Three professors at Murray State were awarded Giving Back Endowment (GBE) grants to support learning experiences and teaching strategies for their selected courses.

The GBE has two initiatives: the Student Philanthropy Initiative and the Faculty Innovation Grant. Elise Kieffer, chair of the selection committee for the Faculty Innovation Grant, said the grant is designed to encourage philanthropic giving from the Murray State community, ideally expanding funding opportunities over time.

Megan St. Peters, psychology professor, was awarded $1,000 for PSY 621: Biological Bases of Behavior. Her course outline allows graduate students to enter four Murray Middle School science classrooms to lead approximately 110 fourth-grade students in activities aligned with the Kentucky Department of Education science learning standards.

Peters said this activity will not only offer a take-home learning point for the middle school students, but it will also provide the graduate students with a visual representation of how the abstract concepts they learn during lecture apply to real-life situations.

The activities selected for the students included creating a cyborg cockroach the children could manipulate to walk across an obstacle course, visualizing brain waves of a fourth-grade student, visualizing auditory waves and how they vary when the group speaks at different volume levels and controlling a character in a video game by using electrical signals from blinking and/or clenching one’s hands.

Peters said this grant enables her to bring the topics to life and provide the graduate students an opportunity to deepen their understanding of concepts learned in lecture in an applied manner.

“Teaching is a great way to learn, and having to teach a younger audience may appear less daunting, but (it) requires one to truly understand what they are saying to put it into age-appropriate terms and activities,” she said.

Peters said the project also aims to foster relationships between the University and the local community by having Murray State students enter into the community to teach what they have learned.

“This project should reinforce physiological psychology concepts for the graduate students and stimulate curiosity and interest in psychological science and (the) University in general for the children,” she said. “It also strengthens relationships between the faculty of (Murray State) and teachers and parents in the local community.”

Kelsey Chadwick, assistant professor of family and consumer sciences, was awarded $1,000 for FCS 340: Textiles, Fashion, and Apparel for Family and Consumer Sciences.

This course is an introduction to different materials and fabrics, covering basics of sewing, needlework and weaving. Chadwick said the grant will support two projects within the course: the Love Monsters project with elementary students and Needle Felting class with Calloway County 4-H.

For the Love Monsters project, college students will read a book that includes themes of diversity and belonging to the elementary schoolers. After reading the book, FCS students will lead the elementary students in drawing their personalized Love Monster. Chadwick said the FCS 340 class will then use the drawings as textile patterns and return to the school to surprise the students with their “real-life Love Monsters.”

In the 4-H Needle Felting class, students will plan a textiles lesson and lab for middle and high schoolers, then lead them in completing a basic needleworking project.

“As a result of these two projects, students in the community will be strengthened in their mental health and understanding of diversity,” Chadwick said.

She said textile work is a distinctive and beneficial craft that is sentimental to her.

“I want to share these skills with our community while teaching FCS students about how to teach and manage textile labs for their own future classrooms,” she said.

Stephanie Rea, professor of music, was awarded $1,000 to bring Chicago-based improv artist and teacher Kevin Reome to campus April 14-19 to complete an improv residency.

During his time at the University, Reome taught classes for the Honors College, departments of music and theater and global languages and various other groups. He also performed with Paducah Improv on the Murray State campus, as well as gave a public talk on the life skills that can be learned from improv.

Rea said combining the GBE grant with her other financial support was what enabled this particular project to have such a large impact. She said Reome will also create a video and pamphlet on the life skills improv can provide, which will be distributed across campus.

“The aim (of this program) was to make people more aware of the importance of flexibility, positivity, creativity and communication in our everyday lives,” Rea said. “I just believe so wholeheartedly in the power of improv to improve people’s lives.”

Rea said university education should allow students opportunities and tools for personal growth. She said by bringing in a guest for a residency of this type, it exposed hundreds of students to the virtues of improv, which most students are not generally exposed to in other academic environments.

“From improv, people can learn to be a better listener, a more attuned participant in any relationship and open enough to creative ideas to try them out…” she said. “These are all things I value and things I want more of in my own existence and in the lives of students I teach.”

For more information about the GBE, visit https://murraystate.edu/news/posts/faculty-members-receive-giving-back-endowment-grants.aspx or contact the Murray State Office of Development.