[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hello, friends, loyal listeners, and bears everywhere, welcome to the Sound Barrier podcast, the official podcast in northeast State Community College. Coming at you with another episode here from lovely Wayne G. Basler Library, kind of the new on the road studio, you might call it. Our second episode we've done from here, thanks to the great Chris Demas, dean of libraries here at Northeast State. My name is Tom Wilson, your co host today, along with a fellow co host, Mister Matt Poole.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hey, how's it going?
[00:00:35] Speaker A: And our guest today is Andrea Amos, Andrea's assistant professor here in northeast State and has a great story to tell. She's done a lot of things in her life. I know. One of the, one of the biggest ones we know here in northeast State, of course, is volunteer northeast State and the service learning course that students take here, among other things. But Andrea, welcome to the podcast.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came to northeast state and some of your background.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: Well, first, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. And let's say, hmm, how I got here in northeast state. Let's see.
My journey here began after serving in the army. So I used my GI bill to attend classes here and worked in the business office for a little over a year. I went on to ETSU, where I worked in financial aid office as a graduate assistant. Lucky me, I know.
I started teaching adjunct here at Northeast State, mostly criminal justice classes in the fall of 2014. And I want to thank the support and encouragement of a wonderful friend and mentor, retired Professor Mister Stephen Batalf.
I want to say he conned me into it. I will say that I had great ambitions of doing something on the federal or the state level.
Here I am teaching. But anyway, that's good.
I've been teaching college and lifelong learning here full time since 2019 and more recently, our intro to service learning course.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: That's neat. And whenever you were in the army, what was your specific role?
[00:02:13] Speaker C: So we call it mos.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Mos, yes.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: And so my jobs, I had two. My first was 63 whiskey, which was a light and heavy wheel vehicle mechanic.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: Do not do much of that anymore. My second mos was 92 Alpha, which was an automated logistical supply specialist, so I could order the parts for the cars that I was supposed or the vehicles that I was supposed to be working on. And my daily driver was usually an eight ton wrecker.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:02:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:02:43] Speaker C: I don't do too much of that.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: That's neat. And so you became full time in 2019 and initially to teach college and lifelong learning yes. And then service learning came into play. Could you care to give a little background with that class?
[00:03:02] Speaker C: So, you know, back in the sixties, they started talking about reciprocal learning.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: And trying to get some information from service that you did in the community and then bringing it into the classroom. And so in the early two thousands, you started seeing a lot more colleges and universities take part in that. And so northeast state began. Doctor Laura Barnett taught it around 2018, and then I started teaching at spring of 2018, 2023. Covid had a little break in the action there, but, you know, we're going at it now.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Yeah, service and volunteering seems to be what Andrea's all about. That's kind of a common theme for you. What got you interested in teaching, though? I know you said you may have been conned into it, but what, you know, whenever you first started teaching, was there something that, was it the students or just teaching that made you want to continue this as a career?
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Well, when I started teaching, I really got a lot more out of the students than I think they might have gotten out of me the first couple of semesters I taught. And so I really kind of enjoyed that, really dived into professional developments and learning about how to teach, you know, that's important. And so I just really got, I really got into it and enjoyed it a little bit more than I think I thought I would have.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Right. So, yeah, I'm always curious what got people into teaching in general, because a lot of programs, when you go through the master's degree or the doctoral degree in a good bit of programs, there's not like teacher education.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: Nope.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: You get your master's degree as long as you have the 18 hours in it, you can start teaching right away, really, if you think about it. So that's all important. It's not just about going into the classroom and talking about your subject. You need all that professional development to advance as a teacher if you want to take it seriously. Of course.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: True. And now I do that as a faculty assistant in our centers for teaching and learning. So I help other faculty as they navigate that same process.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Can you talk about a little bit of the background of some of the projects that service learning students have done in the past, in the last year? Some things, the opportunities they've had to get involved in.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: So we first started, and I leave this up to the students. So service learning course is about what they want and the social problems they're interested in. So one of the first things they looked at was textile waste. And so we had a great guest speaker, come in. You probably know him. Greg Walters.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: We're the Navy state Og.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: That is right. And so he was telling us about what goodwill does and polyesters and how they help use. And so it really kind of lit a fire. And so my students decided they wanted to save a bunch of t shirts and we made them into dog toys. And we learned a lot about that process. Number one, you got to make them real strong.
