Eleven members of the American Indian community will share stories associated with their cultural ties to Missouri as part of a project by the Brown School’s Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies. The Digital Indigenous Storytelling Project will premiere on November 17 and highlight stories from across Missouri including Brown School’s American Indian Student Association.
Storytelling is an important tradition in Native communities across the U.S., which have been disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus. Kellie Thompson, director of the Buder Center, said the project was a way to replace in-person events that the center had to cancel because of the pandemic, including some scheduled for November, Native American Heritage Month.
“We knew we wouldn’t be having in-person events in the fall,” she said. “This is a creative way to continue to engage our staff, students and local people to provide an event for the community.” The project is funded by the Missouri Humanities Council with federal funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), which paid for staff to lead the project, honoraria for storytellers and technical equipment and training.
“We’ve been collecting stories from Indigenous people who have lived in Missouri or who are descended from tribes that are traditionally from the region. Their stories tie back to the land, and helps us think about how individuals stay connected to their culture,” Thompson said. “Some talk about how COVID has affected their culture. Storytelling is a way to not only share much about yourself, but often highlights lessons to be learned or knowledge that needs to be passed on to the next generation. It’s about the story, but also about the oral transmission of it.”
The stories will be posted on the Buder website on November 17; that afternoon at 4:00 p.m. the Buder Facebook page will livestream an introduction to the project. Some of the storytellers speak directly to cameras, others are the subject of interviews by Eric Pinto, the project coordinator, and two were submitted in writing and will be read by Pinto. The project hopes to continue collecting Indigenous people’s stories and will invite others to share their own.
Another response by the Buder Center to the pandemic will be a one-hour seminar that will provide culturally relevant health information for members of the Native community. The project, funded by AMB Foundation, will also disseminate health flyers and personal hygiene items such as masks and soap to help people prepare for the upcoming flu season and a second wave of COVID-19. Buder students will assist in the effort.
“The seminar will explain how to reduce the spread of the virus, what to do if you’re exposed, where to get testing, how contract tracing works and vaccine updates,” Thompson said. The seminar is open to all, but will be geared to the urban Indian community. It will be live-streamed through the Buder Center Facebook page from 12 p.m.-1 p.m. on December 2.
When Thomas and Jennifer Hillman Hall was dedicated on Oct. 2, 2015, it was hailed as a roomy addition to the Brown School, a welcoming place designed to encourage in-person collaboration and shared learning. Now, as the school prepares to celebrate the building’s 5th anniversary, the roominess of its 105,000 square feet is being appreciated more than could have been imagined.
The welcoming and in-person sharing, not so much.
“It’s ‘Come in and take advantage of in-person learning, but follow our science-based public health safety protocol,’” said Mary McKay, Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School.
The difference, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has upended higher education around the nation and posed vexing dilemmas for university administrators who want to offer in-person learning options, while minimizing the risk of exposure for students, faculty and staff. The good news is that Hillman Hall and its wide-open spaces have provided the Brown School with the distancing resources and flexibility that have been key to its resumption of select in-person classes that began Aug. 24.
“We cannot imagine navigating the pandemic without the resource of Hillman Hall,” McKay said. “We have this beautiful building that was designed with flexibility in mind, more than our other buildings. Just having that much more space helps us distance ourselves from one another. That’s the silver lining.”
For those returning to Hillman for the first time since the coronavirus hit, the biggest change they’ll see is in the Maxine Clark and Bob Fox Forum, the building’s large and airy focal point on the first floor that features a woodwork ceiling and a glass façade. Created as a premier event space for conferences, lectures and town hall meetings, the Forum has been considered the figurative front porch of the Brown School. Now it has been transformed into a classroom, configured to maintain a safe six feet between students. Grounds for Change, the café adjacent to the Forum, is temporarily closed, with a possible reopening offering a ‘grab n’ go’ selection in the future.
“All of the features that made Hillman a collaborative and social place are detriments in this pandemic,” said Amy Eyler, associate professor and co-director of the Hillman-based Prevention Research Center who led a study of how the building as designed contributed to the well-being of those there. “I am now teaching two in-person classes and there is a whole new meaning of healthy building!”
