Research Unplugged Episode 5 – Mastering the Art of the Academic Nudge

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• Interviewers: Andrew Welsh, Tracy Woodford
• Guest: Dr. Lisa Kuron
• Length of Interview: 34:35
• Listen to the episode

00:00:00 [Intro music]

00:00:12 Andrew Welsh

Hello, and welcome to the 5th episode of Research Unplugged. I'm Andrew Welsh, and I'm joined again by my co-host, Tracy Woodford. This is the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences podcast where we interview different faculty members across our different programs to learn a little bit more about their research and teaching interests. Today, our guest, thank you very much, is Dr. Lisa Kiron.

00:00:35 Lisa Kuron

Hi, everybody.

00:00:36 Tracy Woodford

Hello, welcome.

00:00:37 Lisa Kuron

Thank you.

00:00:37 Andrew Welsh

Thank you for joining us, especially as the weather is starting to get nice.

00:00:42 Tracy Woodford

Exactly. It's beautiful out today. It is. We won't keep you too long so you can enjoy the rest of the day.

00:00:47 Lisa Kuron

Thank you.

00:00:48 Andrew Welsh

I probably wasn't supposed to comment on the weather because that dates the podcast maybe, but.

00:00:53 Tracy Woodford

That's okay. It could be a nice day in October. It could be a nice day in July.

00:00:58 Lisa Kuron

When did we record this? Nobody knows.

00:01:00 Andrew Welsh

That's right. We're not going to tell you.

00:01:01 Tracy Woodford

It's a mystery.

00:01:02 Andrew Welsh

Instead, we're going to focus on your work [laugh]. So, Lisa, you're a professor in our leadership program. So, I don't know if all of our audience will be familiar with leadership as a university program as much as they might recognize if you said School of Business or School of Management. Can you just tell us a little bit about the leadership program and what it's all about?

00:01:25 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. First, I think it's important to acknowledge that, of course, there is an overlap between management and business and leadership. Oftentimes our managers are leaders and our leaders are managers. And I think where leadership really comes in is the people side of things. We're really focused on developing people for who they are, recognizing what their strengths are, recognizing where those opportunities are for them to grow and to also share the space with other folks. So, we don't have to be experts in everything, and we don't have to lead the way in everything. And so, the leadership program really sees leadership as a shared process where we share power, where we're building relationships to accomplish shared goals with other folks. And so really focusing on that personal development side, but also those interpersonal relationships is how do we create really strong relationships with folks so that we can accomplish great things together, so that we can give each other constructive feedback when things go wrong, because they will go wrong. And developing those skill sets that people need to take on anything that life throws at them because the world is constantly changing. And so how do we leverage the knowledge that we have about ourselves, about the people that we're with, and the context that we're in to actually make informed decisions.  And that's what the leadership program is all about. We've got courses from first year to second year, third, and 4th that really aim to develop those career-ready skills in students and really develop that complementary skill set that I think will help not just leadership students but students from all areas that take our classes.

00:03:05 Andrew Welsh

Leadership's been on the Branford campus too for, I think, as long as I've been here, hasn't it?

00:03:10 Lisa Kuron

Yeah, we just celebrated our 20th anniversary in 2024. Oh, sorry, our 25th anniversary in 2024.

00:03:17 Andrew Welsh

Okay, that's good because I'm not going to tell people how long I've been here for [laughter]. So, I'll just leave that a mystery like the time of year. So, you got your PhD in management from the Lazaridis School of Business at Laurier. What drew you to this particular field and when did you know you wanted to be a university professor?

00:03:39 Lisa Kuron

I think that's a really interesting question because I'd love to tell you that it was a grand master plan, but it wasn't, and really not at all. It was sort of a series of nudges that led me into that direction. I chose an undergraduate degree in commerce when I began my studies because I had some success as a supervisor at Tim Horton’s and really enjoy doing that. And as I took more courses, I picked up a minor in psychology, I picked up a minor in statistics. And as I was approaching graduation, I thought, okay, I'll probably have to work in the corporate world, that makes sense after commerce. And when I went to one of my profs for a reference, she kind of pushed back on that, and she said, “Why do you want to do an MBA?” And I said, “I want to explore some options. I'm not really sure what in the corporate world I'd want to do, but I want to keep learning.” I really liked the psychology and the statistics courses combined with commerce. And so, she let me know about this research-based master's program. So here at Laurier. So, I took that and sort of the natural progression from that was a PhD program, but still I wasn't entirely sure. So, I'd actually gotten a job with the Ontario government and then another professor came along and asked if I'd thought about the PhD program. So, we'd gone for lunch. She gave me a few nudges and sure enough I took the PhD program. And I think when I really decided was when I had my first time teaching, I just fell in love with that process and seeing those aha moments in the students in getting to be a part of that experience and getting to be the person who starts giving students those nudges in those directions. So, if you would have asked me, you know, 15 years ago if I'd be here, I'd probably say no, but here we are.

