Dr. Michael Sharp is an Associate Professor of Experiential Learning at the University of Cincinnati but we picked him here as he is also the editor of Experience Magazine hosted by the Cooperative Education and Internship Association. He is also the co-founder of the Tapioca Radio Show. We thought it was an interesting idea to turn-the-tables on him and make him the subject of an interview rather than be the organizer of other’s voices. That turned out to be a great idea on a number of levels as you will hear about in the podcast. Note specifically, that Sharp works at Cincinnati in Service Learning, making the point himself of the interconnectedness of experiential learning in its many forms. When you listen to the podcast, particularly the introduction, many references are made to the links listed provided below. You will also hear near the end of the podcast the most excellent experiential-education reason behind the name “Tapioca” for the radio show, but we will not spoil that story for you.
Topics discussed in this episode include:
Resources Discussed in this Episode:
Music Credits: C’est La Vie by Derek Clegg
ExperiencED Season 2, Episode 4
Jim Stellar: [00:00:00] Welcome to the ExperiencED podcast. I am Jim stellar.
[00:00:12] Mary Churchill: [00:00:12] I am Mary Churchill
[00:00:13] Adrienne Dooley: [00:00:13] and I am Adrienne Dooley.
[00:00:15] Jim Stellar: [00:00:15] We bring you this podcast on experiential education
[00:00:18] Mary Churchill: [00:00:18] with educators and thought leaders
[00:00:20] Adrienne Dooley: [00:00:20] from around the country and the world
[00:00:24] Jim Stellar: [00:00:24] We have with us today, Dr. Michael Sharp. For 11 years, Dr. Sharp has been leading service learning at the University of Cincinnati program that connects stakeholders who support over 4,000 student registrations per year, representing every undergraduate college at UC. Most recently and in response to COVID-19, he helped to create the service learning co-op program, providing students with paid opportunities to work virtually. With not-for-profit organizations. Sharp is an Associate Professor of Experiential Learning, teaching classes in the division of experience based learning and career education and the college of arts and sciences communications department.
[00:01:09] Sharp created and is leading a novel approach to service learning, called the service learning collaboratory, a class that was recognized via the Dean's award for innovative instruction. He's the co-creator and cohost of the Tapioca Radio show and is introduced to the university the Jack Twyman award for service learning. Sharp is the senior editor of Experience Magazine: Practice + Theory + Podcast, and has earned a doctorate in urban education leadership at the University of Cincinnati.
[00:01:45] His dissertation, critical curriculum and just community: Making sense of service learning in Cincinnati focusing on the importance of critical pedagogy, create a two campus community partnerships. It was awarded the dissertation of the year by the national society for experiential education. It's award-winning work has been contracted pre-publication by UC press.
[00:02:10] So Sharp's service to his community. Includes coaching baseball. Since steady freedom and volunteering. He also co-chairs the greater Cincinnati service learning networks, higher education.
[00:02:25] Michael, thank you for being with us. we see that you have a long history in experiential education, but let's focus first on the magazine you lead. How long have you been the editor and how did you get into that position?
[00:02:39]Michael Sharp: [00:02:39] Well, thank you, Jim. And thank you, Mary, for inviting me on to your podcast. I've been looking forward to this and, it's a real pleasure to talk with you both here. I've been, editor of Experience Magazine, since right around 2017, the publication existed well before me.
[00:02:59] A very good friend and colleague of mine, professor Michelle. Claire was the editor prior to me, and then between like 2015 and 2017, the magazine went sort of dormant. Prior to that, it was really focused, exclusively on cooperative education, internships. And so when I was approached and maybe think about a relaunching it, because in my, my world, I don't do very much co-op and internship type stuff. I do more service learning type stuff. I proposed to the board of CIA, which is the organization that publishes the magazine, asked them, would it be okay if we broadened the focus of the magazine to include other types of Experiential learning and work integrated learning programming, like service learning, like transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary teaching and learning undergraduate research, teaching practicums exhibitions performances. And the board said, said, yes. And so in 2017, we, launched our first issue. I believe it was the fall of 2017. And we've, we've done about two issues per year since.
