Category: Features

Torrey Wilson always figured he would work in healthcare, but the plan was to be a doctor. There was only one small problem with that. “You don’t always really know what you want at 17, but I followed that path and I was miserable,” Wilson said. “And it wasn’t the work. I actually loved chemistry and biology.”  

He credits the chair of the psych department at Xavier University in New Orleans for igniting a new passion for psychology. “The chair knew how miserable I was, and tried to convince me to take a psych course,” Wilson said. He was initially resistant because it wasn’t something he had ever given any thought to because, Wilson said, “there just wasn’t a tradition of psychology in the African American community.”

But the professor persisted and offered to waive an intro course requirement for Wilson. “The notion of doing work that was psych-related was foreign to me,” Wilson said, “but I took ‘Psychology of Women’ and it literally changed the direction of my life.”

That’s good news for the University of Indianapolis as Wilson joins the faculty as the Dean of the College of Applied Behavioral Sciences (CABS). Prior to arriving at UIndy, Wilson most recently served as associate professor of clinical psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University. In his faculty role, he served as chair of the curriculum committee, taught graduate courses, advised doctoral students and served on program and university-wide committees. Wilson has also served as the Department Chair of the Clinical Psychology Program at Adler University in Chicago. While there, he successfully led the unit through the American Psychological Association (APA) accreditation, facilitated recruitment and oversaw the department budget, while instituting its social justice curriculum.

After Wilson received his master’s degree from Xavier he moved to New York for several years and worked with at-risk adolescents at a public high school. It was there when he began to understand how systematic deficiencies can influence outcomes, and that caregivers and patients must work within the constraints of systems in order to achieve positive outcomes.

“I worked with students who the school system almost thought of as throwaways,” Wilson said. “But we’d have these students, who, through their own moxie, had a clear vision of what they wanted to do. All they needed was support. You can teach, you can work with students, you can do all these things, but you have to recognize that there are systemic issues that ultimately affect the ability to be effective.” 

“I came to a deeper understanding of systems, and how you can do great work with an individual, but you have to work within the system to actually create that final outcome,” Wilson said. “This is actually how I ended up in administration.”

Wilson says that many people have a misunderstanding of what psychology actually is. People think of psychology in two ways: “therapy, and then psych labs where you’re running rats through a maze and stuff like that.”

“But everything is behaviorally anchored. We talk about healthcare, and one of the things that I’m focused on is making integrated healthcare a fundamental way in which CABS training occurs,” Wilson said.

Integrated healthcare is characterized by a high degree of collaboration and communication among health professionals. What makes integrated health care unique is the sharing of information among team members related to patient care and the establishment of a comprehensive treatment plan to address the biological, psychological and social needs of the patient.

Wilson says that the reason we have health epidemics is not because we don’t have the knowledge or technology to cure illness, but rather because of the behavioral component. “Yet, psychologists aren’t as present in the healthcare system,” Wilson says. “We’re mainly relegated to mental health issues.”

“That’s what is so great about the Health Pavilion,” he says. “It is a collection of different health programs, trying to build a system that trains and prepares students to actually understand health holistically.”

Wilson’s first job was at Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago where he worked in outpatient psychiatry doing transplant evaluations and substance abuse treatment. There he worked with social workers, nurses and physicians collaboratively to determine the best course of action for people who needed transplants and how to get them healthy again. “Everything in my post-doctoral life has been around this notion of an integrated approach to helping people be healthy,” Wilson said.

Wilson believes the healthcare system itself is moving in a more integrated direction, but the health professions and behavioral health education continue to lag behind. Wilson attributes this to the different healthcare professions remaining siloed to either protect their “turf” or their own identities, or perhaps just because it’s easier to maintain the status quo than it is to adapt.

“If you’re still doing healthcare and thinking psychologists are doing what they did 30 years ago, you’re going to be obsolete pretty quickly,” Wilson said. “I think what UIndy has here is unique, you have these different health programs under one roof—the difficulty is moving them towards an understanding and knowing what it means to work together.”

There is a clear need for those working in the applied behavioral sciences today and Wilson believes the University of Indianapolis will continue to help meet that need, and he’s happy to be here leading the CABS.

“I have always considered myself a New Orleanean, never a Chicagoan, but it really hit me when I accepted this job that Chicago had become home,” Wilson said. “But I’m looking forward to discovering a new home and new community here at UIndy.”

Read more about the College of Applied Behavioral Sciences here.

The University of Indianapolis Theatre program will present two series this season. The Main Stage Theatre Series will include a Broadway classic, a historical comedy and a British turn-of-the-century drama. The Student Experience Series will include fully realized productions, staged readings and a movement and written word performance by our graduating seniors. Buy tickets at events.uindy.edu.

 

Main Stage Theatre Series

 

“Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind”

by Greg Allen
September 12-14, 8 p.m., Studio Theatre
“Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” was the longest-running show in Chicago and the only open-run Off-Off-Broadway show in New York. The show is the work of the Neo-Futurism movement, a variant of the Italian Futurism movement and reflects their aesthetic of non-illusory theater, where, as they describe it, “all of our plays are ‘set’ on the stage in front of the audience. All of our ‘characters’ are ourselves… We do not aim to ‘suspend the audience’s disbelief’ but to create a world where the stage is a continuation of daily life.”  

 

“Cabaret”

Book by Joe Masteroff

Based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood

Music by John Kander, Lyrics by Fred Ebb
October 18-19 & 25-26, 8 p.m.

October 20, 2 p.m.