Figuring out how to resume classes safely and fitting the logistical puzzle pieces together was the job of a large team of faculty and staff, led by committed preparedness, public health safety and administrative leadership teams. Siomari Collazo-Colon, Associate Dean of Administration notes, “We are incredibly fortunate to have some of the best public health faculty in the country. This has allowed us to put science at the forefront of every decision.”
“I was nervous at first but it’s going very well,” said team member Sunghei Han, MSW ’03, the Brown School’s manager of operations. “We’ve all been working to make this happen and we’re very confident that the protocol developed by Brown School public health experts would serve us well.”
When they sat down to plot out classroom floor plans, they quickly realized that many of the school’s classrooms were too small to accommodate six-foot distancing of students. Hence the use of the Clark-Fox Forum (and the Brown Lounge), to host classes too. Also, It was necessary to limit occupancy of the restrooms, which are now restricted to one person at a time and gender-neutral. The academic affairs team worked closely with faculty to decide which of the school’s 200 courses would be taught in person, when, and where. “It was lots of work and a tremendous collaboration,” she said. “It’s all the Brown School community doing it together. It’s been a great honor and a good experience and I’ve learned a lot.”
The building was made possible by the generous donations of Thomas and Jennifer Hillman. Jennifer Hillman was recently announced as a 2020 Woman of Achievement, and Thomas Hillman is president of the school’s National Council. Both have been in close touch with McKay about the changes in the building. “They’re glad about the flexibility and they trust us to make the right decisions,” McKay said. “They’re very practical people and we are lucky to have such Brown School champions.”
Commitment to applying best practices was shared across the school, faculty and staff as it wrestled with the challenges of resuming the in-person learning experience while keeping in mind one of the overarching goals that Hillman Hall was designed to further: the health and well-being of the people who use it.
“We’re protecting lives,” Han said.
Sugar-sweetened beverage warning labels are effective in dissuading consumers from choosing them, with graphics having the greatest impact, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. However, the United States has yet to pass legislation that would require such warning labels.
“The influence of sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) warning labels tends to be in line with the efficacy of warning labels on tobacco packages,” said Ruopeng An, assistant professor and lead author of “Impact of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Warning Labels on Consumer Behaviors: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” published Oct. 12 in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.
“In addition, SSB warning labels may alter consumers’ perceptions about the healthfulness of a beverage,” he added.
SSBs are beverages that are sweetened with various forms of added sugars, such as regular soda, fruit drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, sweetened waters and coffee and tea beverages with added sugars. From 2011-14, on any given day, 6 in 10 youths and 5 in 10 adults in the U.S. drank SSBs and obtained over 140 calories from their consumption.
“During the past decade, various types of warning labels have been developed and tested that aimed to inform consumers about the health impact or nutritional implication of SSB consumption,” An said. “Some SSB warning labels conveyed messages in text form, some adopted symbols or graphics, and others used a combination of different means to communicate with consumers. To our knowledge, no review has been conducted to summarize the scientific evidence generated from those studies.”
In an effort to inform policymaking and promote evidence-based interventions at the population level, the new study serves as the first systematic review that aims to comprehensively identify and synthesize scientific literature that assessed the impact of SSB warning labels on consumer behaviors and intentions in the U.S. and worldwide.
A total of 23 studies met the predetermined eligibility criteria and were included in the review. Meta-analyses revealed that the use of SSB warning labels was associated with reduced odds of choosing SSBs among participants.
“Across the alternative forms of SSB warning labels, a picture or graphic warning label was associated with the most substantial decrease in the odds of choosing SSBs (66%),” An said. “Graphic warning labels may be more likely to be noticed by a consumer, which highlights the importance of salience in engaging consumers’ attention. Also, graphic warning labels might trigger a spontaneous negative response against the product that dissuades consumers.”