[00:04:21]Jim Stellar: [00:04:21] That's great, you got into the editor position was to follow up a little bit because there was a natural turnover. Is there anything more to the story? I mean, were you a hankering to broaden the magazine, as you said?
[00:04:27] Michael Sharp: [00:04:27] Well, you know, it's really interesting. I did know about the magazine because the service learning program at the University of Cincinnati had moved from a sort of satellite office, reporting to the provost office and it moved over to the division of what was then called division of professional practice, which was the place that did, co-op and internships. And so, that's when I became exposed to that side of the experiential learning or WIL umbrella and Michelle, Claire, was then, and is still a colleague in that, unit. And I became very familiar with it.
[00:05:04] Then we even talked a little bit prior to me taking it over about, could we encourage service learning faculty and students to also submit content. But then through a series of changes and sort of Michelle switched gears and became more of a leader in our unit, so she had to let some things go and it sort of died out for a while.
[00:05:27] And I think you both know, professor Cheryl Kates, who's now retired. it was actually Cheryl's idea. And then president of CIA Kelly Harper, I remember having pizza, I forget the name of the pizza joint, but we had a little meeting and talked about what it would look like if I took it over. And so I really, to be honest with you, I sort of fell into it, and I just said, yes. And so now here we are three years later and I'm continuing to do it.
[00:05:56] Jim Stellar: [00:05:56] I have to just interject that so many good things happen in the Academy over pizza.
[00:06:01] Michael Sharp: [00:06:01] Isn't that true? Isn't that? So true.
[00:06:03] Jim Stellar: [00:06:03] Coffee and cookies, maybe a close second.
[00:06:06] Michael Sharp: [00:06:06] And then maybe beer is a fourth. Absolutely.
[00:06:09] Mary Churchill: [00:06:09] Maybe. Jim and I have had some great slices of pizza at Queens. So you've told us a little about how the magazine operates. Could you tell us a bit more, but also I'd love to hear some of the more interesting stories you've encountered through this magazine.
[00:06:26] Michael Sharp: [00:06:26] Yeah, so one big change that I wanted to talk about here in the timing of you allow me to come on your podcast here is perfect.
[00:06:35] So when I relaunched it, it used to be called just Experience Magazine. And so when I relaunched it in 2017, we added the tagline of practice and theory. And then with this most recent launching, if you look at the website today and compare it to the website of six months ago, it's quite quite different.
[00:06:57] And what we've done is we've added also a podcasting functionality. A person that I think Jim, you know, for sure Mary, you may know as well, Eric Alanson. He is a professor at UC. He and I about, I don't know, four or five years ago started basically a radio show out of UCS radio station. And we call the tapioca radio show and it was sort of a hobby where we just invited in people like you and students and not for profit partners and co-op employers. And we interviewed them just sort of like we're doing here. And then Eric and his wife, Erin Allinson, who also works at UC, had a couple of kids. And so that sort of fell off the radar. And so what we've done is we sort of taken that tapioca radio show model platform, and we've moved it over to Experience Magazine.
[00:07:48] We were really surprised the amount of attention we were getting with a Tapioca Radio show. I think we did. You know, 30 or 35 episodes. And we somehow, without promoting it all, promoting it at all, had about 20,000 page clicks. And we're really not sure why that's happening, or why that did happen.
[00:08:09] But we were happy to see it. And so we're hoping to do, is to broaden that listenership of what used to be called the Tapioca Radio show, as we've moved it over to Experience Magazine. So with the new launch, there's a new name and it's called a Experience Magazine Practice Theory and Podcast. And, thank you for having me on to talk about that. And, I. I asked this of Jim prior to today's call, I would love to have you two on to our podcast sometime in the near future. So you can talk about your work as well.
[00:08:40] Mary Churchill: That would be fun.
[00:08:40] Jim Stellar: That'd be great. I’m in.