And then, you know, we probably went through 100 pounds of shirts in that first. And yes, it was a lot. We actually donated several of them to different shelters, a couple of different shelters. And then students spent alternative fall break day at the bridge home no kill animal shelter. And they spent some time with companionship, so they just spent time playing with the animals. And that was pretty cool.
It was a whole big project and we actually used what was left over in the because of you campaign. We raised money for the doctor Laura Barnett scholarship.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: That's amazing. So love that.
[00:06:51] Speaker C: Another project that they've been involved in is food drive food pantry. That was a huge thing because when we had a lot more food trucks, students were having a little bit more difficulty affording that on a regular basis. So we were noticing the need and they went into action and worked with the honors program to help in student life, too, to help kind of push raising some extra items for those existing pantries on campus.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: That's incredible. I love to hear that y'all are doing some cool stuff. And when I was a student at Northeast between like 14 and 16, I remember what the predominant club was was volunteer northeast. So how does, are you familiar with volunteer northeast and how that relates to. I was just kidding.
[00:07:43] Speaker C: Yeah, pretty familiar.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Pretty familiar with it. So how does that relate together?
[00:07:48] Speaker C: Yeah, so I think people, and it's really great that you bring that up because intro to service learning is a three credit hour class. Can take that in the fall or the spring. And, you know, your community service hours are recognized in that class. So if you're a Tennessee promise student, that's a great way to get college credit, too.
But we also offer it an honors section and dual enrollment as well. So that's kind of a nice thing. And I really am glad we're doing that.
Volunteer northeast is different, though. That's a club. It's open to every student. It's free. And if you go out to d two l on your homepage where you see all your courses at the top, you'll see student organizations and resources. And if you click on that, you can find volunteer northeast and I put announcements out there as soon as I get them. And so if there's an activity or an event that's going on, on campus or off, then they're able to participate in that if they need hours. And I get a lot of student feedback from that, like, you know, hey, thanks. I really was needing some hours. Didn't know where to do it at.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Perfect.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: And you can do it on campus, too.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: So that's great.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Holy cow.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: So what are the course?
What is the course? Volunteering is to go back to the service learning course for just a second.
What does the course seek to give students beyond? You have volunteer opportunities, but what is it building? What do you hope to build within them as part of these voluntary opportunities?
[00:09:18] Speaker C: So I'm really focused on the things that they need. What we call in, the employers call those soft skills or power skills, because they're really having to engage with these partners. They're having to learn. What do you need just to do volunteer hours?
What do you expect from me? What do I expect from you?
It's a three credit hour behavioral social science elective, and it does transfer to ETSU. They can take an advanced service learning class over there. And I'll tell you, at ETSU, their alternative fall break and spring break projects are a lot of fun. They go to places like New Orleans or to the beach to work with oysters. So I'd love to get there one day, but we gotta start smaller.
But we hope that we can really put an emphasis on leadership, empathy, the team building skills, be able to take feedback and really understand what the problems are in the community and how to help solve them?
[00:10:23] Speaker B: I love it. And Tom puts this good question in our sheet here. I like this a lot. So do you see a greater or lesser dedication to volunteering and that giving spirit among people in recent years?
[00:10:38] Speaker C: So I did do a little bit of data on this.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: There we go. I love it.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: So the US Census Bureau reports 51% of us population aged 16 and over actually informally help their neighbors between 20 and 21 at the height of the pandemic. So that was 51% of people and 23% formally volunteer through an agency organization. So there's a difference. Informal, I can do it with anybody and anytime I want, any person I want. But a formal is kind of commitment to a certain organization where you stay with that for you don't see a whole lot of that, honestly. And so most of the people that are volunteering is your baby boomers, your veterans, and your people with children under 18.
So that's an interesting statistic that I found.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: What do you think it is? That is the common denominator. Are there multiple factors?
