Camille Mckayle [00:00:00]:
And whenever we get a chance, us mathematicians get a chance to go and talk to students or children and say, younger the better. About mathematics, it is almost never about addition and subtraction. It might be about shapes, or it might be about bubbles, or it might be about knots, or it might be about something. And at the end I go, but didn’t do any mathematics. And we go, you did. You just didn’t think it was mathematics. So I think mathematicians think about mathematics and creativity almost as one differently than other people who hear mathematics. Think about it.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:40]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:43]:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:45]:
This is the fueling creativity in education. Podcast.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:48]:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:55]:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:03]:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:15]:
So let’s begin.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:17]:
Today we welcome to the show dr. Camille McHale. Dr. McHale is a Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of the Virgin Islands. As provost, she led the development of UVI’s first PhD program in Creative Leadership for Innovation and Change, which graduated its first PhD recipients in 2018. Congratulations. She has also been instrumental in starting a creativity lab at UVI, which serves to train faculty, staff, and students in creative problem solving, as well as facilitate planning and visioning through a creative approach. Dr.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:55]:
McHale received her PhD in mathematics from Lehigh University. Additionally, she completed a Master’s Certificate in Creativity and Change leadership from Buffalo State’s College Center for Applied Imagination. Her current research interests are in the areas of creativity studies, creativity and leadership, HBCU leadership, Stem education, and Stem leadership. We have so much to talk about.

Camille Mckayle [00:02:20]:
Welcome to Camille. Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Cyndi Burnett [00:02:25]:
So let’s start with mathematics, because, Matt, I don’t think we’ve had anyone on the show talking about mathematics and creativity.

Matthew Worwood [00:02:32]:
No, we haven’t had anyone on the show. And we’re super excited to have you here, Camille, to talk about mathematics. But I’m going to completely go out on a tangent now and just quickly say that if there is anyone who does want to go onto the show and talk about mathematics, we need more people talking about this, Camille, because I bet you feel that this connection is not spoken about enough. It isn’t.

Camille Mckayle [00:02:55]:
And I think a lot of times when people hear mathematics, they assume definitely not creative. Of course, those of us in mathematics know that the more creative or the more we I think sometimes we call it elegant. Can you come up with an elegant solution? Not just any solution, so we know that we love creativity in mathematics. Almost like, wish I’d thought of that kind of creativity is what we love to see. And unfortunately, most people, when either their first introduction to mathematics or when they think about mathematics, it is, okay, can you learn your addition tables? Okay, now let’s get a little bit more creative and do multiplication today. And that’s really so not what it is. So whenever we get a chance, us mathematicians get a chance to go and talk to students or children and say, younger the better. About mathematics, it is almost never about addition and subtraction.

Camille Mckayle [00:04:01]:
It might be about shapes, or it might be about bubbles, or it might be about knots, or it might be about something. And at the end they go, but we didn’t do any mathematics. And we go, you did, you just didn’t think it was mathematics. So I think mathematicians think about mathematics and creativity almost as one differently than other people who hear mathematics. Think about it. Wow.

Cyndi Burnett [00:04:25]:
So do you think you’ve ended up going into creativity because you saw that connection beforehand, or did you come across creativity? I’m curious where you made that connection.

Camille Mckayle [00:04:36]:
I did not really see it beforehand, or actually, I wasn’t looking for it. Right. Because even for us, for me as a mathematician, I probably didn’t get that until later. I liked solving problems and coming up with the answer and then trying to get it to look like the answer in the back of the book. That was the fun part, if you remember if you’ve ever had one of those. Is this right? I don’t know. It doesn’t look the same. So let’s try and get there.

Camille Mckayle [00:05:04]:
That was probably when we thought about it as fun. Or can you do it a different way? But I think even thinking about number theory or thinking about the infinitude of primes, that they’re Netflixed primes. Well, how would you show that? And coming up with all these and then when you read about the great mathematicians and you think about how their minds think, that’s when you get really fascinated by mathematics, it is usually thinking about those people who are just thinking way outside and most of us aren’t there. But it’s really fascinating. I love to read. So the part of stumbling into creativity, it was just that I don’t even remember when it happened. Maybe I ran into someone, I think I met someone who happened to be in the Virgin Islands who was studying creativity. And then he was really good friends with someone who was a physics faculty member, and they got together and they would talk about creativity stuff and like, hey, our students should know about this.

Camille Mckayle [00:06:11]:
And from there, it started I don’t know how many years ago, and we started in science courses just because those of us who read about it and think about not just one answer or thinking about it another way, or look at things another way. Take it up and turn it around. It’s like every student should know this, especially your science students. And so that’s kind of how it started, those things, how it started, how it’s going, how other people think it’s going. But that was how it started.

