Listen Here: 

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Recorded July 30, 2024

Introduction

Being Human in STEM 

Claudia De Grandi, PhD 

Department of Physics & Astronomy 

 

Claudia De Grandi is Associate Professor of Educational Practice in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Utah. Her scientific interests lie in the area of physics education research and teaching pedagogies. She is involved in several projects aimed at fostering a more inclusive and welcoming environment for students in STEM fields, including the annual course at the U Being Human in STEM. 

 

Further Reading:  

Book (2023): 

Being Human in STEM Partnering with Students to 

Shape Inclusive Practices and Communities 

By Sarah L. Bunnell, Sheila S. Jaswal, Megan B. Lyster 

Amherst College Website  

Transcript:

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David Pace 0:00

My name is David Pace, and this is Pace Yourself, a University of Utah College of Science podcast on wellness. Today my guest is Claudia De Grandi, associate professor of educational practice in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Her scientific interests lie in the area of physics, education, research and teaching pedagogies. She’s involved in several projects aimed at fostering a more inclusive and welcoming environment for students in STEM fields.

Claudia, it’s great to have you here. Welcome. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 0:45

Hello. Thank you. I’m excited. 

 

David Pace 0:47

So one of the projects you’re involved in here at the University of Utah is Being Human in STEM, which is hosted by the Center for Science and Mathematics Education here in the College of Science. I was just looking over some of the content that you have in your syllabus, and I was struck by the quote that you also mentioned in a presentation you gave recently at the Science Research Initiative by Karl Rogers. And it goes like this: “Significant learning combines the logical and the intuitive. The intellect and the feelings, the concepts and the experience, the idea and the meaning.” When we learn in that way, we are whole. 

 

So being whole. That sounds like an attribute of wellness that we’ve been talking about here in this podcast. So I’d like to back up a little bit and, first, have you tell me a little bit about this course, which is now in its fourth iteration. Is that correct? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 1:56

We have mplemented it five times, so it will be the sixth time in the spring coming up 2026. So five times at University of Utah. And actually, I taught it also two times previously at Yale University. 

 

David Pace 2:01

At Yale? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 2:02

Yes. And the class actually existed even before. So the first implementation was in 2016. So it’s just been implemented several times at different institutions. So to give some context, you can call it a Being Human in STEM project. I mean, it is a class, but it’s also a network. So I was lucky to be involved when the class was first implemented at Yale University, but the person who started it was Sheila Jaswal, a professor of chemistry at Amherst College back east where I was doing my post-doc work. So this happened during the time some will remember around 2015 when there were similar protests on U.S. campuses regarding issues like situations of discrimination of students, racial injustice. And so students of color especially protested to be more acknowledged and respected on campuses. And so all those protests brought a kind of a need for a dialogue between students and faculty and students and administrators. And that need was even more important in STEM, where, usually, we don’t talk about things like belonging, like feelings, like discrimination, like being upset — emotions and things like that.

So Sheila Jaswal at Amherst College said, “we need to create a space where we are humans in STEM.” And so she created this class, and then it was an awesome idea. And we were nearby and said, oh, we should do it the same. And so that’s how we started at Yale. And since then there has been a growing network at many different colleges. If you go on the website that Sheila brought up, if you do, I think beinghumaninstem.com. Actually, she has the first website. She has like a beautiful graphic that shows how this has kind of expanded to different universities.

When I moved to the U, and it was hiring 2018, my first priority was to bring that class to the U. So it took, you know, one year or so to get the class approved. So it was taught for the first time here in 2020. And since then, every spring. And yeah, I can tell you many more things, but this is sort of the history where we started.  

 

David Pace 4:18

So this program seems to be a structure that attempts to create a space where student wellness can be better achieved. Is that a good way to position your work in the context of general wellness? It’s a space that’s being created for all kinds of work, it sounds like…Can you talk a little bit about what kind of work you’re doing in there with students? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 4:43

Yeah, I mean, I think one maybe metaphor that I just want to bring up often, or just kind of an image, I guess, I would say oftentimes students in STEM are told whoever they are, their identity needs to stay outside the door. Like there’s this idea you enter a big math class or physics class and whatever you are doesn’t matter because science is objective. The teacher is not going to look at who you are because science is objective. And so you just need to leave those things outside the door.

And there’s nothing more wrong than that, in my opinion. And so, back to the quote you brought up before, teaching is something that involves the entire persona, the entire identity of who is the receiver, not just like the objectivity, the content, the information. And so, in terms of wellness, healthy learning includes the entire human being. And so in that sense, for me, being a good teacher means to acknowledge all aspects of students. And so this class wants to remind me and the students that whoever we are is important for the learning process and for the making of science. 

 

David Pace 5:48

So why do you think that happens, in particular, in STEM classes? I mean, you said that there’s this notion that there’s supposed to be objectivity, that it’s kind of clinical and antiseptic and analytical and just in your head, I guess. Where did we get this notion that you had to divorce everything at the door? And are there any … I’m just wondering what the impulse for that was. Is this just laziness that we didn’t want to have to deal with all of the issues that that the human being brings to the classroom? Because obviously they’re going to do that. They’re human, right? 

Claudia De Grandi 6:35

That’s a complex question. I’ll try to answer it from different angles. So I think one thing is that, I mean, there is some comfort in knowing that you’re just focusing on objectivity and you don’t have to worry about the human aspects. So I think some of us are drawn to science because of that kind of causality or, yeah, objectivity that you don’t have to worry about all the other parts. But I think what’s embedded in the training as a scientist is that we focus on content.

