Trustees' Medal Award

This year, Barbara Brock, professor of Physical Education, Health and Recreation, is the winner of the Trustees' Medal of the Year Award.

The Trustees' Medal Award honors teaching excellence, significant contributions to scholarship and research and accomplishments in the development of academic programs and curricula. The award consists of a bronze medallion and a $1,500 cash prize from the EWU Foundation.

"I am really, really honored to receive the Trustees' Medal. I was very shocked. I didn't think I deserve it, but it makes me realize that what's most important, maybe in my offering is a lot of the little things. It's not one big thing, but it's just the act of kindness - the sock drive, the scholarship thing, helping students take a little one-week look at their life and maybe modify it, change it so they find more happiness," said Brock.

According to the Good Morning Eastern publication, Brock has been working at EWU for 21 years. She began her career at Eastern in 1987 as an assistant professor and has served as professor of recreation management since 1994.

With an interest to learn more, The Easterner sat down with Brock and asked her a few questions.

Easterner: I read in your biography part of the Good Morning Eastern that you studied therapeutic recreation and recreation administration and higher education in college. Why did you choose to study those?

Brock: Well, therapeutic recreation, I just loved the ability to help physically and mentally-disabled folks to do things; to get outside. If they are in wheelchairs and you take them to an incredible, natural place which they never had the chance to be before, it's a neat thing to watch. My dissertation was on therapeutic horseback riding where 39 physically handicapped adults learned to ride horses for six months and measured physical change like coordination, strength and psychological comparisons were done. That was really exciting.

E: And I also read in the Good Morning Eastern that you've done research on TV-free lifestyles. I find that interesting. B: The Easterner did a big story on it last year.

Writer's note: the article Brock refers to, "Changing the channel to reality," was written by Tessa Schilter in the May 23, 2007 issue.

E: What prompted your research of TV-free lifestyles?

B: Well, again, the fact that people are spending four and a half hours of their leisure time watching TV. My field is in leisure so I have a little bit of an awareness of what good leisure is and what it can do for people; providing success, happiness, and fulfillment with hobbies, activities, and socialization whereas no one's getting that if they're watching television for four and a half hours a day. So I wanted to find out what those who don't watch television do with that extra four and a half hours a day.

E: What suggestions do you have for college students who aren't in athletics, something that already takes up the extra four and a half hours, with regard to what they can do to lessen the time of TV hours that they watch?

B: Well, my first piece of advice is to go outside and the second piece of advice is be physically active; find friends, go for walks, bake things together, write letters. There are so many wonderful things to do here in your own community. There's hiking trails and beautiful lakes a very short distance away. I think sometimes just going outside is the first thing to do whether it's night or day, rainy or sunny, you will find something to do. And often you won't want to come back in.

E: What or whom inspired you to teach?

B: Actually, I was never planning to teach. But I had gotten my master's degree and my old undergraduate school [Graceland College] called me to see if I was interested in a position. So it was a real, like, "Teach!?" and they said, "Well, you have your master's degree and at a small college you could teach." And my first day I realized I had found my niche. I absolutely loved it. I taught gymnastics, canoeing, camp programming, creative games, camp administration, programming and leadership. I realized I had just fallen into a really fun occupation.

E: What do you do in your classes to promote TV-free lifestyles to students?

B: I don't really promote TV-free. I present the research. But what I do promote is good leisure. Students have to do a six-day time budget of their life and then analyze it according to four levels on a triangle which shows how fulfilling their activities are. And it's really an eye-opening experience. I've done it over 20 years and students actually request to do this assignment a second time at the end of the quarter to see if they can make some change in their life and inevitably, a huge comment is, "I realize how much time I spend indoors and how much time I spend watching TV and doing video games and there are so many other things to do." One other little optional assignment I give is to actually try to go TV-free for one week and then keep a little journal on the back [of the paper] of how they did. A lot of students like doing that because it's interesting to, again, they're looking at their own life. When you're dealing with your own life, it's a lot more interesting than me giving an assignment on someone else's life.

E: What is the most rewarding part of your teaching job?

B: Just watching students make a change in their lifestyle for the better. Whether it's becoming more active or getting involved in things, presenting something where they gain confidence, of course landing a wonderful job is incredible, going to conferences with students is really, really fun. So I think that idea of knowing that I'm just one little step on the path to helping them find a very fulfilling job is incredibly rewarding.

E: I read in the Good Morning Eastern publication that you organize an annual sock-drive for local charities. Could you tell me more about that?

B: It started about 15 years ago when a guest speaker came into my classroom and was talking about [homelessness. She was a] really incredible speaker and I asked, "What can I do?" The problem seemed so huge and she said, "foot disease and foot fungus is rampant in fall and spring." She goes, "they could use new socks." So we pushed it off. My budgeting class organized it and we did a matching grant with an anonymous donor and to date, I lost count about five years ago, we raised over 15,000 brand new pairs of socks. Every year we bring in a couple thousand, maybe two to three thousand, brand-new pairs of socks and they go to four or five local charities [Crosswalk, House of Charity, Hope House, and the Spokane Regional Health District's needle exchange program] around the Northwest and the Spokane County area. I'm known as the "sock lady" and it's a huge compliment to me.