Matthew Worwood [00:06:42]:
And did you just to carry on this connection, did you then go and study for Creativity and change leadership at Buffalo State, or did the Buffalo State program kind of continue on your journey, making that connection?

Camille Mckayle [00:06:57]:
I took a lot of these online courses, or read. So there was the creative thinking course, where the one that starts with, what are all the things you do with a toothbrush? Or something like that, like, oh, this is kind of fun. So again, for me, creativity was kind of an extension of the mathematics that I knew, which is puzzles, figuring out things, figuring out different ways to look at things. So for me, there was no difference between creativity and stuff that I like to do. Right. Then we started a PhD program at UVI. The University of Virgin Islands. Creativity and Creative Leadership for Innovation and Change.

Camille Mckayle [00:07:40]:
And we collaborated with Buffalo State. And so our students could take 18 credits at Buffalo State that is their master’s certificate, and use that towards their PhD as a track or as their we have different tracks. So they could do that, or they could do one in education or one in organizational leadership. So students were taking that, and I got a little jealous because I’ve been taking these creativity courses, and I want to know more, and I’ve been reading stuff, so I just signed up and I did it myself. I did not do the rest of the PhD, but I just wanted to know more. And so I took that, the whole 18 credit thing, as though I needed to take more classes. But it was fun. It was great.

Camille Mckayle [00:08:28]:
So I think it just started with little things, and then it was just an extension of the next thing. And then wanting to know, when people are studying this, what are they studying, or what does it mean, or why do some people think they’re not creative? And again, it comes from until you asked this question, I hadn’t really thought about it this way, but I think there are a lot of similarities with mathematics, because so many times, what do you do? Or what did you study? Mathematics. Oh, I’m so bad at mathematics. Why do people feel it? So they won’t ever say, I’m so bad at spelling, or I’m so bad at reading, but everyone wants to say, I can’t do and I think it’s the same thing with creativity, where so many people think, oh, well, I’m just not creative. And you go, Why do people think that we have brains, that we can train to do certain things? So why do you just automatically think it’s okay not to be so? I think it’s those kinds of questions that I was thinking about and wanting almost to empower others in the same way that I think when I teach mathematics, I want to empower others to know you don’t all have to be mathematicians, but you should never think you can’t do this. You can choose not to do it, but never think you can’t do this because it makes you feel like those people who do mathematics are some special breed of people, and you’re not, right? So, of course there’s a big M. Mathematicians like you have big C creativity, right? But all of us can get some part of it and do some part of it. And I think that’s a connection I make between the two and why I feel so strongly about the two, because too many people think they can’t do it because they think it’s this mystical thing that you’re born with.

Matthew Worwood [00:10:22]:
Wow, that is a very cool connection being made there, because Cindy and I, through our work with teachers, we regularly talk about our experiences where teachers come back and say, well, I’m not creative, typically because they’ve connected creativity to another domain, like the arts. But there you are highlighting another connection that I’m regularly guilty of saying, which is, I’m not good at math. And when you look at it from that mini C perspective and we could probably even talk a little bit about the work around growth mindset. But the fact of the matter is, right, you’re completely growth mindsets explored this concept, particularly with math, because I am guilty of saying I’m not good at math. And I would never say that again after this discussion. I feel terrible.

Camille Mckayle [00:11:06]:
Thank you. It’s funny you brought up growth mindset, though, because even before, or maybe around the same time that I was getting into this creativity bug, I picked up Carol Dweck’s book, right? Like, way back when, before I mean, now it’s on every poster, everywhere in every class. But this was maybe now I have to think. I think in terms of the age of my children because they were maybe in elementary school and now know way out of college and grad school. So it was that long ago, I think, when I checked it, it was probably the year that Dweck’s book was published that I picked it up. And again, I thought to myself, everybody should know this. So I kind of bought one for my children’s principal and said, you know, every teacher needs to read this book about growth mindset, right? And please don’t ever tell our children that they can’t do so. So I think for me, it’s all related.

Camille Mckayle [00:12:09]:
So, yes, I’m one of those Carol Dweck growth mindset fans as well.

Cyndi Burnett [00:12:16]:
As are we. So would you say that your students, the way you introduce creativity is with growth mindset, or is it something different? What is that mindset for creativity that you teach your students at UVI.