So usually as a teacher you would just do what you experience yourself, right? So STEM classes tend to be taught just focusing on the content. And so you just repeat as a faculty member, you come in and say, ‘I just do what I experience myself,’ which was we just focus on the content. So I think there’s a tradition that doesn’t speak to that part.

Another part that is, I think, another issue within our culture is that to ‘make it’ in STEM, you need to, like, go to the top and only a few survive. I mean, I keep hearing some of my students say that in other classes somebody tells them the first day of class, ‘Turn around. Two people next to you will not be here at the end of the semester.’ Like, this is terrible. I mean, I need to constantly fight against this embedded, implicit competition that STEM students have with each other, which comes from this idea that only the geniuses that you know, the myth of the genius.

So I think there’s the idea also of being objective, because it sounds like it has to be hard. While that’s not true and from a point of view of, like, accessibility, diversity of learning style, the more we can make the learning of science flexible and adjustable, the more we can welcome different voices. And so that goes again.

I guess that has to do with the objective of weeding-out, that it has-to-be-hard-to-be-science kind of approach. 

 

David Pace 8:22

So, would you say that this is some grown out of, this movement — if you want to call it that — towards bringing the whole self to education in particular, STEM … is it based upon the model of accommodation that we have had with the ADA Disabilities Act, or is that too simplistic?

And, also, the second part of that is would that be a good model for what you’re trying to do? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 8:52

So maybe I think what you’re saying brings me to think about something a bit broader.

So the idea in the universal design for learning is that students will have accommodations because the educational system in which they are part of does not accommodate their needs. This by default is constraining that is in studies to create some universal design for learning. I will  bring up the first example of the [sidewalk] curb / ramp was created to allow wheelchairs go down, to pass over the path. And it was the fact that that didn’t only benefit people in a wheelchair but benefited people with a bicycle, with a stroller and someone who is carrying something on wheels.

So the idea of universal design for learning is the idea of making accessibility broadly available to everyone, and that benefits everyone.

So back to your question. I think the idea is that considering the entire person brings more universal design in education and that along those lines, students will not even need accommodations because already the class is structured so that they can succeed as the class is set up. Considering the humanness up front, that already takes care of part of it, I think, but I don’t think [what we’re talking about] is only dictated by this accommodation (ADA) part. 

 

David Pace 10:17

Right. So some of the key ideas that you hope your students will take home with them, well, three in particular that I culled from your website is that science is human made. That’s the first one. What do you mean by that? I mean, I think I know what you mean, but it might be good to actually articulate it because there was this theory, I suppose, at least in my field of study, that there was received knowledge that was just there to be transmitted to somebody or something. That doesn’t sound very human. It sounds very unidirectional. It doesn’t sound like a really creative space where people are bringing or feeling like they can bring something to what I think should be the model of this, which is conversational, right?

So tell me about how science is human made. Why? Why did we ever think that it wasn’t human made? I mean, it is a human product. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 11:20

Yes, absolutely. So just because some of the content we cover in the Being Human in STEM class, that is very interesting to students because they usually don’t hear about that very much in other contexts. So one thing we talk about is implicit bias and in general how bias may impact the publication process. So professors get reviewed and things like that. And so one component is how the faculty members, scientists that in all academic enterprise, still relies on hiring processes and selections. Those are affected by bias. So we talk about implicit bias and how that can impact also students and faculty relationships. So that’s one part of where in some sense the structure with science is made is subjected to biases.

The teaching of science also is also subjected to whatever is the background of the instructor. So, something that I actively try to do in my teaching is being aware of what I know and what I don’t know in front of my students. So, for instance, it’s okay to not know everything. It’s okay to make them aware of that, you know, the limitation of what I present. There are limitations. So for myself and for mostly all of education that we are exposed to in the U.S. is very Eurocentric. We talk about Newton and Galileo and Einstein. They are just one part of the big story. So as much as possible when I teach physics, I talk about also the Islamic Golden Age and all these other discoveries that have been made in other less Eurocentric set up and let them know that what we get to study — what is written on the textbook — is not the full story. I kind of make myself available to show that the story I present to them is only one part of the story, and it’s up to them to keep in mind that that’s not necessarily the full picture. In some sense, presenting science as I mean my science in that I, the physics I teach, let’s say is less dogmatic, but more like this is the best I can do right now. But it doesn’t mean that’s the full picture. So I acknowledge my own limitations. 

 

David Pace 13:24

So it’s not just acknowledging that science is by definition contingent, but that this class that you’re teaching is contingent. That it’s a slice of a much broader picture. And that who knows what might happen in the conversational model that we’re perhaps talking about in terms of our understanding, not only science, but how we exist in this space, in the scientific method. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 13:50

Right, right, which to some extent is what I am trying to teach my students: to be skeptical, to be able to find additional resources. That’s what a scientist does, right? So being able to like, okay, this is one part of the story. Do I need to convince myself that I believe it, and do I have enough resources to kind of continue my research. And so I think that idea of being skeptical and looking for other sources of information is part of, I guess, yeah, being a problem solver. 

