Welcome to Headroom, the podcast where we explore all things essential to mental health and well being. I'm Jim Owens, your host and licensed mental health counselor at Lansing Community College. While you're about to hear from some phenomenal people who have incredible ideas for you and your life, podcasts are no substitute for professional medical advice. So if you need help, Please call or text 988. Okay, having said that, let's get into the Headroom and begin today's conversation. All right, welcome back, everybody. We are kicking off part two of my conversation with Mark Vroman, retired now EMS firefighter, and currently a college professor at Siena Heights University. So you rolled your community service work from the field into the classroom, which, you know, this. I love that people do that because that's, to me, no disrespect to those who go right through academia and stay in academia their whole lives, but you were out in the world doing the work in a way that's just, you know, you're saturated in it, and now you can bring that life experience into the classroom. I'm curious about that transition, though. When did you decide that that was something you knew you wanted to do?

You know, it's. Well, you know, I will be honest. I had a great experience, as you noted earlier. You know, I got to a point, I was in my mid-30s, and I'm like, you know, I'm going to go back to school. I had that associate degree from LCC. I had oodles of credits ye and went back to school, completed my bachelor's at Siena Heights University. And then, you know, and then just kind of had that lifelong learning bug that was, you know, you played an instrumental role when, you know, in taking your course. And again, things kind of came together here about 10 years ago, and I realized, my goodness, I've got life experience, I've got work experience now. I have some of the academic components, and then came back as an adjunct for Sienna Heights and shadowed some of your courses. Preparation for taking on some courses of my own back in 2014. So, yeah, and then, you know, again, that lifelong learning and completed my MBA and, and then, you know, shortly thereafter started the. The pursuit of my doctorate. But again, that's. That's close. And so again, I think being a lifelong learner is helpful.

Yeah.

And you meet different people from different fields. And I really, that was helpful for me, not just following and learning people from emergency services, public safety, but also learning from people from other fields, endeavors, their challenges, their, you know, experiences. And, and just to be able to have Conversations that was very helpful. And of course they were always curious because, you know, the work that I did. So it was a back and forth, great conversation. And that professional networking is. That's a very healthy thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine too, when you get back into the classroom, you would have loved being in a classroom doing these kind of conversations, which actually, frankly, you and I haven't stopped talking about ideas ever since you were in my classroom. It was a very special class, as you remember. But it was pretty early in my teaching career too. But then you went and got the mba, and I'm sure that gave you a lot of leadership opportunities in your field at the time. A lot of people you can stop at an mba, frankly, your resume's in three little letters there. For the most part. It's like, what can you do? Oh, you're an mba. We already can make a ton of good assumptions about what you can do and then going on for the doctorate and now you're teaching. I'm not going to ask you to read the minds of all the folks that you're working with and for. But I mean, two questions. One, how much different is it working in academia versus the field you were in before? Because you stress the power of teamwork and how awesome that is to be able to do your job as a firefighter in ems, responder or paramedic with a team. Academia is a bit more isolated, in my experience. From your colleagues, but not from the students?

No. Great, great question. Yeah. I would say that it was important because of the programming that I'm engaged in. It requires teamwork from a variety of different experts within their given field, whether it's the logistics, the advising, the financial aid, and bringing those teams together to meet regularly, solve problems, have conversations. And you are right. I think you can really, in academia, it can be isolated. But I really, I want to keep that team theme, if you will.

Yeah.

As I transition from, you know, my, my previous career to my current one.

So can you tell folks I was kind of alluding to in episode one, where some of your, some of your, some of your classrooms are in a very special place. Where are those?

It is back in. About five years ago, Siena obtained a grant, Second Chance Pell Grant, and started a program within the correctional facilities and through a partnership with the Michigan Department of Corrections, Department of Education, Higher Learning Commission and then Department of Corrections in the state of Michigan. We started courses within one facility and quickly then. Or in two facilities in the Jackson area.

Yeah.

So yes, the vast majority of my work is Engaging our students that are incarcerated and will be returning citizens at some point and assisting them at reentry. And it is, again, it's a privilege to work with these individuals that are looking to change their life and then more importantly, have a positive influence in their families, their communities, and then society, society as a whole.