[00:11:32] Speaker C: There's multiple factors, yeah, because things like transportation costs, all the same things students are faced with in a college campus, you know, transportation costs, their scheduling, the flexibility with other commitments that they have. You know, if I can go and volunteer for one event on this day and volunteer for another event on this day, then, you know, I may not get as much out of it in the overall, but at the same time, I'm doing some different activities. Whereas formal volunteering, you're wanting to see commitment through and stay with that until you've solved a problem, so to speak.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: Employers are looking for people with volunteering, public service experience. That seems to be. It's been sort of a hot requirement for a while now.
Why do you think these experiences are kind of critical for the workforce, for a lot of the larger employers? Why are they looking for this and the people that they're considering to hire a.
[00:12:36] Speaker C: Well, this was also something I wanted to find out a little bit more about before I spoke to y'all. So I looked at, you know, people who regularly volunteer usually have a 27% higher chance of getting employed. So the independent sector, which is a national membership organization, reports that the volunteer benefit is like $33.49 an hour to their companies.
So it's a 5% increase from last year. So when a person volunteers, whether that's just energy or talent, whether that is helping their neighbors, strengthening the community, whatever it is they do, they're making meaningful contributions. And so companies, I even read about this, and I thought this was really cool. Companies host days of service with 60% of them offering volunteer paid days off.
That was interesting.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: Yeah. And so, yeah, and there's a little bit more data out there even that talks about how that would help with, you know, turnover. But recruiting volunteers is one of the hardest problems that most places face. So you'll see a lot of organizations come together and they'll have group days of, like going to second harvest food bank, for example, or, you know, just, you'll see the toys with cops. You'll see different things like that, where they're actually doing some community service to give back, and they want, you know, good, good, you know, marketing, I guess.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I certainly want a good perspective of their company, but, yeah, if I was an employer and seeing somebody who has multiple volunteer experiences, that shows me that they, you know, they want to see improvement in their area. They love. They love helping people, they're not motivated by, you know, some external item to get them to do something, to work or to help out. So, yeah, if I was an employer, which I'm not, and I don't plan to be either, seeing that would give me a good perspective of that person.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: I think, without before being your paid days off sounds.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah. You're telling me. You are telling me. Goodness.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: Build a little bit of rapport amongst, you know, individuals as well. It looks good for recruiting and, you know, not just for the company that's offering it, but for those agencies and organizations that are benefiting from that volunteer service.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: That's pretty cool.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Yeah. But they measure tangible money value to $33.49 an hour.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: That's serious.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
I like data.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Data is good.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Numbers never lie.
Numbers never lie. Okay. So going back to service learning. So with the service learning class, maybe volunteer northeast. Do you all have anything planned for the fall or spring semesters specifically?
[00:15:33] Speaker C: So currently my Dobbins Bennett class is making thank you cards to individuals within their respective school, and they're also doing thank yous to military veterans or military active duty. We've got actually a whole list of several people who have just either just joined or deployed individuals and veterans. So we've got a lot of thank yous to do.
I have two daughters currently serving in the air force now, so I've got a couple addresses myself. But the alternative fall and spring break projects may include time spent at the local animal shelter campus. We did campus cleanup last year.
We've done the TDOT adopt a highway cleanup trash program as well, and then any other events usually determined by the volunteer northeast group. So we'll meet a few times in the semester and I, we'll attend things like the club fairs and any drives that they have and club contests and, you know, anything we're able to do.
As far as this current fall break, we usually pick one or one of the days. So we'll pick one or two. There's only two days for fall break. Right? So we'll pick a day and we'll come together and decide what we want to do, and we'll try to work with a partner to do that.
We do have the service partner fair that's going to be happening.