 

David Pace 14:19

So in terms of the wellness objective that we’re talking about here, it seems like it’s a two way street in that you’re trying to not only I don’t want to say disrupt, maybe that’s too strong of a word, the notion of what science is, but maybe that is okay to say that, but also to disrupt what it means to be a human. And that tension between those two that you’re both going to be both of those elements, science and being human, are going to be augmented. They’re going to be investigated, they’re going to be probed, and you’re going to walk away from all of this, hopefully with a better sense of who you are and what it means to be human and also what it means to be a scientist in that space So I’m trying to get as it’s kind of a two way street, not only trying to build up science, you’re trying to build up the idea of what it means to be human. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 15:23

Mostly. I think the key idea is that I want students to have the space to do science in a way that they’re comfortable and that implicitly or explicitly must include the fact that they feel welcome. So when I say that we should acknowledge the humanness, it doesn’t mean necessarily that everybody needs to come out with whatever their identity is. Seeing this in a science classroom, but it means but it needs to be such that if they want to share, if they want, they just need to feel that whoever they are is accepted and welcome. And internally that can shift their focus on the actual science because they don’t think that any other of their identities, feelings or other things are a threat because, again, it’s just part of who they are. And everybody belongs in science with whatever characteristic and features they have. So I think what we discuss in the class is the idea of intersectionality and identities. Like all students come with different backgrounds, and they’re all welcome. And I think sometimes, oftentimes, by not acknowledging that there are all these multiplicity — I think I said it right — of backgrounds, we implicitly exclude students. Like you will make a comment in a class and assume, okay, so maybe this thing is not something I should bring up to my classmates.

Creating a space where learning can happen means taking off the stress from other things, making sure you can actually focus on the science and not being aware of what you look, how you speak or who is sitting next to you and just creating a community. I think communities are another very important kind, I would say a key component of this class: that we build community. We have this cookie break where students chat with each other. We share food. STEM students are so thirsty for community, and that’s what we really cultivate in this class is a community between students and faculty members where we laugh, we talk about things. We always play a song at the beginning of class, and that community is also key to science. 

 

David Pace 17:23

Did you say you play a song? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 17:25

Yeah, I do that actually. In all of my classes I play music at the beginning.

David Pace 17:29

What does that do? Sorry to deviate . . .

 

Claudia De Grandi 17:30

It’s actually very fun. People started, you know, maybe, I don’t know, bouncing around or it just shifts a bit. Yeah, it makes it more playful and makes you like, Oh, okay, I do not expect this here. 

 

David Pace 17:43

Same with food, I would think. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 17:45

Yes. The cookie break is very, very special. And students also like to bring and share, the commonality. Also, I think that relates to like you are sharing something that is not related to science. You know, science context, and that creates those connections and opens up the ability for people to connect on a different level. Before they then connect on maybe harder topics. 

 

David Pace 18:09

I think it also honors what I hear you talking about. It honors different ways, different modalities of intelligence. Might be emotional intelligence. It might be any variety of others. I mean, they seem to be expanding the forms of intelligence the more they study that. But it is true that not everybody learns the same way or is able to find in the same way the space that they need in order to communicate, to express, which at least for me, that’s how I learn, is by sharing stories.

And I noticed that narrative and stories are a very important part of this class. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I noticed that some of the comments that you got from the students just this last year talked about their storytelling experience in the class and how that impacted them. You wouldn’t think that narrative and science would go together, but of course they do, because science is a story, right? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 19:14

Yeah, I would say the students’ stories and narratives are so impactful. You know, we talked about data. We look like the statistics of things happening and trends. So students identify issues in STEM and things they want to work on as part of the class projects. But the student narrative, the personal stories, are the ones you always remember the most because we are human. Those are the ones I will remember in the future. And I will advocate for specific student groups, for instance, or student needs.

But yes, the class is very student-driven, and together, with that, it also empowers students to use their voice to make a point. And it happens in different levels. So they have some writing assignments. For instance, they have a STEM autobiography. Will they talk about their path into STEM, why they chose STEM and why they are in STEM at the moment? They also write on a notepad on something related to STEM that they want to, like, make a point and then the project they develop, that they present at the end-of-the-semester symposium to the campus community. There’s a lot of work in preparing them to give like a public presentation.

They get to practice, and they realize that their voices are strong, and, especially, they learn that those voices are valued because throughout the semester all the classes are discussion-based. We continuously welcome their voices and there isn’t a wrong or right answer. Everything is welcome. Actually, disagreeing and having different points of view are welcome. So you can see the evolution of many of them. They get a stronger voice, and they also end the semester by saying, okay, I actually know that I can make an impact, that as a student I can make a change, and I can speak about the student project if you have more time.

But like all the student projects, on some level they have some impact and are so empowering to students to make changes. It is also very important, and that goes with their own narrative and voice. 

 

David Pace 21:02

So empowerment is coming through for me as kind of a through-line for all of the dimensions of wellness that we’ve been talking about in this podcast and feeling that empowerment and obtaining that or developing it probably comes in a variety of ways. I was wondering if you could give me an example of…

 

Claudia De Grandi 21:23

Yes, I know where you’re headed. 