[00:08:44] Michael Sharp: [00:08:44] So that that's one big change that you'll, you'll see on the other big changes. With the old format of Experience Magazine, it was basically a twice per year publication. One came out in the fall, one came out in the spring and that seemed to do okay. But the world's changed and people want content updated more frequently than that. So we've also moved to more of a rolling submission and rolling publication. So as, as we get new content in, or as we do a new podcast, or somebody writes a really cool article, or we, somebody submits a really cool video of something, we will update the platform every two to three weeks or so to keep it current in the key people, coming back.
[00:09:29] Mary Churchill: [00:09:29] So what's a hot story. Like what's the one that people have, especially one that I guess that's surprised you, people are clicking on and reading and listening to more than, than you might've thought they would.
[00:09:41] Michael Sharp: [00:09:41] Yeah. Well, one, one story that I really like is titled, what you can learn from 2000 sticky notes. Using participatory action research to study women in engineering. So that is a mouthful. It really highlights what we're trying to do with the platform, which is, for example, action research is a form of work, integrated learning or experiential learning. As a co-op for engineers. And so what that article does a pretty good job of doing is intentionally blurring the boundaries that exist between those different buckets. So experiential learning, if that makes sense.
[00:10:41] Mary Churchill: Yeah, no, that, and that sounds like a fun topic and I have a nice visual image of all these sticky notes. Right? There's a great visual image with that.
[00:11:01] Michael Sharp: [00:11:01] Yeah, there another article, cooperative education and entrepreneurship education, which seems to be a topic that people are getting more and more excited about.
[00:10:44] What we've noticed in the non for profit sector is the old traditional model of existing solely on grants, and solely on fundraisers. That seems to be fading away a little bit. And what's many of these non-for-profits at least in Cincinnati and I'm sure up North as well are starting to do is more social entrepreneurship.
[00:11:08] Things where they will either provide a service or provide products. And then the proceeds of that, those services and products go back toward the non-for-profit mission. And so that's, I think another example of really blurring the boundary. Between for profit thinking, not-for-profits thinking, the campus and the community.
[00:11:28] And I really liked that. And that's what really trying to do with this platform of Experience Magazine is to really embrace that and, and, you know, create that fuzzy place where people can come and learn from each other. You know, if you're an expert in co-op and engineering, you may have something to learn from the service learning folks and the opposite is true also.
[00:11:46]. Mary Churchill: Yeah. And you know that, like, I'm just thinking, as you say that, that really is a model of integration, right? We're talking about interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary, but that's integration. What you're describing, which is fantastic.
[00:12:01]. Jim Stellar: It's often at those boundaries where the real learning takes place while you're on the field of neuroscience was the integration of psychology and biology.
[00:12:12] Michael Sharp: Yeah, and Jim you know we, talked about this and I would love to work with you. Around that what we've talked about in the past, this idea of the mind and the heart link, fascinating concept for me. And I would love to talk with you more about that.
[00:12:35] Jim Stellar: Well, I'm always happy to talk, I am a professor you know, especially about that topic. But let me turn it back to you for a second, because when you went to the university of Cincinnati, the famous co-op school, the founding co-op school, although that makes Northeastern and Drexel a little bit heebie-jeebie, and they're almost as old as Cincinnati, you didn't do co-op up. You started in service learning. So can you talk a little about you about your personal transition and how that worked to lead you to where you are today?
[00:13:15] Michael Sharp: Yeah, so I graduated high school in 1992. I went straight to college. And like a lot of freshmen do, I did really well for, we were on quarters, then not semesters.
[00:13:23] I did really well for about a quarter. And then I found the, extracurricular side of college, and not extracurricular in a positive way, the, the parties and the clubs and the bars and the stuff like that. And there was a direct correlation between my grades and the amount of time that I. Spent the extra curriculars.
[00:13:34] And so Jim and Mary, both, I, I flounder, you know, at that time they called us undecided students. What they call them now is exploring students or exploratory students. But I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I was sort of taking classes and not doing very well. Wasn't engaged. And I took a class with a, someone that has become a very good friend of mine, Dr. M J Westie. He taught a class called intercultural communication. And that was a service learning class before the university had any sort of formal adoption of a service learning program. And I had my first chance to get outside of the classroom, and I went and worked with an organization here. And Cincinnati called the Imago Earth Center and got to work with some kids and just, you know, shovel around mulch and then reflect on that experience and write a paper.
