Season 1 Episode 10 - Dr. Mays Imad | Making ourselves whole
Welcome to knowledge unbound. This is episode 10. We are I'm I'm kinda sad, man. It's well, I'm not sad. I'm happy that we got to 10 episodes.
Bryan Dewsbury:I'm happy that you stay with us for this journey. Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the RIOS Institute for Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM Education. We are generously funded by the William and Flora Shewlett Foundation, my producer, the forever Mr. Segef Amasai, computer engineering major class of 2025. Thanks for being with me on this journey and I really hope listeners enjoyed every single episode, every single conversation that we've had so far.
Bryan Dewsbury:I can't think of a more appropriate way to end our first season by the discussion we're about to have. Doctor. Mazi Mad is an associate professor at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut. We've been friends for several years and trust me when I tell you, you know the one hour we spend together today can't do justice to the complexity and the depth of how she thinks. So to that extent, just hope that what we share today just provides a window into the way she writes, way she sees the world and the way she tries to help people think about unique ways of transformation and I'll just leave it there.
Bryan Dewsbury:I hope you enjoy the conversation. So, Mais, welcome to Knowledge Unbound.
Dr. Mays Imad:Thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for that heartfelt introduction.
Bryan Dewsbury:Well, you well, people have to know that you actually heard the introduction. Right? That's how you know it's hard. Well, because a lot of the episodes, I tend to record the intro and outro separate.
Dr. Mays Imad:So I see.
Bryan Dewsbury:So you actually got to witness. Yeah. Yeah. But but I I do mean every word I say.
Dr. Mays Imad:Thank you.
Bryan Dewsbury:Where to start with you, man? Where where where to start? Because I want you to do an introduction, and maybe that's where to start. Right? I want you to do an introduction, but I think your journey is so unique.
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean, we could pick one part of it and spend the whole hour. Right? But maybe let's just start. If if somebody walked up to you you in the street and said, you look interesting. What do you do?
Bryan Dewsbury:What would you tell them?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. Wow. I would I don't know where I would start.
Bryan Dewsbury:You'd say might run, right?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. Well, I am If we're gonna get philosophical, I probably would say I am in the business of Or in the I'm trying to remember what it means to be whole. And to do so, I can't do that alone. And so I've been blessed to be able to do that with others, students and colleagues such as yourself. Because I come to this work in a way very heartbroken.
Dr. Mays Imad:As you know, and maybe some of our listeners know that I've been interested, just from an academic, but just from a human perspective in trauma and what trauma does to us, to our humanity. And it shatters assumptions we have about ourselves and the world. And in the classroom is where I began to see possibilities for healing. Yeah, so I've Did tested
Bryan Dewsbury:as you see when you were a student in a classroom or when you were an instructor? In whatever capacity.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah, I mean, saw it, no, loved being a student and also struggled being a student because now I see that the system is still very much separate, separates us from knowledge, separate us from the world, separate us from each other. But I was excited about being a student because I wanted to learn, I wanted to know, I wanted to create and co create. It was as an instructor when I began to see those possibilities for Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:So let me dig into that statement, wanting to be whole. Because I imagine, tell me if I'm wrong about this, I imagine that when you were a first year student at University of Michigan Dearborn, am I correct?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. You didn't go to your dorm and say, or wherever you lived and said, I'm trying to make myself whole. Right? I Correct. And even in my own, like, following of your writings and of your work, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Over time, you're able to give language to something that's in you. Yeah. I'm curious as to when were you able to find that language and was there anything that gave you the freedom or the avenue to ascribe that vernacular to what you were feeling?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah, so that's a really important question because oftentimes when we are fragmented, we don't have the language. We don't have the language to then help us even ask the question of how we might put the pieces back together.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right, right.
Dr. Mays Imad:And in fact, Adrian Rich talks about, in those situation describing the classroom, it feels like a psychic disequilibrium. So I didn't have the language. What I did have is the language of what's wrong with me. Yes, what's wrong with me was And it was really in the classroom with my students and this mirroring and bearing witness where I began to see that I had to do better. And I don't mean do better by doing more active learning, but to do better by those by the humanity of the people that I was working within my own humanity, it would take years later before I could say,
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. That's what you were really doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:What was When you was undergraduate, what was your major?