 

David Pace 21:24

I can smell the wood burning

 

Claudia De Grandi 21:25

Yes. Well, actually, this past spring, to me, all the projects relate to some extent to wellness, but actually all of them. I mentioned all of them in which way they relate to student willing to advocate for their own wellness. So we had four projects this past year and those themes kind of came up in the past. One was about financial aid, students want to have better access to scholarship and clearly that relates to wellness. I think one of the dimensions you discuss in the past and other one was really much more at a basic level was about food access. STEM students are hungry too. That was the title of their project. They wanted better access to food options when they’re late on campus taking labs and there aren’t good options, there are notaccommodations and things like that. So they made a point of better food options. Another project was about mental health and burnout, so we collaborated with the counseling center and the stem student wanted to bring awareness of the amount of pressure and stress they experience and they organize some student led events. One was actually a dance party, basically here in Crocker. They just decided in the middle of the week to just have a time for students to come and dance to the stress. They had another event with pizza. So like, did you have like again, creating community places that are for for just connecting. And then another project was about inclusion of LGBTQ plus identities in light of the current changes in the legislation. And so those were also related to wellness because students didn’t feel welcome or safe on campus and they want to bring more positive affirmation. And so those I feel like all those projects were related to some dimensions of wellness. 

 

David Pace 23:12

I think a bit as a science writer here, when I do student profiles, one of the recurring themes is an imposter syndrome, the sense of a hidden curriculum when they arrive, especially first generation students. Have you had experiences with students in that area? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 23:30

Well, absolutely. Well I mean stereotype, threat and imposter syndrome are a topic that we discuss every year in the class. And yes, we kind of go through all as much as possible different identities, as a first generation. We talk about immigration status, we talk about, you know, sort of socioeconomic status. And so. 

 

David Pace 23:47

Gender. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 23:48

A gender, of course, sexual orientations and 

 

David Pace 23:49

Racism,

 

Claudia De Grandi 23:50

Of course. Yeah, the list continues that actually students are the ones that also bring up. What else do you want to talk about? Of course  religion comes up. Yeah. So we did talk about also indigenous identities more recently and so yeah, it’s up to them to see what they want to discuss. But absolutely. 

 

David Pace 24:14

True. It is really student directed in that way

 

Claudia De Grandi 24:15

Mm hmm. Yes. I learned so much. I mean, the class is different every year, and I love teaching it because I never know really what it goes. And I always learn a lot. So I don’t really say that I teach it. I just make it happen. And it’s a very informs everything else I do in my other classes. 

 

David Pace 24:32

It sounds like they have a project as well as a series of readings that you do and discussions and conversations, things like that. And it sounds like one of the projects was STEM students are hungry too. And are you able to affect change in terms of policies here at the university that might encourage better wellness, access to wellness activities, whether it’s like you say, financial or emotional or mental health?

 

Claudia De Grandi 25:02

So over the years, it varies. It kind of depends on the project. But so for instance, there was a summer where there was some students so eager to continue their project that we had a little kind of summer internship for them. They continued their project beyond the class because, you know, a semester is a very short amount of time to do a lot. But all of the project has some kind of impact. So I can make some examples. Some projects help build some relationship between some specific offices and students. So back to kind of the idea of the class design that is inclusive and meant for for students includes students. So oftentimes those offices on campus do not actually seek student feedback as directly. So this class helps bridge that gap. For instance, the financial aid group worked closely with the financial aid office to create a better connection with what students see and what they offer. So creating making those bridges. Last year there were also there was a group that was working on bathroom equity, so they made a study seeing how many male and female bathrooms on campus and there were some inequities in some buildings, and that was sent out to different administrators and just kept in mind when they build new buildings. Last year, implicit bias training was an important topic and that so the students produced the material that was used in the future to train teaching assistants or other teaching teams to be more aware of bias. So yeah, I can talk about all of those, but to some extent is up to kind of assessing structure to make sure that those those project get disseminated. But I think they most importantly, they just I feel like students put a finger on something that we don’t wouldn’t know that there is an issue somewhere that without a student perspective we wouldn’t know that is there. So it’s just I think what is very powerful is for them to say, hey, there’s an issue here, and then, you know, they will develop some solution. But how they get carry forward is always then in the hand of like the deans, the administrators, the chairs and the office that show up to this symposium and kind of take feedback. And yes, there have been definitely impact, but they can also continue. 

 

David Pace 27:05

Excellent. It sounds like a very dynamic and a little bit like playing table hockey. You’re not really sure where that puck is gonna go. We’re kind of running out of time here, but I have two quotes that I would like to ask you to read from your students, because what I gathered from our conversation is that this is really about finding your voice. At least I’m sure it’s more than that. But to me, that’s very valuable as a communicator is that you learn, if you find your voice and you find your voice by learning in a safe environment. Anyway, these two on the bottom in the red, I was wondering if you could read those kind of as a cap to what we’re saying, because I think it gives students their voice here in this podcast. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 27:56

Mm hmm. I will be happy to do so. So the first one is: “I found myself engaging in meaningful conversations in a very safe environment that I otherwise would not have participated in. And because of that, I learned the importance of engaging instead of constantly opting out of conversation that were hard to have”. Another quote is: “Take this class. Even if you’re scared to speak out, take this class if you’re white or a person of color. I realized that my thinking on so many topics is racist and harmful, even if they were unintentional”. 

 

David Pace 28:31

I think that those are really powerful statements right there about the work that you’re doing and the humanity that we need to bring to not only STEM, but any area of education, any area of study, any area of community, you know, community gathering. Thank you very much for being here. This has been very stimulating. Did you have anything else you wanted to say very quickly before we sign off? 

 

Claudia De Grandi 29:01

Well, thank you for the opportunity. I just would like to advertise a class, of course, to the students. They start every spring, so just look it up. The CS and the Center for Science and Math Education. 

 

David Pace 29:12

We’ll put a link our website yep

 

Claudia De Grandi 29:12

A page where everybody can learn more about previous topics and their project and then more of what we didn’t have time to talk about and resources, also books and things that we use in the class. 

