Mixing it Up: Education Through Collaboration
By Caren Frost, PhD, MPH & Dianne Cunningham, MEd
While the College of Social Work is well known for its ability to connect with community, national, and international organizations - resulting in a long list of collaborative partners - collaboration within the College is a daily occurrence as well. This spring, Dr. Caren Frost and her second-year Master of Social Work students from the Health Domain's "Advanced Administration and Leadership" course put their leadership skills into practice when they collaborated with the Dixon Girls Forums (DGF).
In 2001, the Forums were created under the direction of the Belle S. Spafford Endowed Chair. Forums were conducted in public and private schools throughout the state of Utah for girls ages 12 to 18. The Forums focus on leadership skills, secondary education, community service, and other issues that young women face today. Curriculum is developed based on surveys and requests from school administrators. In 2006, College leaders recognized the increasing demand for Forums. With the help of many generous donors, they established the Katie L. Dixon Women & Girls Leadership Endowed Fund to financially support the DGFs. This year, 43 Forums - focusing on recognizing and stopping stereotyping and bullying - were conducted in 14 schools from American Fork to Wendover, reaching over 400 young women.
Dr. Frost's students were given the assignment to prepare an interactive lesson plan and conduct a Forum at one of the participating schools. Topics for the Forums included conflict management, creative problem solving, managing personal stress, and motivating others. The MSW students designed PowerPoint presentations and hands-on activities to invite the younger students at the Forums to explore how they handle these issues.
Traditional DGFs use female leaders and focus only on female students. Dr. Frost's class, however, had five male students. Dianne Cunningham, project administrator of the DGFs, connected with Dr. Roderick Land from the College of Education and developed a Forum for boys so that the male MSW students had the opportunity to work with male youth in the same way the female MSW students worked with female youth.
"At first, my students were somewhat skeptical about working with youth for a class project," said Dr. Frost, "however, once they met the girls and boys, my students realized they had a lot of experience to share and that working with these youth was very positive." Comments from a reflection assignment about the Forums showed how much the MSW students enjoyed and learned from this experience. Two students noted the following:
"I was nervous because I don't have much experience with 6th grade girls, but I was excited to see how our presentation would be received. As a group we worked long and hard to create a presentation that would be entertaining as well as informative. . . . We truly underestimated our audience. This group of girls was much more intelligent than I had anticipated. . . . These girls were energetic and smart and eager to learn from us."
"When I first learned about this assignment I was wondering what this assignment had to do with Advanced Administration/Supervision. This experience has taught me that if you can teach sixth and eighth grade boys, you can teach anyone. When teaching these boys I had to learn how to 'swing with the punches.' These boys would say the most spontaneous things that were often tangential to the topic and being able to redirect those comments to the topic at hand is a skill that any social worker can use in any administrative role."
After the Forums were completed, many of the younger students approached Ms. Cunningham to tell her how much they enjoyed having the University students come to their school to conduct the Forum, even asking if they would come again. The school administrators also enjoyed the structure of the Forum and requested that MSW students come again next year.
"The MSW students have a lot to offer our community," said Dr. Frost, "and they did a great job during this opportunity, made possible by Ms. Cunningham!" The College of Social Work is fortunate to have many programs and talented employees that contribute to collaboration within and outside of our walls. One does not have to look far to find a knowledgeable resource - in fact they may be just down the hall!