Dr. Mays Imad:I majored in philosophy.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. Okay. Yes, I majored in philosophy. I loved to pontificate. I loved You know, I thought science was boring.
Dr. Mays Imad:Was you. Isn't that? I want my students But I just thought, like, I wanted to discover. I mean, I didn't have that language, but I wanted to I think the first time I thought I did take science classes. I minored in chemistry and I had a professor, Mark DeCamp, an organic chemistry professor that I ended up doing research with and we were inventor discovering new synthesizing new compounds.
Dr. Mays Imad:And the idea of going where there was no answer was just so fascinating and it was so much easier in philosophy. But when I began to see that, no, this is what science is about, then I thought, all right, let me give science a chance.
Bryan Dewsbury:So let's talk a little bit about the pieces that you're trying to make whole. Mhmm. Take us to to to Yaumi's. I believe you grew up in Baghdad?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. I grew up in Baghdad, Iraq.
Bryan Dewsbury:Tell us about that journey and to the extent you're comfortable, what happened along the way that then put you in a state where you needed to recover something?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. So I grew up in Baghdad. Baghdad is beautiful. I hope one day I could take you there. And people are There's a lot of satire and this ability to They endure and endure and endure and they do that with anger and humor and self deprecation.
Dr. Mays Imad:And it's a very There's melancholy and there is melody in that culture and a community and chaos, a beautiful So I grew up in a family that very much education was central. And we also grew up during a time of dictatorship and education was central. My parents were always like it was not even an option. And in education, this losing myself in knowledge and then also finding myself in knowledge. So I loved language and experiments and math.
Dr. Mays Imad:And it was again going to places of unknown. And it was also a country where there were lots of wars, the Iraq Iran war. And the Iraq Iran war, we didn't feel a lot. I mean, it was a war. We had, you know, my beloved uncle was a prisoner of war, so it affected.
Dr. Mays Imad:It affected our family. It affected every family. And then the And then the desert storm, that war was really, I would say this is when the rupture began. The rupture in some assumptions I held about humanity. And there is a particular incident that I just recently began to talk about it because for a long time I tried to understand it from a linearly.
Dr. Mays Imad:Why would I it was during the war, and it was during the bombing, and bombs were falling on us. Windows shattered. And my father had
Bryan Dewsbury:Did you have to go to bomb, I'm assuming,
Dr. Mays Imad:bomb Yeah. We actually, the one night we were instructed to go to bomb shelters, that night my grandfather said, No one goes. I mean, he was very He had his own way and he said, We die alone. We die together, in fact. And because in the bomb shelter, they're gonna separate the men from the women and children.
Dr. Mays Imad:And my grandfather said, No, we die in our home and we die together. And we didn't. And the shelter we were going to go to, Al Amriya Shelter ended up being bombed that night and I lost classmates. And so there was that. There was that bombing that
Bryan Dewsbury:So you was were supposed to be there?
Dr. Mays Imad:We were supposed to be there. Yes. Al Amriya was devastating. So there was that. But that one night where the bombs were falling, windows were shattered, this is it, this is the night we're gonna go, I remember whispering to myself, Why would they do this to us?
Dr. Mays Imad:And I was like a middle school child, didn't really understand, but somehow So over the years I would say, Why would I ask myself this question? I didn't know any Americans. Why would I say, Why would they do this to us? But over the years, I learned that my innocent, naive, you know, had like some basic understanding in humanity and connection that didn't matter where Americans were, that they that we were their fellow human beings and how could they do this to us.
Bryan Dewsbury:But it almost to to I know you I wanna let you I'm gonna let you continue, but I I just I'm sticking on the the they. Right? It's one word, but it it encompasses a whole lot of people as a monolith, which I know you didn't intend. Yeah. But it almost feels as though as the years went by, it was your attempt to kind of unpack that monolith.
Bryan Dewsbury:It's like, well, who's the they? The they are humans. That that I think we can agree on as a as a monolith in and of itself. But but sort of beyond that, right, not everybody's making the decision to
Dr. Mays Imad:to rule.
Bryan Dewsbury:Not everybody is doing the act of dropping a bomb. Not everyone's agreeing or disagreeing. And so trying to figure out where everyone is in that weird mosaic
Dr. Mays Imad:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Is a challenge. Right?
