The saying “wears many hats” is perfectly applicable to Dr. Kelle DeBoth Foust, associate professor in the Occupational Therapy Department of the College of Health at CSU. In addition to her faculty role, she is the managing director and chair of the board of advisors of the TECH Hub and co-academic director of the Internet of Things Collaborative (IOTC), a partnership with Case Western Reserve University. She is also the co-founder and coordinator of PLAAY on the Move, a unique, multidisciplinary project housed in the Center for Innovation in Medical Professions that develops low-cost, high-impact technologies that promote mobility in young children with impairments. Through her work with the TECH Hub, she coordinates the Tech Box program for middle and high school students in Cleveland, the second installment of which begins at the end of February. And that’s not even mentioning various research projects she’s engaged in.
How does she keep it all straight?
“I get excited about new projects and collaborations, whatever they are, and then figure it out,” said DeBoth Foust, who worked with children with autism and developmental disabilities for 20 years before moving into academia. “It’s all connected, really.”
Below, DeBoth Foust shares how she first got involved with the TECH Hub and why multidisciplinary work is so important to her.
Q: How did you get involved with the TECH Hub?
A: I applied for an IOTC mini grant for a project that was trying to create an app that used augmented reality to elevate the content we were doing for PLAAY on the Move events. We wanted to enable them to use community spaces when we were not present. The ideas was parents could use the app to zap an exhibit at a museum or elsewhere and learn how they could engage with that space with their child, who might have mobility or sensory issues. We ended up doing an augmented reality brochure. But that experience led to work on a large Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) grant with a lot of community partners and I made several connections. It kind of exploded from there! The Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) was a big facilitator in getting me directly involved. It got me engaged and interested. Public interest technology is relatable and I could see the connections to my work.
Q: What do you see as the TECH Hub’s potential?
A: My hope is to create training modules for faculty who want to work in the community. And also training for our IOTC Community Advisory Board (ICAB) to understand how the university works. They are two very different worlds. It’s apparent there is a disconnect and a lack of understanding on both sides. I want the TECH Hub to lead community engagement and connection. I want the TECH Hub to be a place where everybody can come together and find collaborative potential for working on projects together. More and more, there are funding opportunities out there that want to see a diverse team of faculty with different backgrounds. We’ve seen over time, even if the funding doesn’t come through, the collaboration leads to other opportunities. There are people across the university who are doing awesome work but no one knows about it beyond their individual college or school. We can help disseminate that info and help connect people. We can break down these academic silos where we only work in one department or discipline and spread projects and ideas across campus.
Q: What are you working on right now?
A: We are gearing up for another Tech Box session! We’re expanding the programming this year to include more sessions on AI and we’re also offering some longer Saturday sessions and workshops to give kids a more in-depth experience. The program this year really showcases some amazing things happening in Cleveland, like the quantum computer at the Cleveland Clinic. We’re also expanding into two additional neighborhoods, recruiting students from Glenville and St. Clair-Superior in addition to Hough, which is where we started last year. Additionally, we are augmenting the focus on career pathways to help students get more connected to potential future careers. That is important and not something we were fully able to do last year.
Our hope is that someone can pick this up and make it a part of their sustainable programming. We think it should be community owned and run. That’s my hope for the end of this session.
I am also excited about the work I’m doing with the YWCA, focusing on mental health and building resiliency in children in under-resourced communities who have experienced trauma. The work is funded by a pretty prestigious award from the American Occupational Therapy Foundation (AOTF). It’s focused on children with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), providing programming to early learning centers, for both preschool students and their caregivers. We teach coping strategies and have done a lot of work with the teachers, training them on child development and how childhood trauma is connected to what they are seeing in school.
Additionally, I’m a member of the core team working on the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) programming. As part of that, I’m co-teaching for the first time with Debbie Espy, a physical therapist, and Dr. Eric Shearer, in the College of Engineering, a course called Human Machine Systems Fundamentals A. The course looks at disabilities from all those different perspectives and really integrates how we think about conducting research, designing new devices, new technology. Community partners who have a disability have been guiding our thinking and helping us teach the course and provide content.
Q: What do you love about what you do?
A: Having the flexibility to try new things, even if they aren’t always successful. I really love working with the community. I can see a meaningful difference. And then to be able to bring those experiences back to the classroom and enable students to see all the different ways their career could go and what they could do.