[00:14:29] And then suddenly I became more interested in the theory and the content of the classes. And so I took a couple of those and, had meanwhile had dropped out of college three or four times, was on academic probation a couple of times. I tell my students today that it took me about 10 years to get a bachelor's and that they should not do that, but it was, it was because I was sort of meandering and trying to figure out who I was.
[00:14:56] And it wasn't really, until I had a chance to do an experiential learning class. And I really thought, oh, I see the relevance of what they're trying to teach us here. And so, Jim, the way that I really got formerly involved with service learning, I was in my doctoral program, UC, urban educational leadership, and I was, a graduate assistant for the Dean and, I had been adjuncting, throughout that time for the communication department, where I got a master's from there, as well as a bachelor's and a colleague of mine over there. Who's still there. Steve Fuller, called me and said, Hey, did you see that job opening? And there was a grant funded position called director of academic community partnerships.
[00:16:05] And I looked at the requirements. It was PhD preferred, which I didn't have one, but I just happened to have finished a class and my doctoral program that, required us to do a CV and a letter of intent. And so I had all the materials ready to go. So I just submitted that stuff. And several months later went to a few interviews and I ended up getting the job in 2008, which was a shocker to me. I didn't expect you to be honest.
[00:16:45] Jim Stellar: That's great.
[00:16:47] Mary Churchill: That's a great story. So I just have to confess, I went to Michigan state in the late eighties, so I also went to a big party school. So yeah, where before we really had a meaningful co-curriculars. Right. and I also, I, my first kind of experiential piece was, I'm working on a research project and Jim's heard me tell this story, but, I think that's when, for me, it really came together too that the classroom learning, wasn't just some abstract learning, but it had real world application. And so, it kind of saved me. I didn't take as long as you did for my undergrad, but I did take five years. I did go an extra year. So, but.
[00:17:02] Can you talk a little bit about how the experiential piece really affected your approach to your career? You talked about your career trajectory, but kind of the way you looked at the work, after you had some experiential Ed under your belt.
[00:17:12] Michael Sharp: Yeah. It's a great question, Mary. So as I was finishing up my doctoral coursework and starting to write my prospectus, the adjunct courses that I was teaching over in the communication department, one of those courses was called persuasive speaking. So a lot of, you know, grad students teach those types of courses affect the public speaking or persuasive speaking. And I had been doing that for a couple of years and, getting paid a very little bit of money, but getting really good teaching experience. And in that class, this is again, back in the quarter system. You know, you have 25 students and the students have to deliver, I think, three or four speeches in the class throughout the semester.
[00:17:57] I remember after teaching that for two or three years, dreading speech days, like dreading the days. And I should mention that I was teaching like two of these sections back to back. So imagine having a whole week dedicated to listening to dozens of students give really crappy persuasive speeches.
[00:18:21] And I started thinking, well, why are they crappy? I'm teaching this content the best that I can. And the content is good. I thought the textbook was good. It gives you all the things you need to know for how to do a really effective speech, but the students didn't care about what they were speaking about.
[00:18:38] All they were doing was doing an assignment and students are smart and they will do what they have to do to get the A. So that's when, and this I should mention, is prior to me taking this job, then called academic community partnerships. Somebody has sent around an email to all of the, part time faculty at UC.
[00:18:59] And it was basically saying, hey, would you be interested in, working with a community partner - a partner with your class? And then I remembered back to my experiences as an undergraduate, doing things like that, service learning things. And so, it was then that I partnered with an organization outside of the class and gave the students the opportunity to get to know that partner, get to understand what their mission is. Get to understand. Who the organization is trying to serve and then set those students loose on creating persuasive speeches that would benefit or on behalf of those not-for-profit partners. And guess what happened to the speeches?
[00:20:30] Mary Churchill: Fireworks. I can imagine.