Dr. Mays Imad:It's a challenge. And when you are, again, a child and you ask that question, our mind, my mind then created that narrative in us, the victims, and we were, and then in them, everybody else. And even though I was talking about Americans, it was complicated. Where was the world? Why was the world silent?
Dr. Mays Imad:Why was And so that was the beginning of the rupture. And then of course the rupture of being a refugee and being stripped from your homeland and then ironically coming to the country that made you a refugee.
Bryan Dewsbury:What year did you come?
Dr. Mays Imad:I came in 1993 with my parents. And throughout all of this, I always fell back on education. That education was gonna be the answer. Education's gonna heal me. Education is going to I buried myself in education.
Dr. Mays Imad:And then I would come to The United States and education here was very different. Very different, very separate. There is this subject and this subject does nothing with this subject and then the separation of the teacher and the student.
Bryan Dewsbury:What was it like in back then?
Dr. Mays Imad:It was more, I would say it was more holistic. So our I mean, I remember my chemistry teacher, just dropping poetry in the classroom. And my Arabic teacher, and I've written about her, my composition, she would say things and make jokes about science.
Bryan Dewsbury:And
Dr. Mays Imad:so there was more. And of course, I'm 45 right now. So there is this tendency to probably romanticize some of that childhood of mine. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I feel like the recognition of the education structure was different, probably more or less immediate, right, once you were a student. Then, you know so you go through UMD at one, and apparently, you like the science classes because you then decided to do a doctorate. Right? I guess I can look at philosophy and chemistry and say it makes sense to me, but I feel there's more that went into that decision than just, well, these things might lead to neuroscience, topically speaking.
Dr. Mays Imad:So, I took philosophy of science, I took philosophy of consciousness, and it was in my philosophy of consciousness where I began to see I wanted more of what is going on in the brain. So I remember looking in the course catalog to see who I could speak to. And there was a professor, Richard Norman, in the biology department who taught neurobiology. And I sent him an email, I believe. And I said, Can I meet with you?
Dr. Mays Imad:Can you teach me about the brain? He wrote back, it was a beautiful meeting. We started talking about He started teaching me about the brain and he said, Why don't we read a book together? And we read a book, The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Di Macio. Just a really Antonio Di Macio has in a way guided my work years later because of that incident.
Dr. Mays Imad:And so the more I worked with Richard Norman, I ended up taking a course with him, the more I thought, I want to learn more about the brain at the basic, the most basic levels, and then go back to philosophy. Mhmm. It didn't work out that way. I I you know?
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean, I think it kinda did because you you sort of philosophize now in the way you write, in the way you think about things.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. So let's fast forward a little bit because one of the things I think most people know about your work is is how you think about trauma, how you how you well, I guess, first acknowledge that it exists, not just in cases like yourself, but also in the students that we teach. Not everybody like you is a refugee or has trauma in that specific way, but it exists in some kind of spectrum. From a teaching and learning perspective, how would you summarize what you've seen? What you think our responsibilities are to students?
Bryan Dewsbury:And then I'll leave the biggie for last. What kind of system we need to set up so that how people's mental health and people's the mental environment is taken care of so they can be their best selves?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. So it is it is clear from national and international data that the young people are not all right. And I would say, I mean, we are not all right. Because of the climate change, because of the political divisiveness, because of the poverty, because of we are social creatures and we depend on others and connections and meaning for our survivability. And so the data is very solid.
Dr. Mays Imad:It was solid before the pandemic, in light of the pandemic. And we are in the business of teaching and learning. And learning, as we know you're a biologist, is biological process. Learning, forming synapses, strengthening synapses. And so I began, I mean, part of it is I began to see that how much of my teaching practices are not following the science of learning.
Dr. Mays Imad:And the cramming, and the content, and the relationships, all of that. So I think if we want to, as we claim, to improve students' learning and their success and their thriving, then we have to pay attention to the factors that are impacting those things. And this includes psychological factors, trauma, intergenerational trauma, and so on. So I began to really, it was working with students where I began to You know, was afraid to ask the question as boldly as I'm going to right now, but it was in the back of my mind, What harm am I causing through my teaching? And when, for example, when students will say, Must be me.