Camille Mckayle [00:12:28]:
So here at UVI, we actually created a particular course. So there are a couple ways in which we do it. So I’m going to talk about this one program that we created that we call Boost. And so with Boost, we looked at some of the data, and we note that the students who have a 2.5 or below are most likely to leave, right? So if you have above a 2.5, you’re going to stay, you’re going to graduate, et cetera. We said, let’s target those students and let’s give them some skills, right? And the skills that we chose to give them. And so we have this five week summer course that’s free to them, and then we will pay for their next course, right? So we’ll pay for their next college course if they do this. And the skills that we give to them is Creative Problem Solving. We go through this whole Growth Mindset curriculum, and then we do Entrepreneurial Mindset.

Camille Mckayle [00:13:30]:
So again, it’s never, well, you did poorly at this course, so let’s give you more of this. It’s more let’s take your brain in a completely different direction and let you know that there are things that you can get yourself to do just by thinking about things differently or by recognizing that you can gain these skills. So we do it together. And I think when we teach it, those who are teaching the Creative Problem Solving know about the growth Mindset. And the growth Mindset people know about CPS, so the students get it from all different directions. And one of the things that we have noticed is that the students who go through this program, their GPA in the upcoming semesters, are statistically significantly higher than those that don’t, right? So it does make a difference. Not because they’re not getting tested on CPS or Growth Mindset or entrepreneurship, but I think just because they have gained some self efficacy, especially creativity self efficacy, growth Mindset, knowing that you can. Knowing that and it’s not, oh, yes, you can, but understanding that you can, as opposed to just pull yourselves up by the bootstraps kind of you can.

Camille Mckayle [00:14:52]:
And I think that having it together might make a difference than taking each of those things separately. So it was an experiment that we did. We ran the data. We’ve been really pleased. It’s really hard to get students to come for five weeks during the summer if you’re not paying them and they could be working, but we get some students to do it.

Matthew Worwood [00:15:14]:
And just in case anyone’s got this question, the increase in GPA, was that just in math, or was that cumulative GPA?

Camille Mckayle [00:15:22]:
Cumulative. Because this was for all students. It wasn’t just math students and it wasn’t just science students. We got a grant to do it with science students, but then we got another grant to do it with other students. So we had students, regardless of major.

Matthew Worwood [00:15:38]:
In the program, everyone in the program. Were they the group that was below a 2.5 GPA at the start? Yes, they were. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it’s wonderful when you kind of go and develop some type of intervention. And I think the entrepreneurial ship was also important because I think in some ways, that’s very empowering as well. It’s about putting your destiny into your own hands, the connection you’ve made with the self efficacy, but being able to go and develop an intervention. It seems like your intervention was so centered about encouraging yourself to think creatively as well as have belief in yourself and your potential, but to see the impact, the long term impact, translate to an increase in GPA.

Matthew Worwood [00:16:22]:
Kudos to you and your team for developing that. That’s really amazing.

Camille Mckayle [00:16:26]:
It’s one of my favorite programs. I’m just hoping we can find a way to continue to fund it. But it is one that I think is innovative. But again, it just comes from the sense that we not wanting to privilege creativity, right? Not wanting to say, oh, only those people who take these funky courses at these funky institutions can do this creativity stuff. But to say creativity is something that we all can do, and you’re giving them a skill, this skill that comes out of advertising and comes out of, again, these people who are doing funky stuff, and you’re saying you can do this as an 18, 1925 year old. This is something that you can learn and do if you just have the tools.

Cyndi Burnett [00:17:23]:
So you’re seeing higher GPA. Are you also seeing higher retention rates?

Camille Mckayle [00:17:28]:
Yes, at the beginning, but we have to do more longitudinal study on that.

Cyndi Burnett [00:17:34]:
Okay, so how many years have you been doing it?

Camille Mckayle [00:17:37]:
Maybe four or five years.

Cyndi Burnett [00:17:39]:
Oh, that’s fantastic, man. I’m just thinking about universities in general right now and how many challenges they face with keeping students in school. And especially after the pandemic, I’m seeing a lot of students who either don’t want to go into the university setting, or they get in and they think, this isn’t for me. I just wonder, my curiosities piqued, if we had more courses like the one that you’ve just described, would that bring in more students and retain those students?

Camille Mckayle [00:18:08]:
I don’t know, because we also had to do this during the pandemic. Oh, wow.

Cyndi Burnett [00:18:15]:
It’s all online as well.

Camille Mckayle [00:18:17]:
Yes, we had to do it online. And that was a challenge because it’s different when you get students and you can take them out of an environment and put them all together. But during the pandemic, you’re still in your environment. You’re just here in front of a screen for a few hours, and then you go back and you don’t get to bounce off the other students. So we still got a lot of students do it, but you’re right, we have a lot more data to crunch.