[00:20:32] It was, it was night and day. And then what was fascinating to me, it was that the, the content I was teaching was not different. The book wasn't different. The instructor wasn't different. What had changed was the purpose of the speech, whereas before it was for a grade and now was there's real people that you now know that will benefit from this speech.
[00:21:00] The speeches became amazing and I stopped dreading speech days. I started looking forward to what these students were going to be. Speaking about. And so that's really where I saw the magic of experiential learning. And in this case service learning.
[00:21:20] Jim Stellar: I think you've anticipated our next question. I'll just put a little twist on it, and that is that when we think of co-op often we think of it as a future focused on the job activity. But what you've just discussed is more on the development of the person. The heart, if you will, of them. So could you just comment briefly on how that kind of experience, like you just described, really transforms a person and then makes them eligible for work or whatever comes next?
[00:22:03] Michael Sharp: Yeah, Jim, that's a great question. Also. I've thought a lot about that. Question, particularly in trying to make sense of, you know, service learning is one type of WIL or experiential learning, as his co-op, as his internship. But there's something different about it. There there's something, and I don't know what the term is yet, but I think you maybe said it's transformational.
[00:22:28] It is not the co-ops are not transformational. I'm not saying that, but co-op almost a little bit leans toward the transactional. Meaning students get an opportunity to work, make a little money, get some on the job training. And the purpose is to get a really good job, right?
[00:23:46] Where service learning is looser. It's a more, the process is more organic and it's more about relationship building than it is the transaction of getting paid for a service and building your resume. I but I've, I thought a lot about that and it, to me goes back to the core of a really good service learning project. And I should mention it's hard to get it right. I've gotten it wrong more times than not, but it's focusing on the relationships between the stakeholders and what is mutually beneficial for all of that. Not just for one of them. So, I don't know if that quite answers your question, Jim, but I think it has to do with, it's more transformational because it gets to, not to get overly cliché here, but it gets to the heart of the person.
[00:22:39] And you know what I like to tell students when they ask me, well, why do I want to do this, I want to be a lawyer, I want to work for Proctor and Gamble. What we want you to be a lawyer, and we want you to work for Proctor and Gamble, and we want you to make a gazillion dollars. So you can give some money back to the university, of course, but we also want you to have this experience or these experiences where you've had a heart change, where you understand. That maybe you've been privileged and there's people that aren't and you have a responsibility for your community and there's a civic side. So even if you're working in a very successful for profit business, then you can still do things to lift those around you.
[00:24:22] Jim Stellar: Well, it's about citizenship in a sense. And certainly that's something that all colleges and universities won't degenerate in their student populations as good citizens. So I. If you will excuse the pun, I whole-heartedly agree.
[00:24:38] Mary Churchill: So, you know, Jim mentioned earlier that, University of Cincinnati is a world leader in co-op education, experiential education. But that was where you went for your undergraduate degree, correct? Right. So, so what is, what is it like to now be in the center of experiential Ed and.
[00:25:02] I think a follow up question to this or a part two is can you view the world of Higher Ed without the co-op lens? You know, I mean my own experience at Northeastern, I'll talk about it after you speak, but it's really, once you're immersed in it and you kind of grow up in it, It changes the way you look at Higher Ed and I'm interested to see what you have to say about that. Yeah.
[00:25:15] Michael Sharp: Yea. Well, I don't know if I should admit this, Jim, Jim already knows this because I think I shared it with him, but you know, I came to UC in 1992 and I really didn't even understand that it was a co-op school until, my position, which was a grant funded position moved over to the division of professional practice, which was about 2011. And I had seen, I mean, there there's a statue of, Herman Schneider and. I've walked past that statue a thousand times.
[00:26:00] Jim Stellar: He's the founder of co-op.
[00:26:03] Michael Sharp: Right. I know that now, but I didn't know that. And, but it, it, it speaks to, what I think UC is trying to overcome now, which is we consider ourselves the co-op school. But up until recently with president Pinto's move toward what we're calling co-op 2.0, really? All those co-op opportunities were for the college of engineering, our design school and the college of business.