00:05:26 Tracy Woodford

Those are great, great stories to hear. And yours is similar to other interviewees we've had too, in that they didn't have this clear-cut path that they, “I'm going to go to school and I'm going to be a professor” or whatever. There’s always these different pathways and people that influenced them in different ways and it's more of a winding path. So, and it sounds like yours is, that's a similar path that you took too.

00:05:51 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. And it's interesting. It actually plays into my dissertation research, which was on the job search process. And that was really, you know, inspired by a lot of folks were, you know, “What's next? What's next?” As if there's only one answer. And my research, you know, focused on, well, what about more of that exploration piece, right? How do we learn? Should we really have a clear goal, or should we have more of a flexible goal? And I think there's some real power in that flexibility until the clarity comes eventually. But if you don't have a good basis for that clarity, explore, have those nudges be influenced by folks and be open to what can happen in the world.

00:06:29 Tracy Woodford

Exactly. Yeah, I like that.

00:06:30 Andrew Welsh

Yeah, that's definitely the same, very similar story to I think everyone we've interviewed. So how did you end up here at Brantford in the Leadership program?

00:06:41 Lisa Kuron

Oh, how did I end up here? So, I had taught in the business school for a little while and I was having so much fun teaching that it was distracting me a little bit from my research. So, I told myself I'm not going to teach for a semester. And literally the next day there was a job opportunity doing some research for some career programs and should we develop this new program in this area? So, then I started doing that. And that turned into sort of another contract and that turned into Leadership asking me to help them on a project. And after that project finished, Leadership had an LTA opening, a limited term appointment opening. And I had fallen back in love with the teaching. And so, I decided to go for that. And we were able to extend that contract a few more times until it rolled over into a tenure track one. So honestly, again, not a grand master plan, a series of happenstance.

00:07:36 Andrew Welsh

No, it usually isn't.

00:07:37 Tracy Woodford

Yeah, but it sounds like perfect, it was perfectly executed and meant to be when you're standing at the, not the end of your path, but where you've come from. It just seems like, oh, yeah, Uh huh!

00:07:54 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. I think looking backwards, it almost seems like everything sort of fell perfectly into place, but it just happened to turn out that way. And I'm so grateful for it because I'm having such a great time in this space.

00:08:05 Tracy Woodford

That's great.

00:08:06 Andrew Welsh

I totally get the, I like doing research, but I love teaching. So, it does oftentimes I focus a lot heavily on that. So, that's good to know I'm not the only person [laughter] So, tell us a little bit more about your work on the Collegiate Leadership Competition. So, what is the Collegiate Leadership Competition and how does it connect to your broader work here in the Leadership program?

