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Milligan grad students use service project to help Parkinson’s group
By John Thompson
Johnson City Press
ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. (Dec. 27, 2011) — Graduate school is designed to be difficult.
Jillian McLellan and Lyndsay Nauman not only met all of the requirements of the master’s of Occupational Therapy program at Milligan College this month, they also met the Christian college’s emphasis on service to the community while they accomplished those high requirements.
While they were immersed in their studies they were able to work with members of the Northeast Tennessee Parkinson’s Disease Support Group. They also developed a system of dance therapy for the group’s members.
When McLellan and Nauman learned that they could work on a project with patients they were training to serve instead of conducting the traditional scholarly research, they were pleased. Both women saw the project as not only a way of gaining experience, but also as a way to fulfill Milligan’s emphasis on service.
On its website, the college expresses that emphasis:
“We believe that leadership is about service. Milligan therefore encourages students to reach out to influence lives and the world around them. Students are encouraged to become servant leaders through mission and service projects, and many classes incorporate service learning into the classroom. On short-term mission trips, in worshiping and participating in local churches, and in serving the community, Milligan students become more aware of their culture and the world in which they will minister .“
The first step was to decide what type of work they would attempt and who would be the group they would study. They were told their project must involve an under-served population.
Nauman had a strong interest in studying therapy for Parkinson’s disease because she had a family member who suffered from the disease. She knew from experience that Parkinson’s sufferers were an under-served population.
As far as what type of therapy to study, that proved an easy choice as well. McLellan has been a dancer her whole life and she believes in dance as therapy.
They had one other influence in selecting Parkinson’s. They both knew David Roberts, a physics professor at Milligan, who had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Roberts had become a very active member of the Northeast Tennessee support group since his diagnosis.
Their professor on the project, Jill Smith, remembers the enthusiasm and hard work McLellan and Nauman brought to the project.
“Jillian and Lyndsay were a joy to work with on this project,” Smith said. “They jumped on the idea of using dance as a therapeutic intervention for individuals with Parkinson’s disease. After thoroughly researching the topic, they met regularly with the members of the local Parkinson’s support group.”
When they first came to a meeting of the support group, the students made a good first impression. One of the group members, Peggy Willocks, is a retired elementary school principal who was named Principal of the Year for Tennessee in 1997.
“As a former educator myself, I can spot genuine interest when I see it,” Willocks said. When they saw how people with disabilities handle day-to-day living, Willocks said Nauman and McLellan told her they knew their project had to do more than just get a grade.
“The girls wanted to contribute to the betterment of the quality of life for people with Parkinson’s … and they did so quite well,” Willocks said.
Although McLellan and Nauman had just conducted a fresh study of the scientific literature on therapy for Parkinson’s, they weren’t pedantic with the group.
“We found there were brilliant people in this group and they liked to do their own research,” Nauman said. They turned over their findings to the group and soon found the information was flowing in a new direction.
“They had tons of wisdom to offer us,” Nauman said.
Both the group members and their professor spoke of Nauman and McLellan’s willingness to listen and learn.
“They listened to the members’ concerns and needs and developed a program that was easy to follow and encouraged movement and dance in a way that was beneficial and fun for the participants,” Smith said.
Their final product was influenced by the “Dance Dance Revolution” video game.
“We developed a tango and modified it a little, we brought the tempo down a bit,” McLellan said. Their project book listed the steps. There are three levels of difficulty.
The women are proud of the A they received on the project, but as Willocks said, they are just as proud, if not more so, of the help they have given others by their research.
Willocks said the project was beneficial to both the support group and the students.
“My observation would be that when students mingle with people who have a condition about which they are studying, they gain better understanding of working with such patients. But when they add doing a service project that can actually improve someone’s life, then they learn an early lesson about building a sense of community through their contributions,” Willocks said.
Smith said, “I was inspired by their enthusiasm for this project and was extremely pleased with the results. The final project was not only completed earlier than I anticipated, it was bigger, more detailed and more generous than I had expected it to be. They were two of the first graduate students to complete a graduate project in our OT program and they set the bar very high for future students.”