight
PUBLISHED ON Jul 22 2019
Of the 37 climate scientists Carol Reeves has interviewed across the United States, all of them feel a moral obligation to help save the planet. All of them want to tell the world how bad things will get if we don’t take better care of our Earth. The thing is, not all of them have the right words to make people listen.
An English Professor at Butler University, Reeves studies how climate scientists communicate with one another, with policy makers, and with the public about their research findings. While not a climate scientist herself, she teaches courses about the rhetoric and language of science. Through working with students on how to talk about climate change, as well as through interviewing climate scientists over the past several years, Reeves has learned about the nuanced challenges scientists often face in discussing their research.
“In science, you don’t talk about absolute facts: You talk about evidence,” Reeves says. “But normal people listen to dramatic claims. They have trouble getting that we have loads of evidence from research to support that we are heading into a really terrible time if we don’t do anything about it. We are going to have more extremes, more heat waves and draughts, more heavy rains, more wildfires, and stronger hurricanes.”
Reeves says we might view this summer’s heat waves as a sort of “test run” for what climate scientists are warning about the future, and how that heat will continue to affect us.
“Extreme and prolonged high temperatures place an enormous burden on communities and citizens, especially the most vulnerable,” she says. “If you’re wealthy enough to be sitting in your cooled home, you may dismiss this very clear sign of climate change. But if you’re poor, or if you have to work outdoors, you probably wish someone would get to work on the problem.”
Starting in 2008, Reeves decided to start conducting interviews with climate scientists to gain more background for the unit of her class that discusses climate change. She focused on those scientists involved in writing climate assessment reports for the United Nations—reports that analyze where the climate is now, and what will probably happen in the future. These scientists also look at how climate change is already affecting the Earth, and they build recommendations for what humans can do to help.
Researchers see a stark future in the data, but they struggle to spread the word. Reeves says policy makers and members of the public often misunderstand the concept of climate change, especially the way scientists talk about it. This has caused climatologists to sometimes disagree among themselves about what kind of language to use when sharing their research.
“You have a set of data,” she says, “but you have to write about that data, and you have to decide how strong your language is going to be.”
Reeves explains that scientists need to balance the ethical responsibility to stay within their data with their desire to help the public understand.
“It is a tenuous balance between explaining the science in a simple and clear way without simplifying and over-stating,” she says.
But it doesn’t matter what the studies show if people don’t want to think about the future. Scientists want to convince the population that, even though we are facing so many other problems, we need to put climate change at the top of the list. They just aren’t sure how.
Media Contact:
Katie Grieze
News Content Manager
kgrieze@butler.edu
260-307-3403 (cell)
Global Warming? Climate Change? How do we talk about what’s happening? Butler prof looks to set the rhetoric record straight
Carol Reeves studies how scientists communicate about their research findings.
Carol Reeves studies how scientists communicate about their research findings.