UNews - Dr. Jennifer Mather

Petition seeks to expand research animal protections in U.S.

caroline.zentner — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 20:33:15 +0000

In the early 1990s, Canada was the frontrunner in developing official protections for invertebrates used in research, thanks in part to the work of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge professors like Dr. Jennifer Mather.

Back in 1991, Mather, a U of L psychology professor and octopus expert, Professor Emerita Gail Michener and Dr. Dan Johnson, Department of Geography & Environment, were involved with a committee through the Canadian Council on Animal Care, the national organization responsible for setting and maintaining standards for the ethical use and care of animals in science.

“The committee recommended that cephalopods be protected,” says Mather. “In 1991, cephalopods were protected for research in Canada and Canada was the first country in the world to do this.”

While Europe adopted similar protections in subsequent years, invertebrate animals used in research in the United States still have no protection. Katherine Meyer, a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, wants to change that through a recent petition that asks the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to include cephalopods — octopus, squid and cuttlefish — among the animals entitled to humane treatment by those involved in NIH-funded research.

Among the co-petitioners is Mather, who has published extensively on the intelligence of cephalopods. She co-edited the book Cephalopod Cognition (2014), has written about cephalopod care issues and is a co-editor of and contributing author to the book Invertebrate Welfare (2019).

“Intelligent invertebrates like octopuses are considered tissue in the United States,” says Mather. “Several universities in the U.S. have made cephalopods honorary vertebrates.

“Cephalopods are as smart as vertebrates, easily. We’re pretty sure they have pain and suffering and they know what’s happening when you do things to them.”

Keeping students first earns Dr. Jennifer Mather a Distinguished Teaching Award

caroline.zentner — Mon, 29 May 2017 17:17:03 +0000

For Dr. Jennifer Mather, being a great teacher is also about learning. She has dedicated herself to learning the craft of teaching since joining the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge as a psychology professor in 1985.

Her commitment to students has helped prepare them for lifelong learning and sent them into the world equipped to be responsible global citizens. For her contributions to education, the U of L is pleased and proud to present Mather with the Distinguished Teaching Award. She will receive the award at Spring Convocation, Ceremony I at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 1.

Dr. Jennifer Mather

When she began her teaching career, Mather adopted a student-centered, inquiry-based approach. She emphasizes students’ learning, encouraging them to think critically, apply their knowledge and take ownership of their learning. To facilitate this, she ensures her students have opportunities to learn by doing. Mather has partnered with a variety of organizations to give her students the chance to take what they’ve learned in the classroom into the larger world. As a result, she has supervised more than 160 applied or independent studies and 11 honours theses.

Over the years, she honed her teaching skills by becoming involved in the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and she has been part of the U of L’s Teaching Centre from its earliest days. Mather has researched teaching methods and strategies, presented at teaching and learning conferences and written articles for teaching-related publications. She willingly shares her findings and experience with her peers in the teaching community.

As an undergraduate, Mather studied biology and eventually moved to the psychology department at Brandeis ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in Massachusetts to work with a professor who studied the behaviour of octopuses. She went on to complete a doctorate in human sensory motor coordination and pursued a research fellowship in human sensory perception, all while continuing her animal work.

Apart from teaching psychology courses, Mather has continued to conduct research on octopuses, travelling to exotic locales to carry out studies. Given her knowledge of octopuses, she is frequently sought out for media comments.

The Distinguished Teaching Award was established in 1987 to recognize the importance of teaching to the philosophy and goals of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ.

U of L Students present to Age Friendly Lethbridge

caroline.zentner — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 21:13:11 +0000

Students in Dr. Jennifer Mather’s Psychology of Aging class got the opportunity to hone their presentation skills to the members of Age Friendly Lethbridge, formerly known as the Senior’s Community Forum.

The students who presented to Age Friendly Lethbridge include, from left to right, Julia Gramke, Riley Fuglsang, Andrew Switzer, Samantha Holmstrom, Sydney Forbes and Ryan Fukuda.

The forum’s membership includes local service organizations like the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Lethbridge Senior Citizens Organization, local government bodies such as the City of Lethbridge, and provincial government departments such as Service Alberta.