They're going to change the direction of their lives, which is going to leave a legacy. It's going to change the direction of the lives of their families. And here I can relate to this work more. Right. Because I did it for 20 years before I. I'll say I suspended my career and my tenure as an. I paused, paused.

I like, paused.

I paused my, my career as an, as an adjunct professor to get more education myself.

As you are pursuing your doctorate. Exactly.

Yeah. But, boy, do I miss the classroom. And I love the work that you're doing because my first 15 years as a counselor, I worked in corrections. I didn't work in correctional facilities. I worked in outpatient substance abuse for drug courts, Ionia, Eaton County, Ingham County. And so everybody in my groups and my individual counseling were probationers and parolees, and I never referred to them as such. Right. But here, just so you understand what their reason for being in the room was, and I loved working in that. Because counseling is all about change. It's about helping people make a change. And you and I both know just one little change, and so do people listening, you get a snowball effect, you know, just one little. What's Robert Frost's famous poem, you know, take a left instead of a right at the walk in the woods, you know, and take the road less traveled. And that makes a huge difference. Just one little encounter with someone like yourself who. I know you're inspirational to these folks in the correctional facilities, but that is such a cool place to be where you're providing a different type of therapy. I'm going to call it therapy because education, to me, it's very therapeutic.

I agree.

It's holistically therapeutic. It feeds the mind, the soul, a person's sense of identity, a person's sense of self worth and dignity. They can walk out of that facility knowing I'm a college graduate, which you and I both became at one point. And I had to kind of double check myself in the mirror, like, am I really a college graduate? Much like. I'm sure we'll probably have not truly imposter syndrome, but once we get our doctorates, we will. We feel like we got them, you know?

Sure, yes, yes. I, you know, that, that, that we could do a whole entire podcast on just imposter syndrome. But yeah, no, I do believe in, you know, the power of education. It's, it really is. If there's a, if there's a things that can change an individual, change a family, change a community, change society, I believe that, you know, education is the proverbial silver bullet.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It really and truly is. And you know, it's, it's the difference in the, in the, you know, that we're making with, with this program. It's, it's, you can see it.

Yeah.

You know, we have graduates that have hit reentry. They're returning citizens, and they are making a positive difference in their community and with their families and through that educational. And I don't believe they would be in the position that they are without that opportunity of that education that they received.

Now, when I ask a sociological question which you may not be able to answer, I certainly can't. So we're both off the hook here. But recidivism rates are high for folks that go into correctional facilities. And that's a fancy word for relapse into the criminal justice system. The hypothesis here would be the more education someone gets, the lower the recidivism rate will be for that group that gets an education. That's probably the hypothesis that drove the funding for a Second chance Pell Grant and all this stuff like, look, if we can get folks educated not just to do a job, which you and I both trained to do a job, but our education helped us become more well rounded human beings. I know you probably had to take World Civ, I had to take World Civ, we had to take social science, we had to take business courses. All these things we learned along the way that helped us become a well rounded person. So when we encounter life in its many vicissitudes that we will hit, we're kind of, we got some stuff behind us. I think I got an idea of how to handle this a little bit more. I've got a bigger, I'm using the word capacity like I did in the first episode. We have a higher capacity for difficulty. Because I've, in my field, I would call it developed, but I would even get a little bit more, say, matured. I've matured in a certain kind of way.

You bet. No, back to your point on the recidivism rate. The Second Chance Pell Grant system is really, they're transitioning away with the Department of Education and into a full PEP or a prison education program. And we're going through that process currently. Now it's a much more streamlined process because we've been in it. It's just transitioning from the grant to a now full program, and some things have changed and so on. But back to the recidivism nationwide. And this, this is data from a few years ago.

Yeah.

That, you know, typically nationwide, the recidivism rate is about 50%.

That's right.

Five years.

I know.

So, you know, within five years, 50% of incarcerated individuals will be back in the criminal justice system and more than likely, you know, re incarcerated. If they obtain an associate degree while they're incarcerated, that 50% becomes 15%. Wow. If they obtain a bachelor's degree, it goes down to less than 5%. So when we talk about the power of education.