It's the week after fall break.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: And so I cannot remember the dates.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Right now where I do dual enrollment. My fall breaks are all over the place, so I can't keep track of ours and everybody else's.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: No, it's the week after. It's on the calendar already, so that's good. But we're going to bring all of our community service partners in agencies and organizations. Last fall we had about 18, so we're expecting a few more.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. That's amazing.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: That gives the students a chance to see who they would be working with, and then it also gives them an idea to what you're going to be doing when you get there. So it's a great way for the partners that we have to reach out to our students and a way for our students to say, okay, well, I think I want to work with this agency or whatever because I met them.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: And, yeah, build that rapport, make connections early. I like that.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Super excited. We're doing that. So our first annual one was last year. This is our second annual, and thanks to first Horizon grant, we got a grant with them. They help offer food. So who, you know, doesn't like free food.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Amen. I heard that.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
Anytime we can get something for the kids, you know, our students, you know, it'd be great because that brings them in and I. You get a lot more attendance that way.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: How do the high school students react to doing something? Maybe some of them maybe have done volunteer work for the first time, or college students have done volunteer work for the first time. Does it seem foreign to them? How do they react to it?
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Oh, yes. So anytime you give a class open creativity and things for not directly, this is what you need to do, it gets a little daunting. Right.
For the most part, students are excited because they're, you know, the community service that they've done in the past or that they want to do. They're learning about informal. Informal. They're learning about the four different types of service. So we have direct, which is working directly with a company or an agency or whatever. We have indirect, which may be like printing flyers or helping with podcasts, for example, whatever they, you know, whatever you need help with. And then that's sort of behind the scenes. And then you also have advocating for awareness. So when you think about what we have coming up in election, what do you want to stress as far as an important reason behind your candidate, why you would select them or not? And then the last type of learning would be research. So looking at a social problem, trying to figure out how you can help solve that problem and then really kind of following through with that project. So students see that and they do get a little bit, maybe overwhelmed because they're, oh, man, I could do all these things. What do I do? You know? But it can be something very simple.
And students don't realize that some of what they've already done, say, in key club or beta club or four h, for example, all those things you've done in the past, you've had some community service time. So let's talk about why you need to do that, why you perform that work, why you want to keep that organization going. What are they providing to the community, that kind of thing.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: We might have hit this, but why is this just in general, like an important part of a student's experience?
[00:20:40] Speaker C: Well, I like the idea of experiential learning because it gets them in the field. It gets their sort of foot in the door somewhere. And, you know, when I was in high school, I started working with the Bristol crisis center, and I stayed doing that for several years. And then I learned a lot about, like, suicide and mental health and stuff like that. And it's kind of ironic. I still work with that in different things that I do here. And so I've stayed kind of in that loop with individuals and what's working in our community and maybe what's not working. And being able to have those conversations is huge.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
I feel like we peel back the layers of Andrea, and there's just so much there.
And not only, I mean, right here alone, we've covered so much about you, but that doesn't just stop there. Like you mentioned, some of the topics that you talk about here at Northeast include mental health. And so you have, whenever I first saw, I guess, the Monday morning briefing and I saw your picture giving mental health first aid classes, I was like, that is so neat, and it's so needed and important. So when did you first start doing these workshops? Was it here at Northeast or.
[00:22:03] Speaker C: Well, yes, actually, the honors program had a project where they offered faculty to attend mental health first aid. And I did it, of course, you know, I'm a big, big fan of professional development. And so you get a certificate for three years. When my three year time was expiring, then the Tennessee Department of Health reached out to me and they said, how would you like to teach the class? I don't know. So they offered me, you know, so we've got grant money. We'll put you through the training. The class is pretty expensive, but it'll be totally covered. And so I did. That went through, that was a couple days in the summer. And so it's actually a course that's taught by the National Council for Mental well being. It teaches people how to recognize the signs of mental health or substance use challenges, not abuse, but use. We like to think of stigmatizing words, so we don't want to use how to offer and provide initial help and how to guide a person towards appropriate care.
So I teach the adult version, but there are other versions as well. I just went through this summer, the youth version, so I was seeing a lot of data that suggests that our youth are really struggling. So I thought, well, I'll just go to that too. And there's a veterans and a public safety and a fire. So there's versions for all the different populations, but here I teach only the adult version.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Got it. And the format for these trainings, are they in person or.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Okay, you can do a blended online in person. I like to be in person, so I do 8 hours in person. And so it's like a marathon day, but it's 8 hours. I focus on the algae steps, which is an acronym, because military people love acronyms, and so you have to take the course to find out that acronym.
