Blackman gives first TRIP lecture
As her lunchtime audience settled into a room on the third floor of the Campus Center Thursday, Dr. Lorraine Blackman began a conversation she hopes will lead to changes that could affect the lives of not only students, but the community that surrounds the IUPUI campus.
As more than 30 people munched on sandwiches, Blackman, an associate professor in the Indiana University School of Social Work, gave the first TRIP Dialogue Space luncheon lecture.
Translating Research into Practice or TRIP for short, in essence involves research that solves problems people face in their everyday lives.
As IUPUI Chancellor Charles R. Bantz, TRIP Project Leader Sandra Petronio, who also is a professor at IUPUI, and School of School Social Work Dean Michael Patchner, among others looked on, Blackman explained she was not there to give a lecture.
Instead, she saw the event as a way for faculty, staff, students and people from the community to sit down and "break bread together," and talk among each other as equals.
The idea, Blackman said, was for people to find ways to connect with each other around the work that is important to them and look for ways to collaborate on those issues.
The trip initiative mirrors some of the inspirational messages Blackman received as a student setting out to become a teacher.
She recalled one professor who told his students that the job of a 21st Century scholar should be different that the traditional academic. By that the professor meant a teacher should undertake research to solve the kinds of problems and issues that could be found on the front pages of newspapers.
"That has become the nature of my work," Blackman said.
To Blackman, her former professor's advice means to prepare students for transformative practice, to become "serious change agents," and not just maintain the status quo.
She pointed out that, for example, in the social work field, "we know enough about problems to fix them before they become major problems."
During the summer of 2007, Blackman was struck by the number of stories she had seen about parents killing newborn babies and her students that fall began looking into the reasons why the killings were taking place.
Then another headline caught her attention, the impact of unwed mothers giving birth to babies and the problems that can cause.
So, she began a conversation with her students to look into why that was happening and together they came up with tips on how to prevent such births. Thursday's lecture was built around that topic, "Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies and Births Through Family Life Education."
One of the lessons students learned through their research is the need to start talking with young people about sex earlier than happens in many cases, Blackman said. In one instance, her students talked with an 11-year-old who had given birth to twins, she noted.
Connecting students to real life problems has an added benefit of getting them fully engaged in the issue, Blackman said.
Students become passionate about an issue and on one topic marched over to the Indiana State House to find out why a particular bill concerning contraceptives was being considered.
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