Matthew Worwood [00:18:47]:
And to your point, Cindy, I mean, these kind of pre college programs that sometimes are offered to certain groups of students before they start college. They do show to be effective, but I can’t say that I’m really adverse in all of the different offerings of these programs. But this is the first program that I’ve heard of that’s kind of put creative problem solving, creativity, entrepreneurship, and growth mindset at the center of the experience. The programs I’ve typically seen or been part of are the ones where you’re kind of doing you’re kind of like general education courses or elective courses cohort based with a lot more support around you. But it sounds to me that you’re actually looking at developing almost like pre university skills and life skills to assist you as you transition from high school to university, which yeah, I think that’s fascinating. That could be something that’s that’s unique. I just don’t know. Sounds really great.

Camille Mckayle [00:19:43]:
Yeah, because what I was thinking is that for a lot of students, it’s not just the stuff in the classroom that’s an issue. Right. It’s just navigating college life and real life all at the same time and wanting to give them skills to make decisions without saying, we’re going to teach you decision making skills today.

Matthew Worwood [00:20:15]:
Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, Curiosity to Create.

Cyndi Burnett [00:20:23]:
Curiosity to Create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood [00:20:34]:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their Creative Thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:20:49]:
To learn more, check out Curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So, Camille, you’ve been a champion for creativity at UVI, and I know you’ve been working to get creativity to be part of the university culture. And honestly, I don’t know any other provost that are out there really championing creativity as part of the culture. So I would love to hear how you’re doing that and what it looks like and what challenges you faced in doing this.

Camille Mckayle [00:21:21]:
Okay, so at UVI, it was really serendipity, I guess, that the creativity is actually in our strategic plan, right? So it is greatness through innovation, and in one whole section, it talks about trying to get innovative ideas in the institution or include innovation in your courses. So it is throughout the plan where you see this. And so as provost, one of the things that I need to do is implement the plan. So I’m looking at the plan thinking, how do you implement this plan without actually having training, having there’s more than just saying, and now you have to go out there and be creative. And it helped to have gone through the Buffalo State program by this, as well as doing some other training and creativity CPS. So I have foresight certification as well. And what else? I’m just always, as I said, always trying to learn more. So we started training, or we started what we call this Creativity Igniters program.

Camille Mckayle [00:22:44]:
And so we said to each unit, get yourself an Igniter. It doesn’t have to be the leader, actually, probably shouldn’t be the leader, but someone who might be looking for something else to do, might be looking for something to engage with, someone who you know, is resourceful and leaders, and this person should come to training leaders. You have to stay for the first day. You don’t have to do the entire training unless you want to. And we talk about creativity and using creativity as you make decisions and why that’s important for leadership. And also the whole idea of get the more input you have, the more you can engage everyone, the more buy in you have, et cetera. So that’s for the leader to hear, et cetera. And then we take the Igniters and we train them.

Camille Mckayle [00:23:43]:
So we train them in creative problem solving. And one of the things that we say to the leaders is and you don’t have to use this all the time, but if there are times when you’re trying to do things or within your unit, you have an Igniter there who’s been trained in creative problem solving to help the unit do so. So that is what we did. The president was really supportive. He himself actually would call on our Creativity Lab, which we called ourselves. It’s really Provost and two other people, but the Creativity Lab to do sessions with him. So we had this building. He wanted it to be innovative, and he got everyone together, and we went through the whole CPS process with, what are all the things that would be in this building? And he used it.

Camille Mckayle [00:24:33]:
So I think the fact that the president actually used CPS and creativity in order to make some decisions about buildings in terms of there are things in that building that he would never have thought about. Right? So one of the crazy ideas that came up was we should have sleeping pods. I guess maybe they have that somewhere, maybe in Japan or something. And he said, okay, I wouldn’t have thought of that. All right, so we didn’t get sleeping pods, but we have a Zen room in the building, which came out of the fact that we wanted sleeping pods that were really expensive. We couldn’t get it. But how about a room where someone can just go in and turn the cameras on and have mood music and mood scents and relax? But apparently you have to really sign up for it because people would want to stay there all day. So because he saw the value, he used it, and I think other units did.

Camille Mckayle [00:25:29]:
But again, you can’t just ask people to be creative without giving them the tools. So we thought we would give them the tools. And we had enough people who had been through the PhD program and been through the Buffalo State Master’s Certificate on our staff to be able to facilitate as well as train. Wow.