As a longtime member of the group, Mather is familiar with the needs of local seniors and the resources available to help them meet their needs. Having students present some of their class work to the group gave them a unique opportunity to share their findings with those who work with senior citizens.

The students looked at aging across various cultures, including Métis, Hutterite, Blackfoot, Inuit, Buddhist and Japanese. They reported finding similarities in some values, such as the importance of family and respect for elders, and disparities both between and within cultures.

Taking learning outside the classroom

caroline.zentner — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 17:15:13 +0000

Students enrolled in Dr. Jennifer Mather’s Psychology 4550 class took their learning outside the classroom with a unique project to understand the nature of community for people with schizophrenia.

“The purpose of the assignment was to get a better understanding of what it’s like to be a person with schizophrenia in the community and also to understand how other people, who have limited knowledge of schizophrenia, see schizophrenia,” says Krista Matthews, a student in the class and project leader.

The class designed the project and determined a plan of action. They first hosted a pizza lunch at the Schizophrenia Society of Alberta’s (SSA) Lethbridge offices. They met with several members of the society, including people with schizophrenia and family members, to ask them about their experiences in the community.

Students discuss their work to understand the nature of community for people with schizophrenia during their final presentation.

“It was an excellent opportunity for everyone. The clients here love talking to people and they like to reduce stigma. They were very candid in their responses,” says Megan Karg, branch program co-ordinator at SSA, Lethbridge branch. “The students had great questions and I think the conversation increased the understanding of mental illness in general.”

Matthews says the students came away with a fuller understanding of the lived experience of people with schizophrenia and what it’s like for family.

“Lethbridge seems to be a pretty good community for resources for people with schizophrenia,” she says. “We found out how the community has treated people with schizophrenia and how they can improve. Coming from the parents, we learned that it is difficult in the beginning when a family member is first diagnosed with schizophrenia because there isn’t a lot of information and there aren’t a lot of resources until you plug yourself in.”

Students then spoke to representatives of various community agencies. Some students talked to co-workers; others spoke to members of service organizations that provide transportation, housing and recreation for people with schizophrenia. Matthews spoke to a police officer.

“We found out that everyone needs to be educated on people with schizophrenia. We need to get rid of the stigma,” she says. “We need to start at the schools, junior high and high school, and educate students. School children are very understanding about kids with Down syndrome or a condition that’s more visible, but illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are invisible. People don’t understand and thus starts stigma.”

Media can foment stigma, too, depending on the way they portray mental illness in movies and television.

Matthews says the local crisis team is instrumental in caring for people with psychological issues but she also sees a need for advocacy.

Krista Matthews, at the front of the class, presented the results of the Psych 4550 community research project to Dr. Jennifer Mather, seated at right.

“We shouldn’t really need advocates, that’s the problem. We should have a health care system that sees the need instead of just brushing people off. I think the big education needs to start with emergency responders,” she says.

Even though the stigma has decreased over the years, Karg agrees that more education is needed. The SSA offers workshops in the community where clients talk about their illness and how it affects their life.

“It’s putting a face to a name and it’s very powerful,” says Karg.

As a learning exercise, Matthews says she and her classmates enjoyed the experience and were motivated to complete the project even though they weren’t graded on it.

Mather is a long-time proponent of having her students see for themselves how their learning in the classroom plays out in real life and the class project accomplished that goal.

“I have sponsored more than 100 Applied Study students and I am a firm believer in combining academic learning with real-world contact,” she says.

“With this project, we probably learned the most we have learned in class,” says Matthews. “We’ve had presentations throughout the semester but, in those, we’re just sitting and listening. In this project, there was active involvement where we actually got out and spoke to people and did personal research. I think you learn a lot more that way.”

Applied study takes learning beyond the classroom

caroline.zentner — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 18:01:20 +0000

As a way to implement theory gained in the classroom to a real world setting, an applied study gives students an experience that makes their learning come alive. Erin Davis, a third-year ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge student working on a Bachelor of Arts and Science in psychology and religion, has found the learning from an applied study so valuable she’s done it twice.

“It is an excellent opportunity to take what you’ve learned and apply it in real life. It’s definitely not the way to get out of the work of a class because it ends up being a lot of work,” says Davis. “I believe that what you gain is more enriched than just sitting in a classroom and I would definitely recommend it for students in their second year and beyond.”