 

David Pace 29:22

Yeah, Excellent. 

 

Claudia De Grandi 29:23

Thank you. 

 

David Pace 29:24

All right. Well, thank you very much for being with us. And we will see you all next time. 

 

Listen Here: 

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Recorded July 22, 2024

Introduction

Survivor Wellness

Dana Levy // Executive Director

Dana Levy (she/her) joined Survivor Wellness as Program Director in 2021 after a long career in the fields of dance, movement, martial arts and yoga, both in the U.S. and Japan. Survivor Wellness is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1997 as Cancer Wellness House with the mission of providing cancer wellness and integrative health care services and support for cancer survivors, their family members, caregivers and loved ones in a home-like setting. Survivor Wellness is a cancer care community, a sanctuary in the heart of the Salt Lake City.

Dana is a certified yoga therapist (C-IAYT), a certified Laban Bartenieff Movement Analyst (CLMA), has a master’s degree in modern dance and a nidan (2nd degree black belt) in the Japanese martial art of aikido. She has 30+ years in the fields of choreography, performance, martial arts, and movement education.

While living in Tokyo, Dana directed FURLA yoga, a boutique yoga studio in Tokyo, Japan, from 2005-2017. She has taught yoga in Salt Lake City since 2013, training yoga teachers and yoga therapists at local studios, at Salt Lake Community College and at the University of Utah. Dana has worked with Huntsman Cancer Institute since 2019 as an adjunct yoga instructor in the Wellness and Integrative Health Center.

She is also the co-chair of the Yoga Therapy Special Interest Group for the Academic Consortium for Medicine and Health. In addition to her directorship responsibilities, Dana also works with the clients of Survivor Wellness, facilitating the Wednesday Evening Support Group, and offering movement classes, private movement/yoga therapy sessions, and retreats.

 

Further Reading:  

Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health (ACIMH) 

I am co-chair of the Yoga Therapy Special Interest Group (SIG). 

 Benjamin Smith Huntsman Cancer Institute’s Wellness & Integrative Health Center, head of the massage therapy program.

Transcript:

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David Pace 0:00

Hi. I’m David Pace, and this is Pace Yourself, a podcast from the University of Utah College of Science and Wellness. 

Good morning, everyone. Today, my guest is Dana Levy, executive director of Survivor Wellness here in Salt Lake City. Survivor Wellness is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 with the mission of providing cancer, wellness and integrative health care services and support for cancer survivors, their family members, caregivers and loved ones.

Welcome, Dana. 

 

Dana Levy 0:42

Thank you. It’s great to be here. 

 

David Pace 0:44

So Survivor Wellness provides a number of programs and services. I understand group and individual health counseling and support individual integrative health care therapies like massage therapy, Reiki, is that how you pronounce Reiki? Reiki? I was testing you. Nicely done. Yoga therapy, etc.. Also, group classes like yoga. And … I’m not going to get this word right. 

 

Dana Levy 1:09

I’ll say it. Qigong. 

 

David Pace 1:11

Qigong. Thank you. Mindfulness and so forth. And also some community events you do as well. So how did you get involved with Survivor Wellness and tell us a little bit about your background. 

 

Dana Levy 1:23

Okay. Well, David, I was working in private practice as a yoga and movement therapist for many years and came into Survivor Wellness because there’s a lovely small yoga studio there. And I thought maybe post-COVID it was time to start teaching in-person again. And I was fortunate enough to meet the then executive director who was ready to start building up programming after COVID because the houses out of which we operate, because we operate out of two small historic homes, have some lovely gardens and outbuildings, and they were empty. It was kind of, dare I say it, dead. It was not a lively place at that time. And it’s hard to serve cancer survivors when you don’t have something alive. 

So I started helping build out the programming from one support group to what it is now. We offer services most days of the week and have a very active campus many days of the week as well. But my background, as I said, is in yoga and movement practices, dance, martial arts. I lived for a decade and a half in Tokyo. I ran a yoga studio there. And all of that somehow coalesced into working with cancer survivors in an extremely satisfying way. I will also say I’m proud to be an adjunct faculty at the Huntsman Cancer Institute as well. 

 

David Pace 2:55

Yeah, I was going to just mention that in there. Wellness and Integrative Health Center?

 

Dana Levy 3:02

That’s right. 

 

David Pace 3:03

Tell us a little bit about that. 

 

Dana Levy 3:05

So everyone’s familiar with Huntsman. It’s one of the top. Well, we serve a five state region with cancer services and one of the top research institutions in the country. And what many people don’t know is that it has a very powerful cancer wellness and integrative health care center, offering movement and meditation classes, strength classes, massage therapy, acupuncture and other complementary therapies as well. 

And any patient at the Huntsman, as well as staff members and family members, are eligible to utilize those services through their diagnosis and treatment and beyond. So it’s an incredible resource, and I encourage any listeners who may have been a patient at Huntsman or a staff member at the U to look into it and see what the Wellness Integrative Health Care Center has to offer. 

 

David Pace 4:03

So when you were talking, it struck me that, you know, here we are sitting in the College of Science and of course, health sciences is up the hill and Huntsman is part of that. Is there a tension between these alternate, what we would call alternate therapies as opposed to, say, hardcore medicine, pharmaceutical,  and surgeries? I mean, let’s just dive into that for a minute. 

