Michelle LeRoy, assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Colorado State University, is utilizing her strong background in pediatric occupational therapy and well-rounded teaching philosophy to guide OT students in learning. LeRoy’s research examines how OTs in community and school settings can support mental health in the LGBTQIA2S+ community.
Tell us a bit about yourself!
Technically, I am from Wisconsin since I was born there and most of my extended family lives there. However, my father joined the army when I was three years old, and I spent my formative years in many places including Texas, South Carolina, and Germany (twice). People tend to have a hard time placing my accent since it really is a mishmash of all the different locations I’ve been.
I received my Ph.D. in urban education and my M.S. and B.S. in occupational therapy, all from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Outside of academia, I like to read, do crafts, go hiking, and do anything involving the water. I also love to spend time with my family and my dachshund, Sophie. Traveling is always something that I enjoy, and I have a list of places I still want to go in the future. So far, my favorite has been Fiji, but I also loved the many places I was able to see in Europe when I was growing up.
What brought you to the Department of Occupational Therapy at CSU?
I have admired the faculty in this department for most of my career and I feel privileged to be working with them and collaborating with them on future projects and courses. This position provides me with the opportunity to focus on my research, engage with students closely and to do so in a welcoming, supportive environment. The commitment from this department to focus on optimizing occupational performance in others with a community-based practice model for research, teaching, and service is a mission I fully believe in and look forward to promoting.
What are your research and/or teaching interests, and how did you get interested in that topic?
I spent most of my career as a pediatric occupational therapist and I was able to interact with people with a wide variety of diagnoses. However, my specialty areas were in relation to working with autistic children, using sensory integration techniques as well as treating feeding difficulties. I also owned my own pediatric therapy business twice successfully. Due to this, you will often find me involved with teaching pediatric or program development type coursework. Although this is my background, my research interests are completely different.
My research is focused on exploring how occupational therapists in community and school settings can help support the LGBTQIA2S+ community with a focus on the transgender community. I am working towards decreasing mental health risks and promoting the well-being of those in the transgender community, while strengthening their support systems. I became interested in this area when my one of my own children came out as transgender. They are currently finding their way in discovering where they are on the gender spectrum and their journey has to remain their own. As they needed the space to do this, I was/am supportive, but I also wanted to try to do more to help in any way I could. As I read about the transgender community, I began to feel passionately that it was a community that I felt occupational therapy should be doing more to support.
While I hope to make an impact on the field of occupational therapy as a whole, by expanding to provide this support, I also hope to make a local impact while I am here at CSU. Based on data collected by the Colorado Health Institute and published in 2022, only 42.0% of LGBTQ+ adult Coloradans report having good mental health compared to 74.8% of heterosexual, cisgender Colorado adults. These numbers further decline as only 22.9% of gender diverse Coloradans reported having good mental health at the time the data was collected. I hope to make an impact by helping support better mental health in youth and adults who identify as transgender. I believe this can be done through helping those who are transgender participate fully and safely in the occupations in their life using the gender expression and identity that is right for them. It can also be supported by helping ensure safe communities and that they have healthy support systems. My goal with my research is to help the field of occupational therapy have a greater impact on reaching this community and help provide support and care where possible.
What is your teaching philosophy?
The overall purpose of adult education is to help people become free, autonomous individuals. People are lifelong learners as they learn not only through traditional methods in the classroom, but also from their life experiences that occur on a daily basis. Our students are at the point where they are following what they believe to be their calling in life; thus, the role of education is to develop them as people who can think and feel on their own and continue their own self-education. This development of critical thinking skills is necessary for our students to be successful client-centered practitioners.
In teaching adults, the educator must first understand what goals the learner has and wishes to meet. Often a learner will have general ideas of what they want to learn without understanding specifically what they need to learn. The educator can understand the learner’s goals and then shape the content to teach the learners what they need and want to learn in a way that ties it back to their experiences, thus providing them a connection to the information. Learning itself occurs when information has been transformed into knowledge and should not be confused with education, which is the process of delivering information to learners. Students should not be lectured during this process, but instead engaged in a discussion of the topic led by the educator who should be an expert in the topic. We can best assure that learning has occurred by examining if the information given to students has become incorporated into their knowledge base through the solving of real-life problems given to the students to determine if they are able to use their experience and knowledge to evaluate and synthesize the information, in order to find a solution.
A good educator should be an expert and must translate the material into an accessible format allowing for different viewpoints depending upon the learner’s capability. Good educators know what the learner can do on his/her own and where he/she needs guidance and direction. As learners mature and become more competent, the teacher’s role changes; the educator must offer less direction and give more responsibility as the student progresses from dependent learner to independent worker. Good educators take learners systematically through tasks leading to content mastery by providing clear objectives, adjusting the pace of lecturing, making efficient use of class time, clarifying misunderstandings, answering questions, providing timely feedback, correcting errors, providing reviews, summarizing what has been presented, directing students to appropriate resources, setting high standards for achievement, and developing objective means of assessing learning. Good educators are enthusiastic about their content and convey that enthusiasm to their students. They encourage the efforts of students while challenging the students to do their very best by promoting a climate of caring and trust, helping the students set challenging but achievable goals, and supporting effort as well as achievement. Good educators provide encouragement and support, along with clear expectations and reasonable goals for all learners. Thus, the ultimate role of the educator is to undertake all of these tasks and do the best they can in supporting the learner.
What is your favorite thing about CSU so far?
I have many favorites already during my short time at CSU. As I mentioned, I feel lucky to have such wonderful colleagues in my department. The students I have met thus far have been a joy and I know they will be fantastic occupational therapists in their future. I love the position of our location on the Oval and I try to take a walk around the Oval at least once a day. I also greatly enjoy Fort Collins as a whole and have found many lovely areas including the “Old Fort Collins” downtown area, Horsetooth Reservoir and the many walking trails in the area. I know I will continue to add to my favorites list the longer I am here!
The Department of Occupational Therapy is part of CSU’s College of Health and Human Sciences.