But more companies are actually determined to train their staff to be mental health first aiders. And this summer I noticed that we had a lot of HR staff come through from various companies across the community. And so we offered it through workforce solutions outside and then through the centers for teaching and learning to our faculty and staff here. And even a student or two actually took it.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Really? Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: So.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Now what does the course really strive to? If you take the mental health first aid course, what are you going to learn? What are you going to hopefully get to understand about how you can apply that to your job site or whatever role you're doing.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: So it's important that we look for the signs and the symptoms, the risk factors of mental health and substance use. We want to identify all those professional self help resources that are available. So really knowing your counseling office here, knowing who you can reach out to outside of here if you needed to. We want to really, we do a lot of focus on reducing stigma. So we do some hands on activities that I really enjoy.
All the things that you would think of, the words, the way that you use those words, like, for example, don't use the word crazy, we want to use other words. So we have activities where we talk about different things like that. Increasing empathy among individuals, because you're probably going to run into somebody who's experienced or will be experiencing a mental crisis at some point.
We want to increase their likelihood to help them in a distressful situation and also managing their own well being. So we talk a lot about self care. So people have often asked me, how do you have the time to do it? I very much compartmentalize everything I do, and so I make self care one of my top priorities. You know, it's just people see always me working. They don't always see the self care part. So, yeah, that's important. And we teach that in a class, so we push it.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great for those that are listening and they've never really heard of self care. What really, what's your perspective of it? And maybe what's a form of self care that the average person can do?
[00:26:25] Speaker C: Yeah, there's so many things. Yeah, yeah. But I do. I do like to say I focus a lot on the activities that just really kind of make me feel re energized. One of them I personally enjoy is kayaking, and so I do a lot of that.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Kayaking.
[00:26:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I do a lot of that. So.
And I will go by. I saw a bear out there near Boondam, the bridge. And it was a moment, you know, and then. So, in the wild. Right, but it's right down the road. So our mascot was not far away.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Right. JP was just down the road.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: Yes. So. But, yeah, self care can involve so many things, like taking the time to read recreationally, not just because you need to for your work or, you know, whatever reason, and just spending time. Maybe no cell phone. There's. We go through a lot of them in the eight hour course, but the things that really kind of hit me will be those activities that just make me feel re energized.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Activities may, you know, just make you feel present in the moment. Just be able to take in and re energize like that and see how.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: Fast you can kayak when you see a bear.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Oh, God, I tell you, I was about to say your, you know, your perspective or outlook after the situation's dealt with is like, just grateful to be alive. So, I mean, I guess you get a boost of energy and, you know, endorphins and all that afterward. Just glad you survived and didn't get attacked by a bear.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: That was a ten mile day, too.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Oh, Lord.
[00:28:04] Speaker C: I was like, I hope I make it back.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Do you get feedback in those classes from people about what they see on their job, what they see around where they work, or what are some of the.
Some of the experiences they've had?
[00:28:22] Speaker C: Well, definitely with the HR representatives. I'll use that one as an example. They're saying that they see that every day and they're having to deal with, you know, persons that maybe need to take leave for whatever reason. And so they're, how do you handle this? You know, a lot of times when we know somebody has been in a car accident, we will do everything we can. You know, let's get a meal train together. Let's go visit them in the hospital, but nobody really tells you when they're having a mental health crisis, and so you don't really do the meal train, and you don't get together and go see them in the hospital.
And it's a way for them to kind of look at from their point of view how to really help that person. So it's been enlightening, I want to say, for some. And it's been, it's a hard course to go through because if you have experienced any kind of mental crisis or, you know, a family member that has, then it can be very heavy. And so we'll say, you know, if any time you just give me a thumbs up as you walk out the door. If not, we'll come out there. You know, usually I tag team with another instructor, and one of us will come out there and we'll just sit with you or whatever we need to do. And so it's not necessarily most people, when they leave the course, they just feel like, wow, I really needed to know what to do in early crisis situations before they became worse.