[00:26:26] And so students like me, that were at one time in Arts and Sciences and then later on to be an education student, we didn't have those co-op opportunities. Now we did have service learning opportunities and those sorts of things, but I didn't know, admittedly what really co-op even was until I was a professional working at UC.
[00:26:51] And hadn't been doing that for a few years. the second part of your question, question Mary, is it possible to view the Academy or even the world without that lens? And I, I think, you know, it's, it's like turning on a light switch, right? And so once you understand the power of experiential learning, both as a student and as a faculty or as a practitioner of it, it would be hard for me to imagine teaching a class where it did not have some experiential learning component to it, because I just believe it's a superior way to understand and retain knowledge.
[00:27:35] Mary Churchill: It's hard to take it away. Right. You know, it's, once you're immersed in that, way of looking at the world, you, you can't turn it off. At least that's what I've found. And so regardless of the discipline or the classroom experience, you're constantly pulling in real world examples or asking the students to talk about how they've experienced things at work or in life, and you've just that interactivity and you don't find that at every institution. And so it is unique and it's, it, it kind of adds a realm, and Jim and I have talked about this before, entrepreneurial edge to almost everything you do. It's just more innovative way of looking at what we do in higher ed. So thank you
[00:28:25] Jim Stellar: That's great. So, we're coming near the end and, I'd like to have maybe one of the last questions be, not the last one necessarily. How you think experiential education in general applies to something that you wanted us to talk about, which is the modern world, where we're all, sort of, staying at home or at least, doing a lot of work on zoom? Do you have any thoughts about how we can do things like service learning and experiential learning and co-op even, in the, in the modern world where it looks like this pandemic is going to be with us for a little while longer?
[00:29:04] Michael Sharp: Yeah. Jim, that's a fantastic question. And you know, I've spoken with other people about what I'm calling, I'm not the only one, COVID-19 silver linings. And one of those silver linings is, I mean, you, you know, you see well enough that the co-op program is a pretty robust program. I forget how many people we have now, but it's 50 or 60 folks. And the vast majority of those folks are co-op folks, meaning they're charged with finding placements for students advising those students and they do a fantastic job. And so the service learning component of the division, it's basically just me and I have sort of help part-time help from one more colleague. But what COVID-19 has as forced to happen all over the world, is that co-op employers have had to pull back offers.
[00:30:35] And so just that you see, we had just this summer, 2,400 co-op placements that many of them were canceled. And even the ones that weren't canceled had to move from being a face to face co-op opportunity to something virtual. And so suddenly what the service learning folks have been doing. We have, started a program called the service or any co-op program. We had some funding from, a grant from the Ohio department of labor where we were providing students with a not-for-profit opportunity, a paid not-for-profit opportunity. But the good news for our partners is that we have the funding to pay the salary of the student, which is always an obstacle for not-for-profit. They don't have the funding to hire a co-op student.
[00:30:52] And so we had started that program in August and suddenly there's. All these co-op students and parents calling the university I'm desperate because they come to UC, the co-op and suddenly they can't. And so one of the silver linings is, has been that my, my co-op faculty colleagues have started to learn and understand and appreciate what the service learning folks do. As we all know, Jim and Mary, the world has changed drastically. And, I think another silver lining here is that it's forcing us to come together in unique ways. Like we are here with Zoom. but it's, it's forcing the campus and the community to come together in new ways also that, that we haven't thought about before.
[00:32:04] And I hope that even once we have a vaccine and we're through this, that there'll, there'll be a legacy of some of those new ways of doing and thinking. So I hope that answered your question, Jim. I think I may have meandered away from it a little bit.
[00:32:18] Jim Stellar: I think it's spot on.
[00:32:20] Mary Churchill: Yeah. And I'm, I'm also hopeful about what I'm seeing is kind of forced flexibility. And I hope we have that flexibility going forward and an appreciation for folks who teach online and how hard it is to teach. Right. And so in the best cases right now, I am seeing faculty really appreciate one another in ways they maybe haven't in the past and, and that flexibility. So I get the last question of this conversation, one for you to think of when I ask this. Is there anything else you wanted to say? But also I'm really curious about the name tapioca radio and how you came up with that. Is there a story behind that?
