A New Day Dawning

August 3, 2023 by Alyssa Seisser

Two venerated institutions of higher learning—UT and Knoxville College—stand just over a mile apart in downtown Knoxville. As the institutions work together to advance reaccreditation of the historically Black college, a moment to elevate the entire region appears.

by Linda Billman

The partnership offers a rare live case study for doctoral students in the UT Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (ELPS).

“Knoxville College has a very rich legacy in Knoxville. And they are very proud—as they should be—of the history of the students they have served and currently serve and what that future could look like,” says Hope Newbill, one of the students on the accreditation team. “Being able to work on a team of people who all believe in the mission of KC and the power of the education that students can get at KC has been really incredible.”

Key to any higher education institution’s success, academic accreditation enables students to qualify for federal financial aid, transfer to another college, or enter graduate school with the recognized credentials. Obtaining accreditation is the essential first goal in a large-scale plan to revitalize the college, help it become sustainable, and reclaim its place as a center for serving underserved Black youth in the community.

When college representatives reached out last spring to ELPS department head and professor Robert Kelchen and Jimmy and Ileen Cheek Endowed Professor of Higher Education Patrick Biddix, they immediately saw how the partnership could benefit doctoral students and earn them course credit.

“We already had our classes set for summer and fall. And we had to rearrange class schedules to get this to work out,” says Kelchen. “This kind of a hands-on opportunity to learn about how a college works and help a college get back to its former glory is just amazing.”

The college was founded in 1875 to educate freed previously enslaved men and women and has educated hundreds of students of distinction. Building on the work of college administrators, ELPS students spent the summer semester with Kelchen to learn about historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU), the accreditation process, governance, finance, academic affairs, and other aspects of business and higher education.

The fall class was entirely focused on addressing and creating documents to complete the 17 stringent specifications of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) accreditation application, which is the national institutional accrediting agency for Christian postsecondary institutions, colleges, universities, and seminaries.

“The ELPS students working with KC administrators are creating or updating handbooks, communications plans, mission, vision, and values—materials that go into the operation of the college,” says Biddix, who taught the fall semester.

Knoxville College Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer Dasha Lundy welcomes new eyes on the college, which lost its accreditation in 1997. “The paperwork is there, but it has not been updated,” Lundy says. “We’ve been around for 147 years. How do you bring the school into a new space? We have a catalog, and they’re creating a streamline for us. We don’t have that much administrative capacity. I tell them to slash or question it.”

Hope Atkins and her ELPS cohorts are revisiting and reimagining the associate degree curriculum that the college currently offers to ensure the programs are going to serve its students well after accreditation.

“That’s going to help their students once they come for an associate’s degree at KC—there are transfer pathways, there is a way to take it to a four-year program or tech school or some kind of certification—something that’s going to set them up to be successful,” Atkins says.

Serendipitously, the diversity of the ELPS students transformed them into a dream team for the project. Veteran UT faculty and staff and newly minted master’s students from nearby universities brought institutional research, communications expertise, diversity and strategic planning, academic coaching, student services, and other diverse professional and lived experiences. What surprised everyone was the bond of a shared mission.

“It’s been amazing. I consider them family. I was just surprised that they were totally in. All in. This assignment for them—they said they feel like they are serving the community by participating,” says Lundy.

ELPS student LaDawna Williams is using the classes, her work as a senior academic coach at UT, and her perspective as a first-generation college student to look specifically at what support services students need as they navigate coming to college—all to benefit the student experience.

“We’ve also been working on the strategic vision, the faith statement, we’ve worked on the organizational structure. Looking at the job description and making sure everything is correct,” Williams says.

The hands-on opportunity to learn how a college works helps set up the students for their future jobs, according to Kelchen.

“With what these students will be doing professionally, they’ll need to know how accreditation works,” Kelchen says. They may not be the person filling out the documents themselves, but they may be overseeing that person. So, knowing more about all the technical requirements, that’s a really valuable skill set.”

Williams said the experience has helped her learn how to be proactive and strategic in order to stay ahead of the game. “It’s definitely growing me into the profession and the leader that I aspire to be. I want to be the type of person and leader who moves and leads with a purpose who supports and encourages, uplifts, and inspires others to do the same in any type of endeavor they pursue.”

Knoxville College’s path to successful accreditation will go far beyond the fall 2022 semester when the ELPS students, along with college administrators, will have completed the application. The review process could take up to three years. Biddix says he expects future ELPS students will be involved to help the college navigate the process. “UT folks are committed to seeing this all the way through,” he says.

Atkins and Williams recognize the significance of their work to Knoxville College’s future students, to Knoxville, and to East Tennessee’s only HBCU.

“To know that the work we’re doing as the accreditation team lays the foundation for the incredible work that Knoxville College is going to be able to do hopefully for decades to come and to be just a part, a small part of that process, has been really great,” says Newbill.

“I definitely feel like I’ve gotten more than I could ever imagine out of this experience,” says Williams. “Because opportunities like these don’t happen every day; they just don’t. And it’ll be very impactful.”

PhD Candidate Researches the Shared Emotional State at Big Ears

April 17, 2023 by Alyssa Seisser

Music To Their (Big) Ears: Exploring Collective Effervescence and Well-Being at Big Ears Festival

Vanessa Slay, CEHHS student news reporter, Class of 2023

Originally from Memphis, the home of the Blues and birthplace of Rock’n’Roll, third-year PhD candidate Jack Babb grew up as a music lover. He attended the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for his undergraduate degree in Hospitality, Resort, and Tourism—now Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management (RHTM) in the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences—before attending the University of Memphis for his master’s degree.