Wow.

And we know the cost. Right. Depending on your state, your region, the cost of incarceration is incredible. And, and not to turn this into a financial conversation, but the value. I'm in it for the human.

Of course.

For the.

Of course.

The field.

Yeah.

You know, but. But, you know, it's okay that this, this is, you know, that this is because we can reinvest those dollars elsewhere, I. E. Education. So just an opportunity. But yeah, I think that the educational component and one of the things. And it's. It's. It's our system. Right. We checking boxes, getting through classes. But one of the things that we try to embed within our program and in other schools, I am confident, are doing the same. But beyond just the academic requirements, we have university learning outcomes, we have program learning outcomes, and we have course learning objectives.

Yeah.

So what we've been trying to do is every opportunity where we can incorporate problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making.

Yeah. Yeah. Say that again. Problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. That's it.

It's more than the grade, the intangibles. If you query employee, if you look at the literature today, if you query employers. Oh, yeah, they're looking at the person. We'll teach them the technical. The degree gets you in the door. But we want to know that those skills, the critical thinking, decision making, the problem solving, are refined and solidified.

I make those assumptions when we're hiring somebody. If they have a college degree, I make those three assumptions. They can do critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making. And I make a fourth assumption. They can do it on time.

Oh, very good. I like that. Yes.

Because I need stuff to be done on time here. Where I work, we have to be on time. Of course. In my field, I Have appointments. I need to be on time for my appointments. But reports need to be published on time. All these things need to be done on time. And it just shows respect. Maybe a certain kind of deference to authority beyond yourself, like I will respect. Professor wants me to do this paper. I don't really want to do it. I'll grit my teeth, but I'll get it done. Because that happens in the world of work we got to do. Stuff we don't want to do sometimes needs to get done. So, yeah, all those things and the therapy of education. I wish I could. Here I have the data in front of me to demonstrate how big of a change that is.50 to 15 and 5%. You almost can't see that kind of a change in any other technology. And I'm here, I'm equating education with a technology in the pharmaceutical industry, in transportation and energy. What do you know of that can take something and make it that much better with an intervention that costs what it costs? It's a miracle in a sense. It's kind of a miraculous thing that happens.

It really is. It's, you know, the, you know, again, the power of education. And I like how you. Education is therapeutic.

Yeah.

You know, and I'll share here. I was going through a lot of challenging times personally when I went back to school, and I was at that mark professionally. You kind of hit the. The law, unfortunately, for lack of a better term and some other, you know, just some challenges. And when I. When I enrolled, it. It renewed my sense of purpose. It gave me, you know, enhanced my confidence level. And it wasn't that, you know, I know more than it was. The more I learned, the more I realized what I didn't know.

Sure.

And. And all it did was motivate me. And in fact, I would say education made me more humble.

Yeah.

Then because I just. That knowledge and understanding it just. There is some humility as you work through a lot about yourself as you move through the educational process. And I'm confident that our students currently, whether it's within the correctional system or what we would classify as traditional or the adult learners coming back to school. Like. Like I did.

Yeah. I would love to look into literature a little bit further on this to see how it's been studied. But as a researcher or a developing researcher, I'm always interested in correlation and then causation. And then now I really want to get to mechanism of action. What is it that's triggering. And you'll know that from your pharmaceutical training days. What is the mechanism of action for a particular pharmaceutical drug. But in human experiments, it's hard to pin down what a mechanism of action might be. We could just say it's education, but no, no, what's happening in the education. What's happening inside the person's mind as a result of being educated? There's something changing there that's not gathering more data. Because you and I both know having gone pretty far into our fields to do doctoral work means you're really going to go as far out into the field as you can possibly make yourself go. And the further you get into that field, the farther you see the edge of the horizon is. I will never get to the end of all the bibliography and footnotes of the one paper I just read that's got 12 citations in it. And I look through that and I go, man, I read the titles. I'd love to read all those articles. I haven't got time to read those 12 that are cited on that article that I have to respond to. And this one and this one. So the field gets bigger and bigger. My data set gets bigger, but it's a diminished percentage of what I now know is the data available. So it's not all of that to say. That's a fun way of saying it's not about collecting data or knowledge, is it? I mean, that's some of it. Right. But some of it is just like maybe it is that humility I don't know you were pointing to. Because I'm certainly, I'll say for myself, starting a. What will this be? My fourth or fifth degree. I thought, I'm going to kind of clean up here in my doctoral degree. I'm going to kind of clean up all the loose ends that I didn't quite chase down every rabbit hole in my previous degrees.