Dr. Mays Imad:I'm just dumb. I'm this. All this self deficit. And I was recognizing that I am contributing to this. It really became increasingly difficult for me to just perpetuate a system I grew up in.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yes, I survived it. But just I thought there has to be another way. There has to be another way. And I would come across bell Hooks as The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility. And I was like, What the heck does that mean?
Dr. Mays Imad:Right? Like, Which classroom? But it was almost like it was in my face, in my heart, and it was like, How do I make that possible? Possibilities for healing, possibilities for growth. And really was like beckoning me to that line from her teaching to transgress to like go deeper, go deeper.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:So tell me a bit more about that because I I feel like somebody listening. Mhmm. Right? And I definitely don't want to get in get you into the, like, do these five things and everything in the low key kind of language. But but somebody may agree with you
Dr. Mays Imad:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:And and then ask themselves a question. Okay. Well, what then what then does it mean to acknowledge that a trauma exists? Right? Because I can I can listen through this podcast?
Bryan Dewsbury:I can listen to May's talk and say, oh, yeah. I now agree that trauma exists. Okay. Now what's my next step? Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? If I'm an instructor of intro physics. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I don't wanna decouple that from the bigger message that you're trying to communicate.
Bryan Dewsbury:But I also perhaps want people to feel like they they have a little bit of power to take a next step.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah, they definitely
Bryan Dewsbury:So even if you have to pick one or two, Yeah. You
Dr. Mays Imad:I mean, they definitely have power. We all have power. And I think when you look at the, trauma theories and the literature and healing and all of that, it is We're not trying to get rid of trauma. We're trying to acknowledge it and then foster a space where people feel empowered and safe and connected. Any instructor can do that.
Dr. Mays Imad:A physics instructor, a philosophy instructor, an art history instructor. And so I think it begins with this intention that we can do better and I wanna do better. And then taking baby steps, what does this mean?
Bryan Dewsbury:What does better look like?
Dr. Mays Imad:What does better look like? So for instance, you know that I have been kind of playing with and dancing with the notion of sanctuary. And while I continue to kind of imagine and reimagine, whenever I come to I reach a place where I think, well, a sanctuary should have an element of X, then I ask myself, what can I do to provide that element for my students?
Bryan Dewsbury:Right, okay.
Dr. Mays Imad:So for instance, so right now, speaking of sanctuary, in the Semitic languages, including Arabic, you could trace every letter to a three letter Every word to a three letter verb. And the word for sanctuary, you trace it back to forbid. So the word for sanctuary is very closely to the word for the sacred mosque. And look deeper and what does the sanctuary have to do with to forbid or to prohibit? It is to prohibit harming others and And so then the more I think about it, I go back to what kind of harm am I doing with my and what is the opposite of that?
Dr. Mays Imad:It's not just do no harm.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right, right, right.
Dr. Mays Imad:It's not
Bryan Dewsbury:just Well, I guess that's where the empowerment comes from, right? And and this is maybe back to the whole, like, acknowledgment point. My take on how you restated that. Right? So you acknowledge it.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yes. But what I'm getting from your sanctuary analogy, alright, this this is Maze's journey and how you've unpacked what do know how means in terms of, okay, what do I do? What what good do I do? But maybe the challenge to the instructor is, well, once you've done the acknowledgement, can you define a vision for what your classroom can look like? Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:What is it what does that bell hooks' radical challenge? You know, how does that unfold in your interfaces class? Like if you had to take all the, you know, the archaic structures out, like, know, it's three credits, it's fifteen weeks, you know, there's requirements. I don't wanna poo poo everything. But if deep down you know there's more that that this experience can be and you can go deeper, are you brave to envision what that is like and then sort of work towards it in the same way you may as working towards the sanctuary?
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. I know it's hard, right? Very hard.
Dr. Mays Imad:And I think it requires that we do our own work. So one of the things that I say, and this every faculty could do it, whether you have the resources, you don't have the I really think I think let's not assume that our students know we care about them. We tell them, we spell it out, we repeat it because it's very easy when we are under the influence of strong negative emotions and we feel cynical and to say, Well, why does he care about me? Why should he care about me? I think But it requires work because there are days when we instructors, educators, we wake up and we feel We don't feel connection to our own self.