 

Dana Levy 4:32

I love this question. Yeah, I love the word tension because tension can have positive and negative. We need tension. And we also sometimes become over tense, overly tense. Right. So when we talk in yoga therapy, we talk about finding that balance. I mean, we all talk about finding the balance between tension and not tension.

What I would say is what we offer as wellness and integrative health care providers is meant to complement the traditional medical treatment that’s given to the people with whom we work, not to replace it. So one of the most important tenets that I share with staff members about Survivor wellness, is that the care that you give is not meant to replace, but to complement and help bring out and make more effective and/or help with the outcomes that you have in your life from any experiences that you have.

So when we talk about tension, I would say that tension might come from lack of familiarity, much like when we’re in a new situation. And everyone knows that massage therapy can be helpful for them. Many people don’t know what Reiki or Qigong are and how it can be helpful. So part of that journey or part of my role is to help introduce people to therapeutic practices that might give them a different perspective on who they are and how they are in the world in relation to what they’re undergoing their cancer journey or their cancer diagnosis and treatment or that of their loved one. 

 

David Pace 6:03

So I think it’s a tribute to Huntsman that they have embraced this kind of integrative approach to cancer survivors. 

 

Dana Levy 6:16

I would also like to put a plug in for the academic consortium of Integrative Medicine and Health. And if you’re not familiar with it, you can all become members as members of the University of Utah, because we are a research facility dedicated to improving the lives of individuals through offering integrative health care services and support and the academic consortium is meant to bring together the researchers who are within the medical field and the people who are practicing what we call now integrative health care practices. 

 

David Pace 6:50

Now, is that the Osher Integrative Health? 

 

Dana Levy 6:53

No, it’s a separate, actually, national organization. They’re special interest groups and researchers and annual symposiums where individuals can share information about the research that they’re doing and the efficacy of utilizing medical treatments in concert with integrative health care practices like what we’re talking about. 

 

David Pace 7:13

Right. So maybe we can put a link on our website about that if you want to share that with us so that people can maybe look that up and investigate it a little bit. 

 

Dana Levy 7:24

I’d love to have a little bit more activity in the yoga therapy special interest group. I do help co-chair that, so we’d love to see you out there. 

 

David Pace 7:32

And that’s a national program, but it has a chapter for want of a better term here. 

 

Dana Levy 7:37

It’s a national program that you can become a member of if you’re a member of an academic institution that does research in the area of integrative health. 

 

David Pace 7:46

That’s interesting. So we’re perfectly poised for that here at the University of Utah. Related to what you were just talking about, Dana, can you tell me a little bit more about the history of, can we call it, a movement? I don’t know of survivor wellness specifically. 

 

Dana Levy 8:02

Definitely. I love this history. It’s one of the reasons that I love being in this environment. In the early 1990s and prior to that, if you received a cancer diagnosis, you knew that you went to the hospital and then you went home and tried to get better. And there were people who realized that these services that we’re talking about, these practices could improve outcomes, help people reduce stress, live better, increase health and vitality and what we call whole person health.

So the founders of Survivor Wellness, which was founded as Cancer Wellness House, were a group of local oncologists from Holy Cross Hospital, which had a very large oncology department at the time, it was just early Huntsman years. Local oncologists, community members, cancer survivors and a powerful local individual named Tika Beard, who started the first mobile mammography unit in Utah. 

 

David Pace 9:04

Excellent. 

 

Dana Levy 9:05

And they did some research into cancer wellness centers that existed in other parts of the United States and gathered together and said we should have one here in Utah. And the activity that really brought them together was a hike to the summit of Kings Peak, three day hike, 26 miles, 14,000 feet, with a group of cancer survivors. And it was called survivors at the summit.

They carried tribute flags with messages and names of those near and dear to their hearts, loved ones who’d passed from cancer, who were experiencing cancer, made the hike, came back, and then Holy Cross Hospital donated the use of the building at 59 South 1100 East for Cancer Wellness House to establish itself. So the room that is my office now was where we had yoga classes and some support groups. And the bathroom on the second floor had a platform built on top of the bathtub to deliver massage therapy. It was that vital that we get these services to the individuals who needed it.

So that’s kind of how we started. It was very grassroots organization involved, you know, and a really unique resource in the Intermountain West. 

 

David Pace 10:17

So that hike still happens every year, but you don’t go up to the high Uintahs for that, right? 

 

Dana Levy 10:25

We don’t go out to Kings Peak at this time, although I’d love to reestablish that tradition again. 

 

David Pace 10:31

Great. And when is that happening next? 

 

Dana Levy 10:33

It’s happening on August 4th. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Brighton Resort. So we’ll be throughout the resort in a variety of different ways. It starts with the mountain breakfast and live music gathering for some guided hikes. Of course, we’ll have the ubiquitous yellow tribute flags there for some people have already done some hiking. People will bring them. People will make a donation in exchange for a flag to write a message and then we’ll have a large display of tribute flags at the area where we’ll have lunch and our wellness providers will be there as well to share what they do at Survivor Wellness so people can learn a little bit more about what we do.

It’s a really powerful event. And the reason I say that is because when you go through the cancer diagnosis and treatment or your loved one does, you’re faced, as you can imagine, with a different sense of your mortality. And often we make it through that process, and we don’t realize how much emotional impact it had. And being in the mountains and taking the long view and standing there, seeing those yellow tribute flags and acknowledging what you’ve been through sometimes can be extremely helpful or even cathartic for individuals who didn’t recognize the impact that it had on them as well as those who did. 

