In This Section:
Getting the student's attention - David Miller, psychology
Seeking ways to improve end-of-life care - Karen Bullock, social work

Miller uses multimedia events to engage his students

Replete with blaring music, bits from animated TV series and other pop culture references, David B. Miller’s psychology lectures are multimedia events that have earned him awards and accolades as one of UConn’s most engaging faculty members.

Photo: Peter Morenus

Psychology Professor David Miller, who uses a variety of multimedia elements in his classroom, won the 2005 UConn Alumni Association award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching at the Undergraduate Level.

He recently plucked snake photos from a science journal to highlight a presentation about mimicry and evolution. The photos showed a non-poisonous snake with similar colors to a poisonous snake, giving it “an adaptive advantage by not being preyed upon.”

“What I try to do is really engage the student—that’s half the battle,” Miller says. “The idea is once you’ve got their attention, then you hit them with the important stuff.”

Miller’s enthusiasm for his subject, his students, and the respect earned from his colleagues, have been recognized over the years with nearly every UConn teaching award, including his most recent honor this past October, when he was presented with the 2005 UConn Alumni Association award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching at the Undergraduate Level.

“David Miller is widely recognized by his colleagues as an outstanding researcher and as a truly outstanding leader in our mission of teaching excellence,” says Charles Lowe, chair of the psychology department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  

Miller joined the UConn faculty in 1980, primarily to conduct bird research.

A decade later a grant from UConn’s Institute for Teaching and Learning (ITL) provided some computer equipment and the impetus to change the direction of his approach to the classroom.

“It started with simple scanning of slides for an animal behavior course...and sort of snowballed,” Miller says, adding he is routinely upgrading the multimedia elements for all his courses. Miller still keeps tabs on the avian world, as editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Bird Behavior.

Miller’s teaching methods are well known throughout the UConn community, says Lowe, thanks to the many workshops he has led on a variety of teaching methods during the past six years at the ITL.

A rock ’n’ roll enthusiast who sings and plays guitar for the band Off Yer Rockers, whose members are all UConn faculty, Miller teaches more freshmen each year than any other psychology professor. He also participates in summer orientation sessions for freshmen, which he estimates allows him to meet nearly 90 percent of incoming students.

Miller admits that although the long-term effectiveness of the orientation sessions is always uncertain, what is clear is that he feels good about making the effort. The influence he has on his students, however, is evident.

“David not only motivates interested students and students with outstanding potential, he also motivates students to approach their potential,” says Lowe.

— Karen Singer ’73 (CLAS)

Personal experience guides research on care of elderly African-Americans

Photo: Peter Morenus

Karen Bullock, assistant professor at the UConn School of Social Work, is researching preferences of utilization of medical treatment among older African-Americans.

Karen Bullock believes elderly African-Americans should know more about end-of-life treatment options, which when needed due to a terminal illness would result in improved support for dying patients and their families.

Bullock, an assistant professor at the UConn School of Social Work, is researching preferences for utilization of medical treatment among older African-Americans as a faculty scholar under a $100,000 grant from the Gerontological Society of America and The John A. Hartford Foundation. She will be comparing end-of-life care experiences, type of treatments and other factors that influence end-of-life care in an acute care setting. It is a subject close to her heart.

“I know, personally, that cultural barriers exist,” says Bullock, whose mother died of lung cancer several years ago. The condition was far advanced by the time it was diagnosed, she says and her mother, who was a deeply religious woman, resisted treatment and pain management.

“Hospice would have been wonderful for her, but she refused the care,” says Bullock, who was her mother’s primary caregiver. “There’s a tremendous need for work in this area, and I really want to do something to break down those barriers.”

Bullock has been involved with eldercare and end-of-life issues for several years, including serving as the director of the UConn Resource Enrichment Center, which was established at the School of Social Work under a grant from the SOROS Foundation/Project on Death (go to UConn Traditions, Summer 2003). The goal of the SOROS program is to develop a Web-based resource enrichment center on end-of-life issues and information for social workers.

Bullock thinks racial differences contribute to end-of-life decisions and that African-Americans are less likely to complete advance directives—living wills that explain a person’s medical wishes—or to choose palliative care, treatments that focus on symptom management and comfort care of an illness when there is no known cure. “Many older African-Americans continue to receive aggressive treatment when there is little to no chance of improvement in their condition because they feel [without it] they won’t receive adequate care,” she says, noting that many older people do not know what advanced directives are and may be suspicious of them when told that these directives help patients have a “good death.”

Bullock will use data from Hartford Hospital to compare end-of-life treatment between a group of African-Americans and Caucasians who died over a two-year period. Key variables include age, race, medical history, types of treatment and cause of death.

“We need evidence-based research on which to make recommendations before we can develop strategies for integrating culturally specific components into our care and to increase the utilization of palliative care within the African-American community,” Bullock says. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

—Karen Singer ’ 73 (CLAS)