Dr. Mays Imad:How am I gonna And show
Bryan Dewsbury:we are also not in a system that allows us to acknowledge that sometimes.
Dr. Mays Imad:Right. How am I gonna show up and tell people you matter, you're brilliant, you And so it really takes, like I think more than ever, takes developing some kind of personal practice to help us reground, reconnect, re yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Well, it makes me think back to your point about you know, instructing a classroom and, you know, you use yourself as the example of you felt you were doing harm. Right? And and where I wanna slightly push back on that just a little bit is I I worry that this system sets us up in this into this false dichotomy where, okay, we we progressive enough to to know that it's not the student. You don't put the blame on the students.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? And and and I I I acknowledge as an instructor, I am going to show this a lot of responsibility for what happens. But also, the system needs to have an environment that allows the instructors to be them their best selves. Right? And so in order for instructor a to do no harm and to then go beyond that and really get towards that sanctuary level, right, what are the things the system needs to do to allow them to do that that interrogation, that digging, that journey, that that bravery we're asking of them.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. The message that's communicated to them is that it's just up to you to figure it out, you know, if we don't couple that with, and here's the ways we are going to support you to go on that journey.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. You're absolutely correct. I mean, I'm thinking of an adjunct faculty teaches they have to follow a curriculum. And even though they know that, you know, giving a 60 multiple choice exam question that's high stake, that is the AC, American Chemical Society, ACS, is not the best way to assess, they have to, right? And so I recognize that I have certain privilege when I say it's up to the instructor, because sometimes the instructors themselves don't have that support.
Dr. Mays Imad:So in that sense then what I say is we really, those of us in positions where we could advocate, we have to advocate, agitate the system. And what this means is I'm not an adjunct faculty at the moment. It's important. It's a moral imperative that any chance I have, any platform I have, that I say, How are we gonna support our adjunct faculty? How are we gonna empower them to have more autonomy?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that could be its own rabbit hole.
Dr. Mays Imad:Right. Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean, you already cracked the door, but I'll I'll sidestep it for a second. I will come back to it. But I wanna I wanna talk a little bit I want you to help me with something here. Let's talk about COVID for a second.
Dr. Mays Imad:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? For most people, maybe not probably everybody. Right? You've never lived through something like this.
Dr. Mays Imad:Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Especially if you were born and raised in The US or the West. Even when I think back to COVID, the real height of it, no vaccines yet, not really sure what's going to happen, how scared you need to be. Then as things, I dare say, improved a little bit with vaccines and better procedures, a better understanding of what you're dealing with, I was actually kind of heartened to see a lot of articles come out where people seem to start to understand this very toxic relationship we have at work in The US context in particular. Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:That's the glorification of burnout, the the the elevation of busyness and working through weekend and making family sacrifices. I mean, I I don't wanna go to the next extreme and say none of this has to happen. I understand productivity is a thing, but but the the balance was off for a long time. Yes. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And maybe it's because people were stuck at home. It it it started to feel I'm saying this unscientifically, but it started to feel like people were finally starting to to resee that, see that imbalance for what it was. And making some brave decisions like leaving work, quiet, quitting, whatever you call it, you know, being willing to have a less household income in order for your mental health to be in a better place. And just specific to higher ed, I actually had a little bit of hope that we had an opportunity to finally recognize and see a different way to care and love for students and each other and our jobs, know. See that humanistic side of our craft.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I've I've been disappointed in in perhaps the way I've seen the pendulum swing gone back. Not not everybody. Right? Not everybody. And and it would be remiss of me to not point that out.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? But I I guess what I'm asking you as somebody who's more steeped in this work than I am, why don't you think there was more learning? There wasn't more learning from that. And is there a challenge then to people like yourself and myself and those of us who practice the way we practice to make this argument either more forcefully or more clearly or in a different way? I know I'll give you a lot, but Right.
Dr. Mays Imad:Right. So as you know, these things are learned behavior. Work addiction, perfectionism, those are all learned behavior. And we had moments of awakening, like, I can't do this. I don't want to do this.