Been, I don't want to say totally eye opening, but it's been like, wow, I should have seen that, you know, earlier.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Wow, it does sound like a very heavy course. But you all are really sensitive to the people who are attending. Like, if they need to take a step aside because the content is either triggering to them or just, it's very specific to an experience they've had. Like, you know, you all cater to all that and support them through it. So I think that's really neat.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: We use humor a lot, too. Yeah, well, hey, yeah, because I like, I think a lot of times we, we don't, we don't laugh as much as we should. We don't, like, just let that endorphin of whatever go. And so we try to do things, the exercises that we do, the National Council has already pre planned, but we'll try to add things in there just to make it a little bit more, you know, fun for the. And then two, you know, you want to learn something you want to be able to take away, but I don't want everybody crying when they leave.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Right, right. You got to have that good mix of all the emotions.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: I know you also, you've hosted crisis intervention training for a lot of the local first responders around this region, where it's like downstairs and downstairs here in Baseville library.
And it seems to be a variety of exercises they go through, which I must admit I've witnessed and they're pretty comical. But it's an incredible piece of insight on how to deal with people who are really suffering and mental health, diseases like dementia, Alzheimer's, a variety of things that just cloud the judgment and people don't know what they're dealing with until they kind of get a better understanding of it. Tell us a little bit about that and how that kind of came about.
[00:31:59] Speaker C: So 2020 in the heart of the pandemic, and there was lots of money out there available. Right?
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:05] Speaker C: So I worked with, in collaboration with criminal justice department to do a higher education emergency relief fund grant. And we got it's crisis intervention team training. And so we got that here. It started in 1988 with major Sam Cochran out of Memphis, Tennessee, and it's expanded internationally. So the idea is you could call a CIT officer, much like you might call a k nine officer or a SWAT member. So this is going to be somebody who's going to come in and they're going to be a little bit more well versed in all the resources and the things that they're looking for.
I really like this training. It's a 40 hours post certified course through the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training academy. And I couldn't have done it without the help of our northeast state Police department and now Chief Andrew Meacham.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: There we go.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:59] Speaker C: So he's been a pivotal part of helping make that happen. Every single year we get a new post number and we gotta go through a lot of work to get that done. And he's been awesome with that.
And our workforce solutions office awards four continuing education units to every attendee. We have graduated, I think 164 now. And so for every continuing education credit we build, the college earns a little bit of money for that. So that's good.
We are the only college in the state that's doing that.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:33:34] Speaker C: And actually across the state, west side of Tennessee, they're following our lead.
There is a CIT statewide task force that meets quarterly. And they've gotten our plan and how we do things and they're taking that and sharing that with others. Like, we need to be doing that, you know? So we do have about 20 different guest speakers. They range from talking about things like autism to PTSD.
And then we also have people that have lived the experience, whether it's substance use or, you know, family members of persons with schizophrenia or psychosis, for example.
We're visiting four mental health agencies in person, so we have site visits. We go to Woodridge in turning point in Johnson City. We go to Creekside in Kingsport, and we just added Ridgeview Pavilion, which is up near the casino in Bristol. And so we'll be going there this fall. And we do participate on hands on training with hands on training. And that's the dementia simulation you mentioned. Yes, that's a really good one. Because the officers, usually dispatchers, whoever comes through the program, a lot of times it's EMS dispatch, law enforcement, mental health professionals.
They never really experienced what dementia is like. So we put the glaucoma glasses on them, we put the popcorn in their shoes, we put gloves on their hands and tie their fingers together.
We send them in a dark room and we make them do certain things like tie, tie and find a white shirt and all the things. And so it's comical, yes, but it's also.
And it's very enlightening to them because they may be talking to an individual and that individual is not responding to them like they would assume they should be as a law enforcement officer or whatever. And they're starting to pick up on the cues. Right. Okay, so maybe this person's not, you know, maybe we need to help them a little bit more. You know, there's things that they look for with autism. Like they always tend to venture towards water. So if you have a missing child, we're gonna look for the bodies of water first. So we're training our officers in this area and I'm super excited because Sheriff Cassidy, Sheriff Sexton, I mean. I mean, we've trained over 13 different departments to have at least one cit officer. And Sullivan County, Washington county have been huge about putting their people through this program.