00:08:29 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. So, the Collegiate Leadership Competition or the CLC, you'll probably hear me use that acronym instead. It's really an immersive experience that takes place over three to four months in trying to develop people and their leadership skills, their teamwork skills, their problem-solving skills. And it recognizes, consistent with Experiential Learning Theory, that we can talk about theory, we can talk about frameworks, and we can develop that knowledge, but we really need that time and space to practice that knowledge and to use it. And leadership in particular, you know, you're going to be thrown a lot of things in your life, no matter what career path you go down, situations you've never seen before. And so, the Collegiate Leadership Competition really leverages that, and it brings together students and pairs them with coaches at various institutions who will facilitate that experience for them over three to four months. And the coach's job over three to four months, so here I teach OL 401 at the Waterloo campus and Dr. Kris Gerhardt teaches it here in Branford where we have a curriculum with students. They learn that, but we spend our class time doing activities. And they're seemingly random activities because again, you don't know what life is gonna throw at you, but you've gotta work through it together as a team. So CLC has this great activity library that coaches can leverage to work their students through those experiences. And what's really critical is the feedback after the debrief. What worked well? What didn't work well? What would you do differently next time? Because the whole idea is that we want to be more intentional with our choices. We don't want to just react at life. We want to make informed choices with what we know about ourselves, about other people, about context, and of course, the leadership theories. So, for three or four months, students practice with their coaches, with their teams, and they get quite comfortable. And then we throw them a curveball, the competition itself. So, competition, we know there's a lot of great motivational impacts on that. It brings students together. But what it also does, it changes the context, because they've gotten quite comfortable in the classroom. They've gotten quite comfortable with their team. And in the competition, if it's in person, and we host it here at Laurier Brantford, it's an all-day event, 6 activities. We've got external judges who are going to sort of grade them on some of these things. And that introduces new stress, right? And so, all that practice sort of culminates on this day, but the heat is raised because they're being judged and they know they're being judged by folks that they don't know. But they're also in competition and they want to win. And they know they have to leverage their learning, but they've never seen these activities before. They're more complex than the other ones. And so how do they slow down? remind themselves that they know what they're doing, there is a process to follow, and again, not react, but make intentional choices for how they're going to move forward. It’s a lot of fun. The energy in the room is incredible. We also host an online competition. We do that one over 2 days because of course we've got to learn how to collaborate in this online space as well. So, this year we had 40 teams across 7 competitions.  So about 250 competitors who competed in the CLC. And just really great experience practicing leadership instead of just talking about it.

00:11:50 Tracy Woodford

Right. That's a lot of people, 250. Yeah. This seems like something that would be good for any student, regardless of what program they were in.

00:12:00 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. And we collected some data from students this year and they came from a wide variety of programs. Of course, there were students in business, but there's also students in political science, education, science, math, really the full spectrum, which I think is really great and really speaks to the applicability of leadership skills.

00:12:20 Andrew Welsh

Yeah. Do you have an example? I'm just curious of what kind of like, one activity that a group has done or a project?

00:12:26 Lisa Kuron

Sure. So, I'll share an activity that we sort of use every year because I think it really exemplifies the experience. So, this is the only activity that students know in advance is going to be one, and it's a video game called “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.” [laughter], and it's a bomb defusal game. So, imagine if we were playing, Tracy and Andrew, you'd have the bomb defusal manual and I'd have the bomb. And I'd have to tell you what I see. And you have to tell me which wire to cut or which buttons to press. But we only have 5 minutes to do that. But we're also in a competition. And we also have to show to the judges that we're working well as a team. We're not just completing the task. We're collaborating well. We're managing our emotions well during that. And so, the great thing about the video game is each level, every time you play, new bombs show up. So, you never know what's going to come up. So, you can prepare, but only to a point. But then again, the heat of the competition, you're hearing another team celebrate. They just won. So, oh, now we've got to do it too. Right? So that is an activity that they know about and can practice during the season. And then they don't know what levels we'll choose on competition day.

00:13:38 Andrew Welsh

I like that. It makes me think of the Keanu Reeves movie, “Speed” [laughter]. A little bit of a different context. No, that sounds fantastic.

00:13:46 Tracy Woodford

Yeah, almost like an escape room sort of idea. Like you're collaborating and working with other people, but you can't lose control and you can't lose your mind, and you have to present and provide instructions clearly.

00:14:00 Lisa Kuron

Exactly. Pause partway through. What's working, what's not working? What do we have to change? Do we need to change our goal because we wanted to get 100 points and we haven't made much progress and there's 10 minutes left. Right? And so that's in the moment, you know, adjustments as well, which is really, really quite cool.

00:14:17 Andrew Welsh

Yeah, I definitely like that one. This actually kind of leads into, when you discuss the application context of that activity for students, I think is something that prospective employers would really like. And I think I would imagine students would really like it much more than a multiple-choice exam.

00:14:34 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. This year for our midterm for OL 401, they had to recreate an image. We had Mario, Yoshi and a one-up, and they had to recreate it with Post-It Notes, but they had to answer sort of like domain questions to get access to the Post-it Notes. But then there was all these hidden problems, like if you put the Post-It Notes on the wall, they're going to fall. Right? So, there's this iterative problem solving. Well, do we do it on the floor? Well, the floor is dirty, so that's going to impact the stickiness of the Post-It Notes, right? So, it's just recognizing the level of complexity and nuance associated with leadership and problem solving on a team and also recognizing that it's not just the leader's job to highlight those problems, right? Anyone on the team can and should make that aware and that's how we're going to be stronger together.