[00:31:35] Michael Sharp: Absolutely. Yes. So the reason for the main Tapioca Radio show, and I should mention that I had the idea to do that radio show. But I didn't have the technical capability. I even went over to Bear Cast Media and got trained, but was so overwhelmed by the switchboards and the whole system that it freaked me out. And it wasn't until I met Eric Allison, who does part time, he sports broadcasting for ESPN U that I was able to do it.
[00:32:13] The radio show name comes from is when I was sitting in my office with a colleague who has retired and no longer at UC, and we were sort of thinking through a service learning lens and drawing on a white board. And we were trying to come up with this idea of how could we thematically group. Not for profit missions in a collective impact way. Meaning that if there's these 10 not-for-profits in Cincinnati that are trying to work on educational inequity, or trying to work on health care disparity, or trying to work on hunger issues or homelessness issues. How can we create a class or create a platform to get them working together?
[00:33:56] And so if you could imagine a white board and people are writing on it and we would draw these little, like circles with the name of the doc for profit, and then try to move them around. But I think we had some sticky notes or stickers on there too. And then started drawing circles around these smaller circles. And at some point, my colleague, who I was with said, you know, that reminds me of tapioca pudding.
[00:34:17] No, because there's like the pudding part, but what makes tapioca pudding delicious is like the little, I don't even know what they call them. Like the little things in there, the little...
[00:34:25] Jim Stellar: The little bubbles .
[00:34:27] Michael Sharp: Yes. And so, the, the reason we call it Tapioca Radio show, the Tapioca Radio show is that we're, we, our idea was to, focus on the bubbles, but not lose sight of what the bubbles are in, meaning that we're all in this realm of experiential education or campus, community engagement, experiential learning, and so that's sort of where the name comes. Comes from, I, part of me is sad that we're losing that sort of name because I like it. But you know, it's probably the best thing to do cause nobody knows what it means.
[00:35:25] Jim Stellar: Well, now we do.
[00:35:27] Mary Churchill: That's a great metaphor though. You know, in another conversation I would love to talk to you more about. What you've done in Cincinnati. I am an associate Dean in a School of Ed and at BU and I am trying to do something similar with Boston. I'm the lead liaison with Boston public schools. And during COVID-19 the community based organizations are. Really been doing the heavy lifting for BPS. And I am trying desperately to figure out how to bring disparate groups together and what it sounds like you did, which is so I'm very interested. Thank you for telling that story.
[00:36:14] Jim Stellar: That was great. We'll have to do some tapioca making.
[00:36:19] Mary Churchill: Yeah. Yeah. I am making tapioca. I just haven't called a tapioca.
[00:36:23] Jim Stellar: Well, if we do use that word, we have got to credit Michael.
[00:36:27] Mary Churchill: Definitely.
[00:36:28] Michael Sharp: Well, I didn't come up with the name tapioca pudding, so you guys can have, have at it, but there's nothing that I loved talking about more Mary and Jim, both and connecting the campus to the community. So if you ever want to just chat offline, I think we have a big responsibility here. You know, one of the biggest criticisms of Higher Ed is that we have these pressing problems, global problems. And who's supposed to be addressing them. And my, my thinking is, is that it's not all the responsibility of Higher Ed, but we can be doing a better job.
[00:37:07] Jim Stellar: And we have a team of people that students want to do this. Anyway, Michael, this has been great. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being with us.
[00:37:20] Michael Sharp: Well, thank you and promise me both that you'll come on the Experience Magazine podcast as well. We would love to talk with you and hear more about your work individually, professional work, but also the work that you're doing with ExperienceEd.
[00:37:31] Mary Churchill: Thank you.
[00:37:33] Jim Stellar: We would be happy to.
[00:37:35] Mary Churchill: Thank you for listening. We hope you will come back soon for the next installation of experiencEd,
[00:37:41] Adrienne Dooley: as we continue to talk about the neuroscience and sociology of enhancing higher education,
[00:37:49] Jim Stellar: by combining direct experience with classical academic learning.