Matthew Worwood [00:25:50]:
I love the idea of a Zen room. And I do want to just share with you that I did a project called Class of 2032, where we took a whole bunch of different people, teachers, students, parents through ideation workshops about what the future school experience might be like in the future. And I think the sleep pods came up 40, 50% of the time, and it was one of these things that you thought, it’s never going to happen. But what I love about it, and I’ve sometimes shared this idea of the wild and wacky ideas is you can always bring the ideas back. Okay. Within the constraints. We don’t have the financial means to deliver sleep pods, but you’ve gone and put together a Zen room. And I’ve limited my thinking because so many of our students want sleep pods.

Matthew Worwood [00:26:31]:
But now I’m actually going to take your idea back to my university, and I’m going to say, Where’s our Zen room? Yes, I think it’s an absolutely great idea, 100%. But I do have a question, and my question centers about the philosophy that you obviously have been working to install at the university. How much has that translated into the application process or even the awarding of scholarships? When you’re looking at kind of bringing students from high school into the university, have you found yourselves looking to identify students who are thinking creatively or perhaps showing creative potential and found ways of rewarding them? In some ways?

Camille Mckayle [00:27:14]:
So we haven’t yet. But that’s a good idea to have a few creativity scholarship, because then it kind of sets the tone or say, this is important. What we have done is, with our student leaders, we have given them special training in creativity. So our Student Government Association students, they might have leadership sessions where we do creativity training, and we also have them be part of creativity sessions. So we asked for all the students to say, what would you like UVI to look like? Three years. You graduated four years from now. And you said that was the best experience. What were some of the things? And so they participate in the creativity sessions, especially student leaders.

Camille Mckayle [00:28:13]:
But we haven’t yet flipped it to say, hey, let’s give something for those who show that creativity spark or at least push themselves to showing that. But that’s a good idea.

Matthew Worwood [00:28:28]:
Well, Camille, you’ve been sharing a whole bunch of really good ideas. And just so you know, I’m going to be taking this episode and sharing it with a few folks at the University of Connecticut, because what you’re doing is great. I mean, quite often, Sydney and I talk about it at a high school level to a certain extent. How can you kind of shift and develop a culture of creativity and innovation at your school in support of all of the other benchmarks that you hold yourself to? But here you are talking about it at a university level, and I’m finding it all very inspiring. So thank you.

Cyndi Burnett [00:29:00]:
So, Camille, it’s time for us to wrap up. Unfortunately, Matt, this half hour flew by.

Matthew Worwood [00:29:06]:
It did really flow by. And I hope I didn’t take us too far away from mathematics, because I know we wanted to talk a little bit about mathematics, and I also wanted.

Cyndi Burnett [00:29:14]:
To talk about Stem. But maybe sometime you can come back and join us again and talk more about some of the work you’ve done with the National Science Foundation, because I think that’s also really interesting. And we’ve had a lot of guests talk about Stem and steam and creativity, but not from the higher ed perspective. So that’s a hope that you’ll come back and visit us again.

Camille Mckayle [00:29:34]:
I sure will. Those are my passions. So anytime.

Cyndi Burnett [00:29:38]:
Excellent. So, Camille, to finish off, we end every episode with three tips you would provide to educators to bring creativity into their classrooms.

Camille Mckayle [00:29:48]:
First tip be brave. Be creative yourself. Right? So creativity isn’t just something that you teach, but something that you are and you be. And you can bring yourself as a creative being into the classroom. Another would be to give the students a chance to give a lot of ideas around a solution to a problem that might not have a single solution. And as we know, with creativity, no judgment, no discussion, just ideas. So giving the students a chance to really themselves practice creativity. And there are all these creativity attributes that many of us know about.

Camille Mckayle [00:30:36]:
And my favorite one is visualize it rich and colorfully. I love that one. If you can just in everything that you do, you visualize it rich and colorfully, but also ask your students to visualize it rich and colorfully, whatever it is. A solution to a math problem. How could that look differently? I think would go a little bit of changing the classroom, having students bring a different side of themselves into the classroom, and having you give yourself the freedom to be creative in the classroom. So those are my three.

Matthew Worwood [00:31:14]:
So that concludes this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. Now, we started off the show by talking a little bit about the connection with math and creativity, and I went off on a tangent, so we didn’t really have an opportunity to explore that further. So if you or another educator feels comfortable about speaking on that topic and exploring how you promote creativity through topics like math or Stem, we would love to hear from you. Questions@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com?

Cyndi Burnett [00:31:42]:
My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:31:44]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Warwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:31:48]:
This podcast was produced by Matthew Warwood and Cindy Burnett. The episode was sponsored by Curiosity to create.