So Heather Proffitt with Washington county court works with me. She's my co coordinator. And, you know, we couldn't do this without the help of frontier health Creekside ballot.
So we're really. We've built on this. We've done it. This is the fourth year now that I've been doing this. And we have two to three trainings a year. And that's all volunteer. So it's great. And it's funny to say that I have a 40 hours week that I enjoy volunteering but really do learn a lot. And we do role play scenarios at the end where they. And we had train the trainer course here where we had used some grant money that was left over. And we brought in the international teachers and major Sam Cochran himself, who is retired now, who taught us how to role play the scenarios, the actual calls that they might have had. And so we've done that. And it tends to be even more comical sometimes, depending on. You might see me in a different lot. Of course.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:37:21] Speaker C: It's a learning experience.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Yeah. I've been able to witness, like, I've heard, like several of the speakers who came and talked about their experiences.
Very, very compelling.
[00:37:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Which I think a lot, many people need to hear firsthand. It's really moving. But the Alzheimer's and the dementia experiences, it's a fascinating thing to witness, to see people not be able to do things. They kind of get just a little taste of that kind of frustration and just not being able to perform the way they believe they can typically would. Yeah, it is really an eye opener when you, when you see people doing that.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: I'm going to give sort of a shout out for centers for teaching and learning is going to be doing the dementia simulation as a workshop, actually, this semester, which we're excited about. I believe it's October 25, and so Tennessee Alzheimer's is going to come in and do the same little piece that they do with Cit for our faculty and staff. So I'm excited about that.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it really strengthened a little bit of understanding and as well as empathy. Big Keith with all of this, is exercising that empathy, actually putting yourselves in the shoes of somebody else.
Andre, you are the definition of a volunteer. The truest form and all the associations with it. I mean, I've just. I've known you for a bit, but I just feel like we pulled back the layers, and I didn't realize just how much you are a part of. It's really impressive stuff.
[00:38:58] Speaker C: I'm blessed. I get to work with a lot of people across campus, and a lot of the library staff is wonderful to host us. And marketing people have been so, so great about taking pictures of and sharing that and getting that out there for us. And workforce solutions police department, I mean, I'm pretty blessed to get to do the things that I do. So I'm not complaining.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: What prompted you to join the army? I'm interested.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I was, too. That's a good question. I know we're going all the way back, but I was curious.
[00:39:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know, honestly.
[00:39:33] Speaker B: How old were you? 1717. Oh, I knew that you mentioned that to me.
[00:39:39] Speaker C: I'm only 25 now, so, yeah, I really, really enjoyed my first, my first couple of years in, I did some active duty recruiting and retention across the state. And so I got to go to all the fairs and dress up and, you know, drive the big vehicles and share how exciting that was. And I actually recruited my husband. Oh, well, yeah. And so, yes. And then, and then felt immediately guilty because he got deployed to Iraq. He was in operations, iraqi freedom three. And so he was overseas, and I had two small children and one in school. And so I say that because I know what it's like to be a single parent for a little while. He was overseas for 18 months and then be also military myself. And then now I'm the parent of military people. So, you know, it's like I've kind of went all the way around with that.
But no, I don't know what caused me to join. I just thought, well, this will be great. I can get myself through school.
And I did. I used every bit of my GI Bill.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Very good.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: I did. I started here and then went to Etsu, majored in criminal justice and psychology over there and then thought about going further than that. And then, well, the GI Bill's gone, so I'll stop.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: Well, Andrea, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today and sharing all your amazing stories, all the cool things that you're involved in, not just an assistant professor, but a true volunteer through and through. You were what the state was named after.
[00:41:25] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: There we go. Well, sound very delicious. We appreciate you so much for tuning into this episode. If you're interested in taking classes here at northeast State, you can do so here with andrea, Miss Amos, and get into some service learning volunteer with volunteer northeast. Once again, thank you all so much. Really appreciate you all. And we will talk at you next time as we continue to break the barrier.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Listen to the sound
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