00:15:23 Andrew Welsh

Hearing all of this, it's not surprising that you have over the last several years won a handful of teaching awards; “The Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence for Early Career Excellence” back in 2023, “The Leo Groake Award for Teaching Excellence in 2025,” and I guess earlier this year, “The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Award for Teaching Excellence.” So, tell us about, you know, what is your teaching philosophy?

00:15:49 Lisa Kuron

I think, first and foremost, I think fun is at the heart of my teaching. I have always thought learning was a really fun process. So, I try to bring that joy, that fun to it. What I also try to let guide me is I have this incredible opportunity as a leadership educator, as someone who is the leader of the classroom to practice what I preach. And so, when I'm wondering what should I do in the classroom, I can look to my leadership theories. I can look to that. And that plays, I think, into the last part of my philosophy, which is that leadership can and should be available to everyone. And so, my job then is to find those ways where I can help even the quietest leaders find more confidence in themselves. The people that don't conceptualize themselves as a leader, how can I create some space for them to believe in themselves? And those folks who can't stop leading and who really struggle to create space, how can I get them to step back and to be that follower that the person needs them to be? And so, I try to sort of leverage all of those things, having fun, being intentional, and meeting students where they are, just to create a learning environment where it's less about the performance and really about the learning together.

00:17:03 Andrew Welsh

So, you mentioned OL 141. So, that's, for our audience, that's the designation for the leadership program. And what is the actual course 141?

00:17:12 Lisa Kuron

So, OL 401 is “Leadership Skills, Practice and Application.”

00:17:16 Andrew Welsh

Okay. And are there other courses that you teach regularly?

00:17:19 Lisa Kuron

Yeah, I teach a first-year class. It's OL 140. That’s “Leadership Foundations.” And some of my CLC activities have found their way into those. I do some of the practice activities in that class. I also co-teach “Workplace Diversity” in the 21st century class. That's OL 251. And online I also help out with “Organizational leadership.” So that's OL 224.

00:17:44 Andrew Welsh

So, what would if a student is walking into your classroom, could be middle of the term, start of the term, close to the end of the term. What does a typical class look like? Or is there a typical class?

00:17:54 Lisa Kuron

I would say that there probably isn't a typical class. It sort of depends where we are in the semester. Of course, we have some classes that are more typical lecture because we need that foundational knowledge first in order to leverage that knowledge. But what I always try to do is bring a human component to it. So, you might see my dogs on the slides, you might see a silly check-in question to sort of start things off. I try to share as much as myself as I can with students. We watch a lot of videos or different comics and try to apply that to the leadership lessons because I really just try to bring that to life. I try very hard to not be the only person talking because I want students to be engaged. I want them to be part of that experience because that's, I think, the first step for them to sort of learn how to lead themselves. Right? To be an engaged person, to be part of this larger ecosystem that we're creating.

00:18:50 Andrew Welsh

As you talk about teaching, I'm thinking of more questions. So, you've taught for a while now. I've taught for a while. Have you noticed any, like, what I've called not individual changes in students, but kind of shifts in students as a whole that have things that have changed since you started teaching?

00:19:08 Lisa Kuron

I think I'm seeing a little bit more hesitation in students. Of course, we've got a lot of students who are very engaged, but I think there's some folks who hesitate a little bit, who are worried about how they might look to others or that they might be underperforming. I think I see that a little bit. So how do I help them gain their confidence. How do I help empower them.  Of course, we have some technological changes that impact things for better or for worse, but really just trying to adapt to those moments and finding new ways to engage with students. One thing I learned early on when I was doing my PhD, I relied on “Seinfeld” a lot or “Friends.” Those jokes don't work anymore. They don't get my references anymore [laughter]. I feel dated. Right? So, you know, trying to keep up with the times. Last year, one of my students, after we did an activity, they're like, “Tell them that they cooked!” And I was like, is that a good thing? I don't know.

00:20:10 Andrew Welsh

No, I've learned all. I know what “Unc” means and “Riz” and “Mid” if something is, my son has said many of the things I do as “Mid.” But it's funny you mentioned “Seinfeld” and “Friends” because I use those examples a lot. My students, you know, about what they're now, a first-year student was probably born in what, 2006, 2007? [laughs] Something like that. So, they, that's long after Nirvana was done. So, I've started watching Euphoria on HBO so I can catch up. That's a more current show, I think, so...