Failed U.S. legislative efforts
Chile passed a law in 2016 that required front-of-package warning labels for foods and drinks with added sugars, sodium, saturated fats or calories that exceeded preset limits. Some early evidence suggests that the soda purchases in Chile considerably declined following the implementation of the law. In 2019, Mexico’s Health Commission approved a proposal that introduced front-of-package food warning labels to combat obesity.
Despite the promising effect of SSB warning labels and recent legislation in other countries, An warned about the substantial political barriers in the U.S. to sign it into law by pinpointing a few failed legislative efforts.
“The Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Act (SB 1000) was introduced in California in early 2014,” he said. “The act prohibited the distribution and sale of certain SSBs in California that did not carry a safety warning message about the health consequences of SSB consumption. The bill was later amended to SB 203 but is no longer active.
“In the following years, similar bills were introduced in New York, Vermont, Hawaii and Washington. In 2015, San Francisco passed the nation’s first law that required the beverage industry to post health warnings on advertisements for SSBs. However, the bill was later blocked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court. In early 2019, the Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Act (SB 347) was reintroduced in California and amended a few months later. To date, no law mandating SSB warning labels has been implemented in the U.S.
“SSB warning labels tend to be a low-cost, scalable and effective policy leverage to reduce calorie intake and prevent unhealthy weight gain in the population, but relevant legislation in the U.S. could be a long-lasting battle.”
Co-authors on the study are Abigail Barker, a research assistant professor at the Brown School; Timothy McBride, the Bernard Becker Professor at the Brown School; Jianxiu Liu and Ruidong Liu of Tsinghua University, China; and Roger Figueroa of Cornell University.
As Jack A. Kirkland marks his 50th year on the Brown School faculty, the issues that motivated his remarkable career in social work and civil rights are as urgent today as they were when he began. From his annual seminar that takes students to underserved neighborhoods, to his research on economic development in urban areas, Kirkland has sought to create change through understanding.
“What I teach is to how to change our thought processes in order to be able to walk in different cultures, and to deal with the African American urban struggle,” he says.
The result has been a legacy of research, public service and teaching, as well as an international reputation for enriching the experience of thousands of students, organizations, and state and municipal leaders who have sought his insights and advice.
“Jack Kirkland is an icon here at the Brown School and well beyond,” said Mary McKay, Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School. “His achievements have benefited a large and diverse array of students, faculty and communities striving for concrete progress in social and racial justice in the United States and around the world.”
Kirkland joined the Brown School as an assistant professor in 1970 after teaching for several years at St. Louis University. Soon thereafter, he co-founded and chaired the Black Studies Program at Washington University (now the Department of African and African-American Studies). A popular teacher, he was three times voted Most Outstanding Teacher, at the university as well as the Brown School. He also received the Distinguished Faculty Alumni Award.
Now an associate professor, he is perhaps best known on campus for his field-based summer course, “Poverty – The Impact of Institutionalized Racism,” which immerses students in the community of East St. Louis and teaches them to strategize on policies that can combat the effects of urban blight and poverty. The summer course was canceled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Kirkland said he hopes to resume next summer.
“It’s an opportunity to watch students and engage them in the process of seeing individuals and families grow and excel and lift themselves up,” he said. “Students come into our school with a desire to help people who are disadvantaged. But many have very little knowledge about why families are trapped. What students come to discover is you can help people develop self-esteem and motivate themselves to change the situation they’re in and do what they can for oncoming generations.”
One of those students was Keaira Anderson, MSW ’15, the former executive director of the Cornerstone Community Development Corp. who continues to lead the effort for affordable housing in the West End neighborhood of St. Louis as a board member of Delmar Divine, a $100 million redevelopment project. Asked during a recent panel discussion about how the Brown School prepared her for her work, she immediately mentioned Kirkland and the summer course in East St. Louis.
“He talked a lot about making sure that once we graduate, we truly treat it as an extended practicum experience,” she said. “Now, I’m making sure I’m seeking to understand the needs, the strengths and the opportunities in communities. I truly do thank Professor Jack Kirkland for that experience.”