Nice.

Neatly. I'm going to tidy it all up.

Yeah.

I'll. I'll be able to say I read this and this, you know, and understand, really. I've read all the primary source stuff.

Yeah.

That ain't going to happen.

No.

And I know it now. And I'm still grieving that a little. Right.

You know, the. Sometimes I, I came up and really had contemplated many of the wonderful things you just identified. The path is the objective. There is no finish line.

Okay.

And I, we, but we, we. But we live in a society where the finish line is achievement.

Yeah.

Whereas if you're just on the path, I just really believe that the path is the purpose.

Yeah.

I think that there is no endpoint when you become A lifelong learner. Yes. You may have certain credentials and achievements along the way.

Way.

But yeah, my reading list has only gotten longer. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, mine too. You contribute to that because we're constantly.

Telling each other to read stuff, sharing resources. Absolutely.

But what you're talking about is education. I think it transforms a person's disposition or has the potential to do that, their attitude toward life a little bit. You and I talked about humility here a second ago, but it's kind of like I want to go back to something. She's now retired, but she was the president of the Siena for 20 years. Sister Peg Albert, PhD, Dominican nun and a social worker. I remember at her installation, I think they call it when somebody becomes a president like they're an air conditioner or something. But that wouldn't be a bad metaphor either.

No, no, it's okay. Yeah, plugged in.

Clean the air, keep the atmosphere what it needs to be. But anyway, the installation of a president, I'll never forget some of the things she said at her speech, which was to be a student means you're going to assume a position of openness. And boy, if that isn't an antidote for narcissism and egoism and selfishness. And those are the kinds of things that get us into trouble. I think by and large I agree when I'm thinking only of myself and I'm seeking only for myself. Education just probably challenges us and at least gives us the opportunity more so than maybe many other things, which hopefully we get these things in our family of origin, but we don't always to say, you know what? I don't know everything. And I kind of am enjoying that now a little bit. Like it's kind of fun to be able to be curious about things and not be the expert and approach life with a little more openness and consideration for how this will affect other people and other things and so on. Yeah, that's kind of where I'm going.

Great point. And I think we as educators can improve, enhance in creating a psychologically safe learning environment. We're making mistakes or not. You know, perhaps as critical as, again, if you, if you put forth your best effort, you're on time.

Yeah, I do like that one in.

But again, I think that if you can create an environment where it compels people to do some self reflection and assessment and the fact that it doesn't. You don't have to agree with everyone at every point in time, but you create an understanding and there's a difference. There's A stark difference between understanding and agreeing. And I think that we should always strive to understand.

Yeah.

And that creates an environment of learning that I think is very supportive, respects the dignity of each and every student.

Yeah.

So. Yeah.

So you don't have any researchers doing personality inventories pre and post?

No, no, not yet.

Because I would love to see where people score, let's say. And for those of you who are more interested in the psychology side of things, there's a very popular personality test called the Big five. An acronym we have to remember it is ocean. But it basically helps us kind of figure out where somebody falls in terms of their personality along five domains. O, C, E, A, N. So it's openness, which is what I was just describing. Sister Peg was talking about. Conscientiousness, which means, am I thinking about other people when I'm doing the thing I'm doing. Extroversion, which means how willing am I to engage with the public or communities? O C E A A is. Oh, it's. I think it's assertiveness. I don't think that's right. I actually have to come back to that. And then N is neuroticism. So how much do I want to make the world? Oh, it's agreeableness. Agreeableness, like how, you know, am I agreeable or am I a disagreeable personality? And then neuroticism is how neurotic am I? Meaning how much do I have to make everything be the way I want it to be? My hypothesis here would be. And I'd love to test it, but to get an IRB to approve doing anything with an incarcerated population is nearly. It's very difficult. It's difficult to get research done on human beings in classrooms, let alone in a correctional facility. But anyway, my guess would be that their openness would go up post education, their conscientiousness would go up post education, their extroversion would go up, their agreeableness would go up and their neuroticism would go down. Could go up. Because you and I are high functioning neurotics. That's how you get this far in life. Because we, we must have it a certain way. We will get it done a certain way. It's not a bad thing, by the way. None of these things are bad things. They're just domains of our personality. It's one way of thinking about it. But doesn't that sound. Does that sound right as a hypothesis?