00:20:41 Lisa Kuron

Well, is that what they're watching?

00:20:42 Andrew Welsh

I don't know. I made a reference to it in one class and a handful of students just laughed politely. So, I don't know.

00:20:48 Tracy Woodford

Everything changes so fast now.

00:20:51 Lisa Kuron

I think we could probably draw on Heated Rivalry. That was a big one.

00:20:54 Andrew Welsh

Yes, and there's the new one “Off… campus.”

00:20:57 Lisa Kuron

“Off campus?”

00:20:57 Andrew Welsh

Yes.

00:20:58 Tracy Woodford

No, I haven't heard of that. It's hard to keep up.

00:21:01 Andrew Welsh

It is, and there's just too many platforms. So, you have worked on a project called “Instructor Capacity for Equity and Belonging in the Classroom.” Could you tell us a little bit more about that project?

00:21:14 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. Well, I hope that you can hear, you know, sort of through how I'm talking here, that relationships are a really big part of that, idea of belonging. But we know, of course, that historically not everyone has felt like they have a place in education. Not everyone had equal access to education. And just like I see sort of my role as a leader in the classroom, that project recognizes that instructors have an ability to craft that experience in the classroom. So, what are those points of intervention where they can help students feel like they belong, that they can feel seen? You know? Whether it's changes in the reading, language in the syllabus, different assessment structures, flexibility built in, things like that. And alongside of an interdisciplinary team, we've got folks from social work, from science, from data science as well, who are part of this team. We've drawn on the literature on anti-racism and decolonization and more. And we have this collection of about, we started with 186, you know, sort of different points of intervention for an instructor, working with a few folks that quickly grew to 250. And the idea is there are so many instructors who want to do this work, who want to create a more equitable classroom, who want to be more inclusive in their teaching, but they don't really know how. And again, we have 250 ways for you to do that. So, it began as sort of a training session where we talked about these ideas, where we helped them understand some of these levers that they have available to them. And then we asked them to change their syllabus and send us those to develop an action plan and really just, start getting some small wins towards this. We're not going to fix everything overnight, but what is in our control, what can we do to create a more, effective space in that area? And so, we've got some really great results on that. We're going to analyze some of those changes in the syllabus to see, you know, are folks focusing on areas that they're strongest in, on areas that they're weakest in, so that we can sort of coach them sort of to keep going. But what we've also done is we've just completed some data collection from the student's perspective. Of these 250-ish things, what's most important to you? And we had a diverse group of students sort of go through that so that we can say, you know, these might be the starting points. These might be the high impact things. And then you can sort of keep going from there because this work is constantly evolving, right?

00:23:43 Andrew Welsh

Yeah.

00:23:44 Lisa Kuron

So, a starting point, but certainly not a finishing point.

00:23:48 Tracy Woodford

Yeah.

00:23:49 Andrew Welsh

So, as you go through the data, what do you see as kind of next steps then for the project?

00:23:54 Lisa Kuron

I think trying to really make that 250 item list more manageable and thinking we've thought a lot about, should it start with a few items and then grow and sort of as people move along their equity journey, here's some more things that you can consider. Does it depend a little bit more on your discipline? So really just trying to disentangle that complex number of actions and figuring out what the students want, what the students need, and what are some of the barriers to implementing that stuff? Because it's hard to experiment with things that you've never done before. It's a lot easier to stay with what you've done which you think works, because it worked for you, we got here when we went through that, but what can we change about that environment? So, I think really just trying to nail down, what should we focus on without being too prescriptive and recognizing that of course it'll evolve.

00:24:55 Andrew Welsh

I think that's interesting you mentioned that kind of blind spot that we have when teaching is “This worked for me. I loved this. I didn't like that.” Even using examples from, well, everyone must have watched “Star Wars” when they were a kid or “Seinfeld” when they were older, and you know, adapting and slowly realizing that no, not everybody, that's not how everybody sees things.

00:25:16 Lisa Kuron

Exactly. And that aligns so nicely with Leadership, right? Where our answer to everything is it depends. So why am I trying to just do the same thing over and over? You know, where can I adapt as well?

00:25:26 Tracy Woodford

And including the students in that research as well, what do they, what's important to them?

