The Best

Learning to juggle in Dr. Noreen Glover-Graf’s class is essential to understanding how difficult it can be for an individual with a disability to acquire new skills. Graf’s unconventional ways of teaching her rehabilitation counseling classes at The University of Texas-Pan American not only make her students skilled jugglers, but superior rehabilitation counselors.

“In my classes students are required to learn how to juggle. The idea is to learn about rehabilitation and about people learning new skills. I needed to find a way to help students understand how difficult it is to acquire new skills that they don’t necessarily want to acquire and so throughout the semester they have to learn how to juggle and relate that experience to the process of rehabilitation,” Graf said.

Students juggle for the first 15 minutes of class while Graf monitors their progression with the activity and makes certain they are attempting the task. At the end of the semester, students face off in a juggle contest and find out who has mastered the skill.

“Some of the students just become fabulous jugglers, but they all begin to understand how difficult change is,” Graf said.

For Norfilia Gonzalez, a rehabilitation counseling graduate student, taking Graf’s classes were an enlightening experience. She admits the juggling part took her completely off guard.

“This sent a red flag that indicated that she was certainly going to keep me on my toes, and she stayed true to her word,” Gonzalez said. “This not only strengthened my ability to stay on task with class and projects, but it also heightened my awareness to the importance of being prepared for anything and everything at the spur of a moment – always have a Plan B and C.”

Besides juggling, Graf, who has an art education background, also incorporates photography in her classroom and therapy sessions. Her interest in phototherapy incorporates the use of photography with substance abuse and other types of counseling.

“Students in the psychology and disabilities class look at themselves through the medium of photography and then try to find out what disabling condition they may have – something about themselves that they find hinders their functioning in someway. Based on that, they find very creative ways of using photography and then write a paper about it,” Graf said.

Graf along with Dr. Eva Miller, a UTPA colleague and licensed psychologist, have taken Graf’s phototherapy concept out to local treatment facilities and have been able to use it in group therapy settings.

“In group therapy we had them photograph a number of different things to learn about themselves and open up. One of the difficult things is to get people talking. There are various ways of getting people to open up and with photography they don’t have to talk directly about themselves, instead they can focus on the photograph and in that way, are able to learn and talk about themselves,” she said.

After the treatment facility patients completed their phototherapy they were able to show their images in black and white in a photography show, which Graf said turned out “really nice.” In the future, Graf plans to use phototherapy with HIV and AIDS patients to help them cope with the disease.

Other research interests for Graf lie in the areas of substance abuse and sexual abuse counseling, rehabilitation education, and disability and spirituality.

Graf, who has been with UTPA since 2003, said what she enjoys most, as a faculty member, is the opportunity to collaborate with other UTPA faculty in her college as well as outside her college on research.

“The best part of being here at UTPA is that the faculty really like each other, work really well together, and can collaborate with each other,” Graf said.

Currently, Graf is collaborating with faculty members from UTPA and various other colleges and universities on different topics including working with UTPA Political Science Associate Professor Samuel Freeman and STC Assistant Director Wallace Johnson on research regarding the reentry and adjustment issues of Iraq and Vietnam veterans into their everyday lives and in the higher education classroom.

In addition, she is collaborating with Dr. Irmo Marini and Dr. Roy Chen, UTPA rehabilitation faculty, on the topic of spirituality and spinal cord injury. Also, Graf is teaming up with Marini on writing a psychology and disabilities book.

Finished research Graf is most proud of is her journal article titled “100 Women, 100 Words,” which was a project where she asked 100 women who were sexually abused what they had to say in 100 words about their experience.

“It took two years to get 100 responses and I tried to figure out what these women wanted to say to the rest of the world about having had that experience and what it is like living with that experience,” she said. “It is always the surprises that make research so fun for me because I expected to hear a lot about these women not trusting men in general, but what I did not expect was a more positive side that a lot of these women felt they needed to help other women.”

For her dedication to students this year Graf was honored with her first award at UTPA, the 2009 Excellence Award in Teaching in the College of Health Sciences and Human Services. Students like Gonzalez said Graf is deserving of the honor as she has taught her many beneficial lessons.

“There are many things that I have learned from Dr. Graf. I think one of the most valuable lessons has been to keep our self-respect and to respect others no matter what circumstances evolve around us,” Gonzalez said.

The southside Chicago native said as a professor in the Department of Rehabilitation she currently teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses and often works alongside her students when writing her journal articles or conducting research. Several of her students have published with her and also made national presentations based upon their own research conducted as part of Graf’s classes.

At the graduate level she instructs on research and counseling courses and teaches students how to use their listening skills as well as their skills to push people where they need to go. She also teaches undergraduate courses in substance abuse, psychology of disability, and medical information. As part of the medical information class she assigns poster presentations as end-of-the-semester projects in which students must have communication with someone who has a disability who they have never met. Several of her students have won awards for their posters at the college’s annual research day poster competition.

“I train advocates for people with disabilities and I really try to do a good job of that. We have students here who are very committed and what I do is train them to become counselors. To be a good counselor you have to be really invested in helping people to find ways to live their lives well,” she said.

To learn more about the Department of Rehabilitation, call 956/316-7036.