 

David Pace 12:05

And healing, sounds like. 

 

Dana Levy 12:06

And healing. Yeah, exactly. 

 

David Pace 12:09

Yeah, that’s a remarkable scenario that you just painted for us, because especially after the isolation of the pandemic which was a health event as well, I think that there were a lot of us that attempted to just paper over that, like, I could do this, I got this, I can do this on Zoom. I can live my life here. And we did.

But the costs that came as a result of that were sometimes pushed aside because the business of life took over and we wanted to get back to the new normal. 

 

Dana Levy 12:48

You’re saying the exact words that the members of Survivor Wellness say. I facilitate what I call the heartbeat of the organization, which is a Wednesday night support group. And many of the individuals who come to that support group come because they recognize that we heal by association, that being in community often helps us recognize how we are and who we are in the world in this moment.

And I often hear them say exactly what you said is, “I want to get back to my life. I want to be normal again.” And as we all know, there’s no normal, there’s no going back. There’s only moving forward into the next iteration. And it’s incredibly powerful to see people acknowledge that the transformation that comes from that acknowledgement and the environment that supports the opportunity to transform, so to speak. 

 

David Pace 13:46

Right. So you’re speaking the language of wellness all through this, which I appreciate. And we can unpack a lot of things in this way. I’m kind of interested, though, because of a personal friend of mine, about how we help as friends and family, cancer survivors or people going through the cancer journey, if you will.

And it’s funny that we should be talking about this because if you don’t mind my maybe setting up a little case study here and I’m going to ask you some questions about what can I do in this scenario for my friend whose husband is struggling with what looks like colon cancer and just last week.

She wrote, and I wanted to share some kind of the story, the chronology, because it made me wonder about what she’s going through right now as the spouse of this man who is in his mid-seventies. So she wrote me a text out of nowhere on Tuesday. So … not even a week ago, “I have some really sad news. He has stage four colorectal cancer. We are having some more tests today to see what the best course of action is. All of this is expected in something like this, but it will likely be palliative care, still in shock, both of us.”

This is the email we got out of nowhere. Come to find out, they had been struggling for a couple of weeks knowing that this was developing and that this was an issue.

Then that night, “blood tests tomorrow to look for cancer markers, several nodules on liver that are characterized as peritoneal and suspected as secondary, which is bad but not certain yet. Heard from the doctor and he is ecstatic that the colon seems to be okay.”

Okay, so this is the first roller coaster bump for my good friend. And we’re just like, what do we say to this woman whom we love? She’s my oldest friend. 

 

Dana Levy 16:11

Mm hmm. 

 

David Pace 16:12

And then later, “peritoneal nodules are malignant, but we have eliminated the worst case scenario, which is a metastasized colon, which is really good.”

So she’s, you know, she seems to be clinging to whatever she can.

“I’m a little confused about that.” This is all on text, “a little confused about that, because the doc today said he only looked at descending colon rather than ascending, which is located on the right side. Maybe I misunderstood.”

So she’s trying to fill all this doubt again. “He says we are not in the clear yet that we have a lot of testing yet. I can’t tell what he is thinking.’ 

 

Dana Levy 16:54

Mm hmm. 

 

David Pace 16:54

So she thinks that the doctor knows something that he’s not telling her. An hour later, “All blood work normal. We are relieved, confused, and exhausted.”

What do I do for this woman? How do I respond? You know, ‘another scan,’ she says in a couple of months.

 

Dana Levy 17:19

So I hear the gravity and the emotional impact on you and on your friends. Thank you for sharing that. 

 

David Pace 17:33

Yeah, I was just struck by this instantaneous, in-your-face experience, and I remember thinking that when I’ve been in these scenarios before, the person that is caring for the person has to repeat over and over and over everything she can say about what she knows. And so I did encourage her to do that. I said, You need to just tell this story 50 million more times to everybody, using all this new language and vocabulary that you’ve picked up. “Peritoneal.” You know, I had to look that up, and I’d like, at least for me, I would like to think that would help me process what’s going on. And to have permission to repeat myself is okay.

So that’s the only thing I’ve come up with out of this scenario. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on any of this, because survivors are also the people that are caring for the person who is surviving. 

 

Dana Levy 18:38

Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. Since we’re talking about the markers of wellness. So first, I want to acknowledge that, as you said, the National Cancer Institute stated in 2021 that a cancer survivor includes the caregiver and loved ones of that individual who receives the diagnosis.

Many people don’t know that. So when you see the word “survivor wellness,” many people ask, Can I come if I’m the caregiver? And absolutely, the impact goes beyond the individual with the diagnosis, as you said. You’re a survivor from the moment you hear the words you have cancer.

What my members say is, I feel less alone when I know that I’m a survivor. That there’s a community. So what you’ve done is enabled your close friends to have a sense of community. What’s challenging, like you said, is knowing what to say and how to support that person. We westerners go to our intellect and we feel our emotions. And you made a great choice in saying, find out as much as you can and as much information as you can. And that’s a wonderful place to start. Where can we take it from there?

What I observe is that we begin to feel helpless or disempowered or powerless in this situation, as with any type of crisis. So my question to you then is, what can you do to feel more powerful in this situation? And that depends on the individual. And for some, it’s gaining in intelligence, so to speak. Like you said, for some, it’s processing the experience by talking about it. For others, it’s going and doing a hike. For others, it’s sitting in a support group. For others, it’s walking with a group of people. And what it is that helps me change.