Jack Babb

Babb recalls his time at the University of Memphis as a music lover when he had the chance to work at the Beale Street Music Festival, the largest music festival in Memphis. That experience allowed him to see the process that is involved in putting on a large festival and cemented the desire to incorporate music into his future research. He jokes that all he cares about are “music and food.”

Now back at UT, Babb is in the process of writing his dissertation on collective effervescence. “Think of it like when you go to a football game at Neyland Stadium,” Babb explains. “Everyone is excited, focusing on the football game, cheering, and booing the other team. [Collective effervescence is] a shared emotional state that people feel when they’re involved in the same event.”

Babb saw the opportunity to examine that same emotional state at the annual Big Ears Festival in downtown Knoxville. “It’s different from other festivals…people are here to learn something, whether that is socially or sonically.” Big Ears’ slogan is “Listen.” Babb interprets that to mean coming into the festival with an open mind and experiencing something that you might not have otherwise gravitated towards. In essence, it is making your ears big.

He used a qualitative study of culture broken into “three arms” of research. The first arm focused on participant observation. Babb took notes on what the participants at Big Ears were experiencing, collected symbols such as wristbands, and gathered his own pictures and videos. The second arm, Participant Produced Images and Videos, required him to coordinate with the staff at Big Ears to recruit attendees whom he would interview about what pictures and videos they believed embodied the idea of collective effervescence. Then the third arm involved another series of interviews in which participants would further explain their experiences in general.

With the Festival just days behind him, Babb is still sorting through his research and preparing it for his dissertation.

Babb is thankful for his faculty at RHTM. “They are unique and diverse in their research interest and expertise. It’s nice to have a wide range of people you can talk to about what you’re interested in; they give me the freedom to research what I want to research.”

Through its eight departments and 12 centers, the UT Knoxville College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences enhances the quality of life for all through research, outreach, and practice. Find out more at cehhs.utk.edu

Child and Family Studies Scholars Receive $5,000 Student/Faculty Research Award

March 3, 2023 by Alyssa Seisser

By Macy Roberts, CEHHS Student Reporter, Class of 2024

As members of the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences’ Child and Family Studies Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, graduate student Hannah Thompson and assistant professor Lori Caudle were awarded a $5,000 Student/Faculty Research Award for their project entitled, “Social Emotional Learning Trauma-Informed Intervention Preschool Study (TIIPS): A Partnership with Rural Southeastern Teachers.”

Previously, this research was unfunded, so receiving the Student/Faculty Research Award means there is now financial support for main project activities, stipends for partnering teachers and research materials, such as a 360-degree smart camera.

The research-practice-partnership uses a trauma-informed intervention framework to foster children’s social emotional development and prioritize workforce well-being among educators.

The partner school in the study is located in a small mountain town outside of the Qualla Boundary, home of the Eastern Band Cherokee Indians, where Caudle and Thompson work with local educators to collect child-level data through classroom observations, engage in reflective coaching and support educators through professional learning community meetings. They also hope to implement bug-in-ear consultation to support teachers through challenging behaviors in the classroom.

The two CFS representatives will also be working with Cathy Grist, a developmental psychologist specializing in early childhood social emotional interventions, as well as a professor and Birth-Kindergarten program director at Western Carolina University.

Throughout the partnership, Caudle and Thompson aim to identify how their efforts support teacher well-being, trauma-informed practices and classroom-level interventions. They also intend to analyze whether or not the partnership resulted in improved social emotional competencies and behaviors in children.

According to Caudle, there is a widely recognized need for trauma-informed practices in Pre-K education. However, there has been little research conducted that prioritizes trauma-informed professional development for early childhood educators.

“There is a need for intergenerational interventions that include adults with adverse childhood experiences histories to break the cycle of negative outcomes and develop concrete plans that enhance resiliency and promote healing,” Caudle said.

Lori Caudle

Caudle recognized the importance of these intervention plans in rural schools in the Appalachian region of the Southeastern U.S., given these communities face higher risk factors and generational trauma due to ongoing social inequities and a lack of upward mobility. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic increased the need for interventions in these areas particularly.

“An important note about our work is that we are actively supporting the early childhood educators who are supporting the young children in their classrooms,” Thompson said. “This work centers the voice and perspectives of the teachers and uplifts both the lead teacher and teaching assistants in the classroom through reflective coaching practices, responsive relationships and building sustainable trauma-informed skills.”

Student/Faculty Research Awards are open to all disciplines, with award amounts ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.

Caudle and Thompson believe their project was fully funded because the University understood the value of supporting early childhood educators and young children and recognized the direct impact research-practice-partnerships can have on communities.

“Educators’ well-being influences the quality of teacher-child interactions, their ability to build relationships with children and the types of decisions they make when faced with challenging behaviors in the classroom,” Caudle said. “While academic initiatives are valuable, we must continue to advocate for educational programs that consider the social and emotional needs of the whole child and prioritize educator well-being in order to see improvements in child outcomes.”

Caudle has been Thompson’s major advisor for nearly two years, so the two are already quite familiar with each other and look forward to getting to work more closely together on this project.

“Dr. Caudle is a great example and model of what it looks like to be successful as a scholar in our field,” Thompson said. “Dr. Caudle always leads with compassion, a critical perspective of supporting others and is a wonderful mentor.”

Caudle praised her advisee Thompson, saying that she “regularly goes above and beyond the requirements of her graduate research assistantship and coursework.”

“We bring different perspectives and experiences to the project, which lead to rich conversations and critical reflections about next steps,” Caudle said.

Both Caudle and Thompson believe in the importance of community-based research and issues regarding early childhood education at large. The Student/Faculty Research award will allow them to make an impact on the community while collecting crucial data that can be used to advance understandings of teacher and student well-being.