I agree. I think that at the very least it should be an objective of any type of educational programming. Or any programming for that matter, with really any student obviously more importance on, you know, the students within the correctional setting. Yeah.

What about your own experience? Do you feel like those kinds of things change now that I've brought up this taxonomy which I'm only now just giving to you? But you would have had to have had a certain degree of openness to even show up to a classroom because people who are very low there, they don't have no interest in being open to new ideas or being exposed to them necessarily.

Sure.

Or conscientiousness. You struck me from moment one as a conscientious person. You, you're probably a 10 out of 10 for conscientious. As far as you might be an 11 out of 10.

Yeah, yeah.

To a fault, an extrovert and so on. But yeah, I mean, do you think some of those things are what changed for you or helped you develop?

Yeah, I think so. I think the educational I liked. I could feel myself perhaps becoming a better person and human being through the education as I went back to school. Not to say that I wasn't a good human being before, I just, I could feel myself be better. I was better with, with friends, I was better with family. I was better in the, in a professional setting. My decision making, my critical thinking skills, my problem solving all improved. So I think to go back into the value and I wouldn't change a thing. I think from a process how it all worked. I think sometimes we want this nice neat path. Right. 22, bachelor's degree and then you actually script your life.

Yeah.

Marriage, mortgage, everyone from, from a wellness perspective. Don't enjoy the path like we talked about. Enjoy the path life's going to take you, where it takes you. But, but don't, don't script your life. Don't, don't script it like I need to have this done. But just things will evolve and if you put forth the effort, there's goodness in your heart with your decisions and your peace. I think things will fall into place.

Well, I don't disagree with that. We've got a little bit of time. So I'm going to point to another philosophers who have talked about this, but I think what you're describing in my language would be psychological flexibility. It's not bad to have a plan. It can be fun to write a plan and dream about a plan and dream of what something could be. But then as you get out into the world and you start working through that, be careful to enjoy the process along the way.

That's right.

We are very, I mean, being goal oriented is wonderful. It's survival, you know, for our ancestors. What are we going to do today? We're going to go get some food. That's a good idea. That's a good goal. Glad that's on the table because we're all hungry. But there's a lot of beauty along the way to hunting down those nuts, berries, animals, whatever it is that could just be overlooked along the way if we're not. And here I'm going back 15,000 years or 30,000 years to our ancestors, hunter gatherers. Hunter gatherers. Why couldn't they enjoy the process too? Right. Ours is a different hunting and gathering. We're hunting and gathering different things.

Yeah.

But there's a really cool philosophy that's been developed over the last 20th century, I suppose, called process relational theory. And what it really kind of says is humans are best understood as a process and in relationship. So we don't have enough time to get into all of that. But I just want for people who are interested and want to know more about that, go look up Alfred North Whitehead and see what he says about. To underscore your point here about what does it mean to be a human being, you're in process. You're not a product and you're not an individual. You're a relationship. You're part of a relationship. Like you said from the very beginning in episode one, you always saw yourself as a community member, not an individual going into some other individual's home. Not quite family, but it's community. So thanks again for joining me today. I appreciate you making the trip to campus.

My pleasure, Jim. What an opportunity to be back here and really enjoyed this morning in our conversation and wish our listeners the very best.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of Headroom. Remember, if you need mental health assistance, you can always call or text 988. And if you're a current LCC student, free mental health counseling is available to you at the college. You can learn more at LCC.edu/counseling. I want to thank our producers here at LCC Connect and encourage you to explore other amazing podcasts at LCCconnect.com thanks again for listening. Take care and we'll see you next time in the Headroom.