The other thing that I see some of my — I’ve got to call them empowered clients or empowered members, empowered cancer survivors — is individuals who say, I feel hopeless, I feel helpless, and I need to figure out a way to feel, as I said, powerful again.

One of my favorite clients said,when I received my diagnosis, my boss said to me — and he had had a close encounter with cancer in his own life — he said to me, Tell me what you need. And this member looked at him and she said, I need three things from you. One, I need you to make me laugh every day. I need for you not to pity me. And when you ask me how I am, be deeply interested in my answer. 

 

David Pace 21:50

Don’t just wait for them to finish so you can continue to talk, in other words. 

 

Dana Levy 21:56

To be interested. Because we’re afraid. The person who’s talking about it is afraid. I’m afraid. And if I told you something bad happened to me, my car has a flat tire. You hear me speaking from my helpless perspective.

But if I say my car has a flat tire, we need to call the tow truck. You know what to do, right? So how can we help each other figure out what to do, what this person needs, whether it’s knowledge or information or whether they need emotional support or whether they need you to come cook a meal for them or to take them out and take them for a walk.

If you can collaborate and find out what will help that person in that moment, that you’re an ally in this situation, when they feel powerless, then you’re building a better environment for everyone. 

 

David Pace 22:48

Mm hmm. Including yourself. 

 

Dana Levy 22:50

Right. 

 

David Pace 22:51

Right. 

 

Dana Levy 22:52

And a sense of connection, which can be helpful. 

 

David Pace 22:58

Yeah. That’s very helpful. As we think about connection, which wellness is so connected to, whether it’s physical connection or emotional connection or social connection or so forth, that it kind of creates, like you say, an empowerment because we know how to connect deep down because we connected with our mother and our father. And as you know, hopefully we did.

But it seems to have gotten complicated as we’ve grown older. And as we’ve experienced loss and fear too. Because connection requires bravery, kind of courage that there’s a part of me.

To be perfectly frank, I don’t want to deal with this with my friend. I want to go back to having dinner with them and gossiping about her impossible kids and, you know, doing all the dramas that are really psychodramas in the end, because that’s the devil I know. That’s the person I love.

But it does ask us, I think, to… and what I think I hear you saying, Dana, is that it does ask us to step forward and to re-jigger or reiterate, if you will, what it means to be a friend, what it means to be a lover, what it means to be a spouse, and we don’t like to do that. We like to watch Netflix and see it portrayed very quickly in 2 hours. 

 

Dana Levy 24:55

So easy, isn’t it? 

 

David Pace 25:00

What else can you tell me about Survivor Wellness and the group that you’re doing? We have a few minutes left. 

 

Dana Levy 25:06

When we think about the setting of where we receive medical treatment, it’s usually in a hospital or clinic. 

 

David Pace 25:40

Right. 

 

Dana Levy 25:40

And when I came into Survivor Wellness and as you know, it was originally called Cancer Wellness House, right? It’s not a hospital or a clinic. You actually walk into a historic home that feels like an old friend’s house or, may I say, grandma’s house. Hopefully that has good associations for you. But a place where you have good associations when you walk in the door, you are now an insider in this world of cancer, wellness and integrative health care.

When you stand outside the door, you are an outsider. Much as you feel like an outsider in this relationship, you’re navigating a new relationship with your friends and this new diagnosis. So one thing I would like for folks to know is what sets survivor wellness apart. And that’s one of the main reasons that I feel it’s important to advocate for and continue having this resource in the community, because I see people’s bodies change when they walk into the building and they soften. And that is, I think, the first step to healing or to change or transformation maybe.

The second thing that I would like to share is that at this time, all of the people who provide services for the people who are our members, the folks who walk in the door impacted by cancer volunteer their time. So they’re doing it out of love, courage, compassion and skill. They’re professionals. And the way that we support them is many of them run their private practices at Survivor Wellness. So you may come in as a cancer survivor for massage therapy or Reiki treatment, a class or counseling, but you can also come in and receive a reduced rate treatment or therapeutic session. And a portion of the proceeds for that paid session goes back to support the houses.

So we have what you might call another unseen ecosystem whereby the practitioners are also supporting the houses, as I call them, the organization as a non-profit and their clients are as well. So we’re creating, I want to call it an environment of wellness and healing because we’re all supporting each other.

In that way, I mean, that’s something that most people who walk in the door don’t know when they come in the first time. And that’s okay, because the most important thing is that, you know, there’s a space that you can walk in that’s safe and welcoming, that allows you to be yourself in this new iteration, as you said, to be surrounded by people who are also courageous and compassionate and who are living through maybe what seems like the hardest time of their life and are living through it and are living, are really looking differently at what it means to be here in this world. 

 

David Pace 28:41

Well, hopefully we’ve pulled back the curtain a little bit on that unseen ecosystem, is that what you called it? Of health wellness, survivor wellness, and there’s some of these resources we’ll post on our website so that people can read further about this amazing project that you’re doing as a non-profit. So I’m sure they take donations as well. 

 

Dana Levy 29:05

Definitely

 

David Pace 29:06

Well, thank you very much, Dana, for being here. This has been a very enlightening and even a little moving. So I’m moved. But we do need to move to close here. And thank you again. 

 

Dana Levy 29:26

Thank you. 

 

David Pace 29:33

We’ve been visiting with Dana Levey from Cancer Survivor Wellness here in Salt Lake City. Thanks for being here. 

 

Dana Levy 29:44

Thank you.