00:25:32 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. Yeah. Because it's not Seinfeld anymore.

00:25:35 Tracy Woodford

It's not [laughter].

00:25:38 Andrew Welsh

Although I will point out Seinfeld is available on Netflix [laughter].

00:25:43 Tracy Woodford

And you're not getting paid to endorse that.

00:25:45 Andrew Welsh

No, not at all. Not at all. We don't have any endorsements at this point, so I don't think we're going to be getting one from Seinfeld [laughter]. But it's one of the tricky things, and there are a lot of tricky things to teaching but recognizing that things change. Because I don't know, at least I find as I get older, time goes by really fast and you forget how long ago something was.

00:26:05 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely, right? Even just thinking what the first-year students, what age they're coming in or when they were born, right? It's wild.

00:26:13 Tracy Woodford

And I have a question too. I have a son just finished his third year in university and him and his friends talk about what's happening with their degrees and their career with AI. So, and I'm just listening to you talk about your program. It sounds like there's a lot of skill based and that's what he and his friends are talking about, we need to have skills. We can't just use the knowledge, the theoretical base of what we're learning. We need skills. And so, in order to not be taken over by AI, do you talk about that in your class at all?

00:26:54 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. So, we talk about both AI and of course those skills, right? There was in 2025, the World Economic Forum put out a future of jobs report, and the top five skills were, I think things that we develop in Leadership; Resilience, Creative Problem Solving, Leadership and Social Influence, Adaptability, right? And so, one example of that in terms of AI is in the diversity class, we put in prompts in a platform like Crayon, which generates images.  And we'll put in different professions, nurses, doctors, professors. And the images generated for professors certainly don't look like me, right? And so, we use that as a tool to help students like if this is the answers that it's getting, but this doesn't look like most of your professors, how much can we trust them, right? And really sort of reflect on that. But also challenge them that when you're in a leadership situation, you're not going to be like, one second, let me type all of this information into AI and see what it tells me. You actually have a computer in your brain that is capable of these calculations. So, trust in your own self, right? And maybe that goes back to what we were saying that some students are hesitating a little bit, hesitating to trust in themselves when they have this tool that they think they can trust in. But why not trust in yourself? Why not develop those skills for yourself so that you can be the one who's leading the way, who's leading yourself, rather than relying on external tools? Because all it takes is one power outage and what are we going to do then?

00:28:28 Tracy Woodford

Exactly. Yeah.

00:28:29 Andrew Welsh

I love that example with the images of professors. That's a good example. Sorry, I just had to have my brain going about things because, you know, the challenge, you know, as an instructor is how am I going to approach AI in the classroom and that's a good strategy.

00:28:44 Lisa Kuron

It is. Even the other day I was trying to see, I asked AI if it could do something and it said “Sure. So, then I tried to get it to do it, and it said, “Oh, I can't do that.” I said, “But you just told me that you could!” And then I asked it again. It was like, oh yeah, I could do that. So then, you know, putting that out there, how can we trust this person, this person, this thing? right? And that's clearly not giving us honest answers. And how do we develop that critical thinking in our own selves, right? So really encouraging them. If we can't get away from it, how can it be a tool, but not the ultimate answer? It is not the expert. We are the experts. We are trying to help you become the expert.

00:29:27 Andrew Welsh

I like that one, too. Yeah, I should be jotting all this.

00:29:31 Lisa Kuron

Well, I think we're recording, so [laughter].

00:29:36 Andrew Welsh

On a less serious note, you have two dogs. Tell us a little bit about your dogs.

00:29:42 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. I've got two dogs, Socks and Asty. Socks is a 13-year-old Beagle and Asty is a 5-year-old menace, AKA a retriever. They're so much fun. They bring me so much joy. They have made their way to the Branford campus a couple of times to see some things. And of course, they often find their way into my slides. I love to use them when we're talking about power, right? Because I think students often underestimate the power that they have. So, I remind them, the dogs have power over me. They influence me to do things all the time.

00:30:14 Andrew Welsh

I was going to say my dogs are the boss.

00:30:18 Lisa Kuron

Exactly, right? [laughter] And just that little sort of way to help it connect it back to them in a really fun way, because they love the dogs. I often get requests for more pictures of the dogs, please [laughter].