“Many students say they learned more in their applied study course than in any other course they took at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ,” says Dr. Jennifer Mather, a psychology professor and Davis’s faculty supervisor.

An applied study gives students the chance to integrate what they’ve learned in the classroom in practical situations through paid or voluntary employment. Students have both a faculty and a workplace supervisor and work a minimum of 130 hours over 13 weeks. Applied studies courses are offered in all U of L faculties and departments. Students gain interpersonal and technical skills and develop more self-awareness.

“I am really interested in the psychology of religion and I decided to do the applied study with Dr. Jennifer Mather because it combined a cultural aspect with psychology. I looked at what it was like for people immigrating to Canada to experience a whole new culture and what kind of barriers they encountered,” says Davis.

Through Lethbridge Family Services - Immigration Services, Davis volunteered to work with a group of seniors who had been Bhutanese refugees. Some of the seniors Davis worked with have lived in Canada for about seven years while others had arrived more recently and were working on obtaining their Canadian citizenship. Davis estimates some of the seniors had been living in refugee camps in Nepal for up to 25 years before coming to Canada.

“My job was to do the co-ordination of a gardening project for the seniors. This allows them the opportunity to do something that’s very similar to what they did at home,” she says. “A lot of them were farmers on a large scale and if they weren’t farmers on a grand scale, they were definitely farming to live. Everybody gardens, that’s their source of food.”

An applied study course gave Erin Davis, wearing sunglasses in the front row, the opportunity to learn about the experiences of a group of Bhutanese seniors when they immigrated to Canada.

With some money for seeds and tools provided by Mather, the group maintained two garden spots, one at the U of L’s Campus Roots Community Garden and the other at Lethbridge College. Davis worked closely with a steering committee, consisting of six of the seniors, to plan the gardens, ensure the necessary tools were available and organize a work schedule.

“My final project was co-ordinating a garden festival on Sept. 28. We harvested everything in the garden and both food banks were present so the seniors got to hand over the goods to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and College food banks,” says Davis.

In addition to organizing the work of the garden, Davis was required to write two papers to fulfill the academic portion of the applied study, one looking at how seniors adapted to immigration and the other examining multiculturalism. By working alongside the seniors in the garden, Davis was able to glean some information about their experiences adjusting to a new culture.

“I’ll admit I learned a lot about gardening,” says Davis. “The seniors helped me to see firsthand what they were experiencing. Even though they had really limited English, I was able to hear a lot of stories about their emigration and the challenges that they face here.”

The seniors relayed their feelings of sadness, especially when they first arrived in Canada. They also said they experienced a sense of isolation. Coming from a culture where community is key, where everyone works together and people live in close proximity, their adjustment to a city like Lethbridge was challenging. Living farther apart from each other, needing to learn to use public transit and even knowing where they could meet all presented obstacles.

“Lethbridge Family Services (LFS) wanted to create programs for the seniors that allowed them opportunities to get out into the community and give back to the community,” she says. “One of the things the seniors stressed was that they wanted it to be an opportunity for them to give back to the community that had accepted them.”

Despite the difficulty of adjusting, Davis says the seniors who worked on the garden project seemed to build a sense of community and were happy to be involved. She found seniors have a more difficult time adjusting to a new culture in general, so the LFS project, along with English language classes and learning cafés, helped the seniors adapt.

The applied study gave Davis plenty of food for thought about multiculturalism, too. While multiculturalism, where diverse cultures co-exist peaceably, may be ideal in theory the reality is different.

“The biggest question I have coming out of this whole project is where do we draw the line where people who immigrate to Canada stay connected with their cultural heritage and where do they integrate because they need to be able to live and adapt in the new culture?” she says. “I found myself, at times, really questioning what was appropriate for us to be telling them to change in order to make things better for them here and the kinds of things that needed to be kept intact.”

UNews - Dr. Jennifer Mather

Petition seeks to expand research animal protections in U.S.

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Keeping students first earns Dr. Jennifer Mather a Distinguished Teaching Award

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Taking learning outside the classroom

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Applied study takes learning beyond the classroom

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