Dr. Mays Imad:And unlearning is not easy. It takes time, persistence, community. And so just when we started unlearning and saying, No, there has to be another way, then came that push to go back to normal, get the numbers back, students, enrollment, revenue, all of these things. And we fall back on the routines that we were used to even when we know it was not healthy, is not healthy. So of course it's very frustrating.
Dr. Mays Imad:It's very frustrating because here we are and many people were saying like, Okay, the silver lining of the pandemic is that we see that we can't sustain it. We can't expect this of students or ourselves. And it's frustrating to see that we're going back. We're going back to You know, I mean, people are going back to the tyranny of content, the high stake exams, the publish or perish. It is.
Dr. Mays Imad:So it's gonna require, well, A, that we have some kind of community to help this group of faculty that say, No, there's gotta be another way to support each other. And to continue, I think, to agitate. I really don't think I mean, this is not coming from a pessimist, but I think we've been neglected the humanity of the system for so long that having these one or two or three or five workshops is not just going to magically transform it. I think what we could do is start to agitate and plant seeds so the next generation and the following generation can maybe see the fruit. Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm. It's almost hard to even imagine a system where it's in it fully. Yeah. What are you doing for yourself to make yourself whole?
Dr. Mays Imad:To make myself whole.
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean, that's what you started with. Right? So I wanna Yeah.
Dr. Mays Imad:I think educating myself is one. So learning more about what is fragmentation, what is all of this, but also turning to areas that have been neglected for so long. So, you know, the overwhelming trauma theory is embedded in the global North. And whether it's mental health or trauma or healing, there is so much incredible, expansive things we could learn from the global South, from indigenous practices. And so, at the moment I can't go back to Iraq and be in that community, but I have been going to West Africa, to East Africa, to try to immerse and learn from others other ways.
Dr. Mays Imad:Other ways of being, other ways of coexisting, other ways of not just existing but flourishing. And I could tell you, it all has to do with meaning making and connection and community. And this, I go back you know, going where there are no necessarily not necessarily answers, but that's okay, you know, being in that liminal. So I do that, trying to slow down, really slow down,
Bryan Dewsbury:Says the person who's going to Africa in a week or
Dr. Mays Imad:something. Yes. Yeah. Let
Bryan Dewsbury:me ask you this. Because I know you said you immigrated. You went directly to Michigan?
Dr. Mays Imad:To Michigan.
Bryan Dewsbury:The state of Michigan. Right? Yeah. Where in Michigan?
Dr. Mays Imad:So first we lived in the suburbs of Michigan and then I
Bryan Dewsbury:Suburbs of Detroit. Detroit. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mays Imad:And then I lived in Detroit.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Mays Imad:And that was a really powerful experience for Because in Detroit is when I began, I would take lots of walks. That's when I began to see the similarities yeah, the similarities of oppressive systems. Because I remember coming to some areas where it was jolting. You would think that you are in a war zone, but this is in The United States Of America. And I began to And I would talk to people on the street really.
Dr. Mays Imad:I began to see how interconnected everything is. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. So if I have my math correct, you would have been in Detroit or the areas of Detroit when the city went bankrupt, right?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yes. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Obviously, not the same as a desert wall. Never try to make that comparison. But to the extent that they sort of collected from around a city and had to cut its services and Mhmm. Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know, leadership changes and stuff like that. I just I just wondered as a young woman growing up at that time, what was it like kind of being witness to that?
Dr. Mays Imad:Feeling, it has to do with knowing you're not in good hands, or again, the idea of feeling abandoned. I mean, I was okay. My family was okay. But I also had people that I met on the corners of the streets, people that I did one of my first rotations was in a psych ward, and people that I got to know there who were not okay, who were affected. And the fragility of how And it was really hard.
Dr. Mays Imad:I've had a few moments in my life where I pause and I think, Oh my goodness, we're so abandoned. We're so on our own. And it's hard. It's really Your nervous system doesn't wanna accept it but it's the reality and yeah. That's how it felt.
Dr. Mays Imad:It felt that way. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:If you had to, let's take the glass half full. Yeah. Or maybe we didn't look into the beautiful crystal ball approach here. If you had to describe what a classroom, a campus, an educational experience is will will look like, sorry, that that embodies the best of what you think humanity can do and can be. What does that vision look like for you?