00:30:32 Andrew Welsh

It is true. My dogs dictate what time I get up at or I go. Anyways, that's fantastic. One feature of the podcast on, again, a less serious note is we always ask at the end of an interview if there's a dad joke or a joke that you use at the end of, in your class at any point to kind of, you know, lighten the mood. Do you have, I mean, anyone can tell a dad joke, not just dads. Do you have a joke or a...

00:30:59 Lisa Kuron

I don't have any sort of set jokes. I find I'm a lot less funny when I try to be scripted. So, I just kind of try to like meet the moment where it is. But the one thing that I've started doing, especially in my first-year classes, which connects back to the dogs, is because I got the retriever as a puppy. So, I started taking weekly pictures of her and I got pictures from week one to week 12. And that's how long a semester is. And so, as we start the semester and as we wrap up the semester, I show them the progression of the growth that they can physically see in the dog to remind them that this is the growth we're hoping to sort of inspire in you. But I also remind them that they didn't just see the growth in the retriever in Asty. You might not see it, but Socks grew a lot too in that moment. He learned how to be a big brother. He learned how to share his mom and dad with another living being [laughter]. He learned that he got more cookies now that she's here, right? And so, there's all of this growth that some will be visible, some might not be visible until later. But to lean into that, because a lot can change over 12 weeks if you're willing to embrace it.

00:32:08 Tracy Woodford

That's wonderful. I love that!

00:32:09 Andrew Welsh

It is. That's another good example.

00:32:11 Tracy Woodford

I know.

00:32:12 Lisa Kuron

Plus, it's just adorable, right?

00:32:15 Tracy Woodford

Yeah.

00:32:15 Andrew Welsh

Don't feel bad. When I'm funny, it's usually unintentional. So…

00:32:19 Lisa Kuron

Right?

00:32:19 Andrew Welsh

It wasn't planned [laughs].

00:32:21 Lisa Kuron

There was one week where I just couldn't get my Cs and my Ts and I don't know why we were talking about tuna, but I kept saying “Tan of Cuna” and I just couldn't say “Can of Tuna.” So, we just had to totally change what we were talking about. But I just laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously, right?

00:32:40 Andrew Welsh

No, it makes life a lot more fun when you don't.

00:32:43 Tracy Woodford

Well, and I think the students recognize you being more genuine that way too, right?

00:32:48 Lisa Kuron

Absolutely. And I hope that encourages them to be more genuine, more authentic with themselves, because I think that's where they're going to really find their power, their influence.

00:32:58 Tracy Woodford

I need to audit one of your classes one day.

00:33:01 Lisa Kuron

Oh, well, 401, you should take it. It's a joy of a time.

00:33:04 Andrew Welsh

To do the bomb defusal. That sounds fantastic. Well, thank you very much for coming in, Lisa. We really appreciate it. Did you have one more question, Tracy?

00:33:15 Tracy Woodford

I just think I just listening to you is so inspiring and I can see why you've won all these awards, and your students must just love taking your courses.

00:33:25 Lisa Kuron

Well, I love teaching them and I love learning alongside of the students. So, I think I'm very, very lucky to have fallen so luckily into this leadership area and that I get to do what I get to do.

00:33:35 Tracy Woodford

Yeah, well, Laurier, it's very fortunate to have you.

00:33:38 Lisa Kuron

Thank you so much.

00:33:39 Andrew Welsh

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

00:33:40 Tracy Woodford

Thank you for sharing your, your research and your teaching philosophies with us today. It was a great chat. Thanks.

00:33:49 Lisa Kuron

Thank you so much.

00:33:50 Andrew Welsh

And for everyone who's joined us for our 5th episode, thank you very much. If you're a new listener, we hope you enjoyed it. And for returning listeners, we're glad you came back. And we will be back as well in a few weeks with one more episode for season 1. But I'll leave it at that and wish everyone very well. Thank you.

00:34:08 Tracy Woodford

Thank you.

00:34:09 Lisa Kuron

Bye bye.

00:34:10 Tracy Woodford

Bye.

00:34:15 [Outro Music]

00:34:18 Andrew Welsh

Thank you so much for listening to the Research Unplugged podcast. This episode was made possible by the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University and produced by Andrew Welsh and Tracy Woodford. Original music provided by Kevin Byrne, Megan Shubrook, and Tracy Woodford. You can find out more about today's guest and the research in the show notes for this episode. Until next time, remember to unplug and stay connected.