From Faculty to Life Coach

By Donna E. Swaim, PhD
Senior Lecturer Emerita in Religious Studies
Clinical Lecturer in the Dept. of Medicine, Medical Humanities
Faculty Fellow in the Athletic Department

After 44 years of teaching at The University of Arizona, I am sometimes asked to consider what my greatest “accomplishments” have been. Often, my answer is not what the questioner expected.

Very often my answer turns to the opportunities I have had to take the material of inter-disciplinary Humanities off the undergraduate campus – to live theatre audiences, to prisons, to elder hostel groups and to medical practitioners. The most important venue out of the classroom has been in my Faculty Fellow offices. For 2-1/2 years in a women’s residence hall, 2-1/2 years in a coed residence hall, 1 year in a fraternity and 18 years in the McKale Center, I have had the privilege of talking informally with hundreds – by now thousands—of young people.

For some of those young people in their important formative years, I am a substitute grandmother. For others, I am a “life coach.” In all of our interactions, I have the years of teaching literature, philosophy, and art history behind me as source material for stories, examples, and the personal awareness that expansion of perceptions is very important.

When teaching in a correctional facility for 18-25 year olds, I realized that the same need to change perceptions of self and society was evident. As I continued that volunteer teaching throughout the Department of Corrections for many years, I realized that the same is true for all of us, in or out of prison fences, of all ages and stages of our lives

In McKale, in order to promote broader self perception we have created an athletic “art gallery” in the Faculty Fellow office. We have been able to display the remarkable talents of athletes (and some athletic staff) with photographs, drawings, paintings, and poetry. That need to see oneself as more than “an athlete” is not at all different from Medical Residents in my Medical Humanities class needing to see themselves as more than the title of Doctor... or convicts expanding beyond that title.

I officially spend three hours a week in McKale, but I’m there closer to 7 hours weekly – and I attend as many athletic events as possible. Currently I seem to have “adopted” the women’s basketball team where I sit with several individuals from the academic services.

When I will finally retire is an open question.   My involvement with the students and the camaraderie with my fellow Faculty Fellows is far too wonderful to leave just yet.

Dr. Donna Swaim can be contacted via email at dswaim@email.arizona.edu