Another former student of Kirkland, Karen Stewart, MSW ’11, was raised in the majority-white community of Springfield, Mo. “Jack really helped me expand my world view in a way I didn’t even know needed expanding,” said Stewart, MSW ’11, who recalled that she initially argued with Kirkland’s views on race. “I said no one has given me anything,” she said. “He said, ‘I know you believe that.’” She said she soon realized the truth of Kirkland’s teaching, and he became her adviser.
“He said, ‘No one is poor in America because they’re white,’ and that is really accurate,” said Stewart who is now an adjunct faculty member at the Brown School and a consultant to organizations on issues of race. “The two questions he wants students to answer are: How can we help poor people? And, why are people poor? What Jack Kirkland does is not so much about social work as it is about social justice.”
Kirkland’s academic career was influenced by his vast array of work outside the classroom. One of the most significant experiences came in 1976, when Missouri Governor Joseph Teasdale appointed him as the state’s Director of Transportation. His two years in the cabinet position helped to transform his thinking about social work, and the economic impact of policy on the lives of communities. “I saw that economic development often had no conscience,” he said. “The gentrification, urban development and highway development destroyed many Black communities. Most of social work deals with services. But if you’re going to be working with people who are economically distressed, the thing that’s imperative is that it be about economic uplift.”
When he returned to the Brown School, he founded the concentration in Social and Economic Development and served as its chair for ten years. He said the Brown School remains the only school in the nation to offer a full concentration on the subject.
Kirkland’s teaching draws from his extensive life experience. Born during the Great Depression, he grew up in western Pennsylvania and attended Syracuse University, where he became the first African-American graduate of the School of Social Work and upon graduation was inducted into the Phi Delta Kappa Education Honorary Society.
He served as Director of Community Development for Peace Corps for Latin America, and has consulted with mayors across the nation about community development. Locally he became the first African American elected to the University City Board of Education, and was a consultant in the school desegregation decree for St. Louis and St. Louis County. He participated in research with scholars at Stanford University and the U.S. Department of Education that led to the department’s Charter Schools Program. He also consulted with the Department of Indian Affairs in Washington, testified before Congressional committees, was appointed to the executive board of the St. Louis County Economic Council, and served as a member of trade missions to Indonesia and China. Kirkland is a member of The History Makers, a non-profit research and educational institution committed to preserving and making accessible the untold personal stories of well-known and unsung African Americans.
His work has been recently acknowledged with the creation of the endowed Jack. A. Kirkland Scholarship for Social and Economic Development, in recognition of his impact and legacy at the Brown School. The scholarship will support students with significant financial need who are committed to working in Black communities. For more information or to make a gift in support, reach out to Brown School Advancement.
“My work has brought me to realize that the most impactful way to apply social work to economic development is by working directly with power structures,” he said. Most recently, he’s been a consultant to the mayors of three small St. Louis municipalities on a merger to help improve their economies. “My focus is how to help mayors put in place an economic baseline so they have an opportunity to see capital come through and show how people can help themselves and one another economically,” he said.
Now well into his ninth decade, Kirkland remains as passionate about his mission as ever, with few thoughts of retirement. “I’ll retire when I don’t have anything else to say that’s helpful for young people to hear,” he said.
Fortunately for Brown School students, that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon.
Female authors are underrepresented as sole and first authors and as members of authorship teams in readings for undergraduate college courses, finds a new analysis from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Emerging evidence demonstrates that female-authored publications are not well represented in course readings in some fields, resulting in a syllabi gender gap, found Jenine Harris and Amy Eyler, associate professors and authors of “Diversify the syllabi: Underrepresentation of female authors in college course readings,” published Oct. 28 in the journal PLOS ONE.
“Women are underrepresented as authors on course materials across disciplines, limiting the exposure of students to women experts,” Harris said.
“And it is completely fixable,” Eyler said. “This paper helps to increase awareness of the disparity, so instructors can intentionally create a more equitable reading list.”
Merriah Croston, a doctoral student in public health sciences at Washington University, and Ellen Hutti, a master’s of public health student and master’s research fellow at the Clark-Fox Policy Institute at Washington University, are co-authors on the paper.