Ransburg Auditorium

In a Berlin nightclub, as the 1920’s draw to a close, a garish Master of Ceremonies welcomes the audience and assures them they will forget all their troubles at the Cabaret. With the Emcee’s bawdy songs as wry commentary, “Cabaret” explores the dark, heady, and tumultuous life of Berlin’s natives and expatriates as Germany slowly yields to the emerging Third Reich.

 

“In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play”

by Sarah Ruhl

February 21-23 & 27-29, 8 p.m.

Ransburg Auditorium

A 2009 play by award-winning playwright, Sarah Ruhl.  “In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play” is set in the 1880s at the dawn of electricity. It concerns the early history of the vibrator as a clinical device for treatment of “hysteria.” among women and the Victorian ignorance of female sexual and mental health. 

 

“The Drowning Girls”

By Daniela Vlaskalic, Beth Graham and Charlie Tomlinson
April 17 – 19 & 23-25, 8 p.m.

UIndy Studio Theatre

Bessie, Alice, and Margaret have two things in common: they are married to George Joseph Smith, and they are dead. Surfacing from the bathtubs they were drowned in, the three breathless brides gather evidence against their womanizing, murderous husband by reliving the shocking events leading up to their deaths. Reflecting on the misconceptions of love, married life, and the not-so-happily ever after, “The Drowning Girls” is both a breathtaking fantasia and a social critique, full of rich images, a myriad of characters, and lyrical language

 

Admission for Main Stage Theatre Series

$12 general admission

$10 for alumni, senior citizens, groups of eight or more and non-UIndy students with ID

$6 general admission on Thrifty Thursdays 

Free admission with ticket for UIndy Students, Faculty and Staff with ID

When Sycamore Services was considering ways to enhance their client programs, they didn’t have to look far. The University of Indianapolis music therapy program is part of a blossoming partnership with Sycamore, which provides services to adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and other conditions that can limit participation in life’s daily activities.

Consumers at Sycamore receive services paid for primarily through waiver funding. This can become an issue when those dollars run out, however. One of the programs that Sycamore offers is music therapy. “We have people on the waiver who get music therapy, and we also have people who would like to do music therapy, but because they utilize so many other services, they may not have enough waiver dollars to do it,” explained Trina Blackburn, project coordinator at Sycamore.

That’s where UIndy came in. “My first thought was connecting with UIndy to see if some music and art therapy students would be interested in coming to our day program and doing music for our clients,” said Blackburn.

“We reached out and explained what we were interested in doing, we told them about our idea of having some students come over and do some music and art, and hopefully try to have a long term partnership where the students can come over and do this like an internship.”

Because the UIndy students can provide music therapy through a partnership with Sycamore Services at a cost that is free to the consumers it opens up a host of new opportunities for them. 

“For some of the consumers, it’s something different than they’d normally get to experience,” Blackburn said. “Because if it is not on their plan, they wouldn’t have the ‘waiver dollars’ to be able to experience it.” 

The music therapy provided by UIndy students is also important because many of the consumers at Sycamore are unable to go to a concert or an art studio and experience those types of activities and there is no guarantee there is anyone on staff that is qualified to lead them.

“Our staff is great,” Blackburn said. “But they don’t have the expertise in doing art or music, so for us to be able to bring someone in that has that knowledge base, that helps tremendously.”

Jan Schreibman, director of the music therapy program, took two students to Sycamore to provide a music therapy session and determine the types of consumers that Sycamore’s day program served. After the success of the initial visit, Blackburn and Schreibman are hopeful the partnership will continue and expand once students are back on campus this fall.

 “We want this to be an ongoing partnership,” Blackburn said, “providing art and music for our consumers by utilizing UIndy students, even on a weekly basis. We’re so close to each other, it just makes sense!”

Music therapy provides many benefits for those who have intellectual or developmental disabilities. It can stimulate the mind, while being soothing or relaxing, but is also very interactive for the consumer.

Some ways that music therapy can help consumers achieve physical and psychological benefits include:

•     Playing a drum to increase the mobility of their arms, which could eventually help them become more independent doing activities like eating and writing
•     Singing the words along to preferred songs can help those with Alzheimer’s/dementia recall past experiences
•     Singing can also help people with traumatic brain injuries or difficulty speaking learn to pronounce and say words more clearly, which helps them communicate in their daily lives
•     Discussing and analyzing lyrics to songs, or writing lyrics to a song, can help people that struggle with depression relate to others, share experiences and self-express.

 Practical experience is required for music therapy board certification, but that’s not the only reason it is important to UIndy students. “Practicum experiences are essential for music therapy students to gain experience working with different populations of people with varying needs,” said Amy Foley, who is serving as the UIndy clinical experience coordinator. “This hands-on experience allows students to learn from a board-certified music therapist and have a safe environment to practice skills they are learning through their coursework with people in the community.”

Providing this service is so important because it is about giving back to the community,” said professor Schreibman. “Opportunities like this help us identify how our resources can best fit and provide a service to others.”

“The music therapy program at UIndy is very hands-on and allows for a lot of experience doing supervised work in the field,” said Katelyn Snider ’20 (music therapy). “This has really prepared me to feel comfortable and confident in a professional setting.”

“My experiences working in places like Sycamore have really helped me grow academically and personally. I was able to become more comfortable relating to and communicating with all people.”

“We have so many people who could benefit from art and music in a small group setting” said Blackburn. “It gives them something to look forward to. You can tell that it really is bringing joy to their lives.”