Bryan Dewsbury:Do people understand trauma, they understand it's more than just not doing harm. It's about going deeper and being radical in that space. I I I know I'm just not giving you a ton of time. Yeah. But I would love to just hear you pontificate, to use on your own what that vision looks like for you.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. You know, it would be a place where It would be a place of non duality. It would be a place of complexity where we could hold fear and joy at the same time.
Bryan Dewsbury:Or
Dr. Mays Imad:sorrow and joy at the same time. And mean, what makes us human, it's so complex and part of it is to hold contradictions and be okay and to go into the unknown and the mystery and the beauty and also this trembling of not knowing. So I had a teacher that described this He said, When you have a child and you take the child, you're playing with the child and you throw them up into the ear, And there is this moment of, you know, it takes their breath away. And then they fall back and you have them. In a way, that's the classroom.
Dr. Mays Imad:Like this falling back but the student know or you know you got them. We got each other. This is what I think of a sanctuary classroom.
Bryan Dewsbury:But what's beautiful about that, to me at least, is actually not the falling back. It's the point when they're up in the air. Yeah. Because that's the discomfort. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:That's the willingness to go into the unknown and trust Yeah. That there's safety on the other end. Yeah. Yeah. But in the middle, in in between, between the beginning of the journey and the safety Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:It's it's potentially even a lot of pain even. A lot of darkness. A lot of uncertainty. A lot of Yeah. But also a lot of discovery.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah.
Dr. Mays Imad:A lot of discovery. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember, I mean, I had in my undergrad, I did experience some of that. I remember taking a class, a philosophy class, and I was so afraid that the class was very challenging.
Dr. Mays Imad:It was asked about existence and God and this and that. And I would go every night, I would pray. I put my head on the ground. I pray and say, please God, please God, make me me continue to believe. I wanna be a philosopher, I wanna continue to believe.
Dr. Mays Imad:And I would go to class and I would have this fear that I was gonna it was it was just it was like a chaos, but it was beautiful. It was beautiful of I didn't know what unknown territory, what you know, but I felt like, you know, this discovery of the world inside and the world outside, you know, did something for me and it does something for us.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I almost feel like I do you a disservice by asking you to describe that. Because, you know, a lot of times in higher ed, especially in science, we're so obsessed with an answer.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yes. Like, it must look like this. Uh-huh. And therefore, there's nothing here this and go and say, okay, let me replicate that because that is a good thing versus what the question is really trying to get at is is the journey to undergoing that vision. Is the journey to trying to figure out what that looks like for you.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I'll give you an example. As you know, because you've been part of the team that helps run this, we run a national faculty development workshop called the deep teaching residency. And one of the things we ask participants, faculty participants who take this as a deliverable is not just a plan for what you're gonna transform in your class, but they always have a last slide that's an image of what the journey was like for them. Right? To look at their course critically, to look at themselves in the mirror and imagine something different and feel the power and bravery to do so.
Bryan Dewsbury:And everyone always comes up with some great designs for what they wanna do, practically speaking. But honestly, it's the images that really inspire me. Because I know how much thought went into those images. I know for many of them that's the first time they were asked to even think of their class in this in this, you know, philosophical way. And I make that point to say that I think that that exploration journey is in all of us.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? And back to the system, it needs to give us a space to really figure out what that is. Yeah. For each one of us.
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah. Yeah. I love that, Brian. I think how can we empower each other to ask what's an alternative? What's a more beautiful, sustainable, capacious alternative that bears witness to my students' dignity, but also my own?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Tell us a little bit about how you experienced teaching in this way, being this way. How have your students responded?
Dr. Mays Imad:I think I had a lot more self imposed anxiety that came from, I worry what my colleagues are gonna say, the students love it, they want more. I mean, I did, for example, semester long experiments on biofeedback and heart rate variability and so on. And the students just came up with these interventions that are community centered and they really, they honored each other's humanity. They wanted music and art. And yet we were working with complex data and linear regression and this and So the students have really They want more.
Dr. Mays Imad:They want As I mentioned to you before, we read the paper recasting the agreements.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right, right.