From a list of courses offered in 2018-19 at Washington University, the authors selected a stratified random sample of course syllabi from four disciplines: humanities; social science; science, technology, engineering and mathematics; and other. They coded the gender of course instructors and course reading authors using the genderize application programming interface, which helped categorize authorship by gender. They then examined representation of female authors at the reading, course and discipline level using descriptive statistics and data visualization.
The final sample included 2,435 readings from 129 unique courses. The mean percentage of female authors per reading was 34.1%. Some 822 (33.8%) of the readings were female-led (meaning a female first or sole author). Female authorship varied by discipline, with the highest percentage of female-led readings in social science (40%). Female instructors assigned a higher percentage of readings with female-first authors and readings with higher percentages of females on authorship teams. The representation of female authors on syllabi was lower than representation of females as authors in the peer-reviewed literature or in the workforce.
“Adding to evidence of the syllabi gender gap, we found that female authors were underrepresented as sole and first authors and as members of authorship teams,” Harris said. “Since assigned readings promote academic scholarship and influence workforce diversity, we recommend several strategies to diversify the syllabi through increasing awareness of the gap and improving access to female-authored publications.”
To aid faculty in identifying readings by underrepresented groups more easily, the authors recommend the development of reading collections that faculty can draw from.
“These collections could ideally be housed in a central location, perhaps on discipline-specific professional association websites or discipline neutral locations like the website for The Chronicle of Higher Education,” Eyler said.
This fall marks a transition in leadership for two of our MSW concentrations—International Social & Economic Development (ISED), American Indian Alaskan Native(AIAN).
New Chair for International Social & Economic Development (ISED)
After founding the ISED concentration serving as its chair for six years, Professor Carolyn Lesorogol steps down. She leaves an incredible legacy of leadership and course development. She significantly expanded international practicum opportunities – developing field-based courses in Haiti, Costa Rica, Tanzania, Germany, Australia, and Uga, India that have provided faculty and students opportunities to learn outside the U.S.
The new ISED Concentration Chair, Assistant Professor of Practice Brad Tucker, is an international development professional passionate about advancing the type of social justice that maximizes human development of nations and communities in the Global South – especially sub-Saharan Africa. He has worked with organizations such as USAID, RTI, PACT and the Aga Khan Foundation. Before coming to the Brown School, Tucker taught at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH; served as a Foreign Service Officer in Washington, DC, Indonesia and Kenya; and directed a development program with activities in over 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
He currently teaches MSW, MSP and MPH students in the following classes: International Social Economic Development (ISED) Policy; ISED Theory; Management Leadership of Organizations; and Leading Managing Employees, Volunteers Teams. He brings in-depth knowledge of international practice & policy expertise to the ISED concentration.
New Interim Chair for American Indian Alaskan Native (AIAN) Concentration
Associate Professor David Patterson Silver Wolf served as the concentration’s inaugural chair and leader since 2014. During that time he taught two concentration courses: Leadership Development Evaluation in Indian Country and Community Development with AI and Indigenous Communities. He also supported the Social Workers Advancing Through Grounded Education (SAGE) program, working to create new practica opportunities for students within Indigenous communities. Patterson is currently on leave.
Kellie Thompson, director of the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies and member of Seneca Nation of Indians, will serve as Interim AIAN Concentration Chair. Thompson earned her BA in psychology gender studies from the University of Notre Dame. She is an MSW Buder Scholar alumna from the Brown School.
In previous positions at both the Washington University Center for Diabetes Translation and Research and the Health Communication Research Laboratory, Thompson collaborated with tribal epidemiology centers, the National Congress of American Indians, and Native faculty from across the country.
At the Buder Center – which is currently celebrating 30 years of training and service for Native Americans – Thompson is responsible for the overall management and development of activities and programs including recruitment, student support services, curriculum, partnerships and research development. Her research interests include Indigenous student development, leadership education and decolonizing social work practices.
Thompson has been actively engaged with Patterson throughout this past year in revising and strengthening the AIAN concentration. She brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to this important leadership role.