Dr. Mays Imad:And they often say
Bryan Dewsbury:By
Dr. Mays Imad:By Laura And they often say, Can we have this agreement? Can we do that? So I think the students are, more than ever, they want to go to those places of because how could they not? I mean, they come from a system, they are in a system that just beats on them, that tries to reduce them to a number. And then you show them other ways and they just, they really, they thrive.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. All right. I wanna ask you one more question. Right. Put your thought on this one.
Bryan Dewsbury:Because you are so many and too many things. Right? You're a teacher, you're a researcher, you're a scholar, you're a keynote speaker, you're a faculty developer. You are a collaborator with other international scholars. And one of the things I've noticed at least in the last maybe two or three years about your writings, you have been talking about trauma informed education in different contexts.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? So you have feedback for people who do faculty development. Right? You had a paper, I forgot the name of the journal, but about student success and how to think about it that way. Have the papers on how to think about it in your teaching.
Bryan Dewsbury:So you're kind of looking at all of these different levels in the system and thinking, how can people have this mindset? From the faculty development side, right, this is what we're trying to grow across the world, providing continuous support for instructors in the classroom. What are the things and again, not the instructors, faculty developers. Yeah. What are some of the things you think they should know as they work with faculty in their campuses?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yeah, that's an important question. It gets to a different point in the system that faculty are trying, faculty are exhausted, faculty are burned out, and faculty are also looking for, I think a lot of faculties are also looking for, There has to be another way. And I think, in a way, faculty developers, we sit in this space where we can be the bridge between administrators and faculty. And instead of just doing the same, active learning, ungrading assessment, this and that, we have the capacity to begin to reimagine and advocate for empowering the faculty to go into that places of possibilities. What this means, for example, is for instance, as a faculty developer, I have been thinking about, okay, so I teach and I also work with faculty.
Dr. Mays Imad:I have been thinking about what would a sanctuary look like, right? But I also think, what would a sanctuary look like for faculty? And working with faculty. I mentioned Bell Hooks, I go back to Bell Hooks. Bell Hooks talks about liberating mutuality for both, for the educator and instructor and students.
Dr. Mays Imad:And so for faculty developers, how can we kind of workshop different ways, right? And be the conduit, the bridge to help the administrators see what other possibilities
Bryan Dewsbury:See what's are possible. Yeah. Mayes, thanks so much for spending the hour with me being on last episode. Thank
Dr. Mays Imad:you, Brian.
Bryan Dewsbury:You sure?
Dr. Mays Imad:Yes. Of course. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Alright. Thanks.
Dr. Mays Imad:Thank you and thank you to everyone listening.
Bryan Dewsbury:Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the RIOS Institute for Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM Education. We are generously funded by the William and Flori Hewlett Foundation. Thank you as always to my very very loyal very excellent producer Mr. Segev Amasai, Computer Engineering Major Class of 2025. Thanks to all of you who've stuck with us.
Bryan Dewsbury:Remember all of our episodes are available in perpetuity on Spotify, iHeartRadio on our website at knowledgeunbound.transistor.fm. Don't forget to subscribe so you get to know the latest episodes even though this one will be the last one for season one so we'll see you all next year with another 10 beautiful guests with hopefully more insightful conversations. Thanks to Doctor. Maisie Mad for closing our series out and just sharing, just having a lovely conversation that I hope, I truly hope you've been inspired by. It is both the most beautiful part of education for me but also the most challenging in trying to communicate and trying to understand what it means to fully be human as you teach a very kind of technical discipline right and maybe in the words of Elizabeth Moore's paper in 1996 that we teach students not subjects Maybe starting with that can help us understand better how to privilege the needs of ourselves and the needs of others to make ourselves much more whole when we show up to do good beautiful work.
Bryan Dewsbury:That's the change we need and that's the change we're looking for so until next season my friends be excellent to each other.
Dr. Mays Imad:Work addiction, perfectionism, those are all learned behaviour. And we had moments of awakening, I can't do this, I don't want to do this. And unlearning is not easy. It takes time, persistence, community. And so just when we started unlearning and saying, No, I really, there has to be another way.
Dr. Mays Imad:Then came that push to go back to normal. We've neglected the humanity of the system for so long that having these one or two or three or five workshops is not just going to magically transform it. I think what we could do is start to agitate and plant seeds so the next generation and the following generation can maybe see the fruit.