May 1, 2003

Creative Problem Solving in the classroom:
Blumberg Center brings program to ISU students

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — When school psychology major Traci Goddard graduates in May she’ll have Creative Problem Solving (CPS) skills listed on her resumé, courtesy of the Blumberg Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Special Education.

Goddard was one of several graduate students who enrolled in a summer school class specially developed to present CPS in a five-week format to Indiana State University graduate students last July.

Creative Problem Solving is a practical, methodical approach that can be used on challenges and opportunities facing education and not-for-profit organizations. The Blumberg Center’s Indiana Creative Problem Solving Initiative provides CPS training under a grant from the Indiana Department of Education, Division of Exceptional Learners, and is considered a leader in the field.

Goddard plans on using the skills she learned in the class to help educators solve problems that might come up in a creative, direct way.

“CPS is direct and gets the job done without wasting time. It is also a simple, straight-forward process that gets an end result,” she says.

Goddard and others in her graduate-level class of future school psychologists and educators were the first group to take CPS training in a classroom setting. Taught by Bill Littlejohn, director of the Blumberg Center at the ISU School of Education and project director for the Indiana Creative Problem Solving Initiative, the class is an example of the Center’s efforts to expand its outreach to bring CPS to Indiana educators and social service agency representatives.

The Indiana CPS Initiative has trained more than 700 special and general education administrators, teachers, university/college faculty, social service agency personnel, local Step Ahead and First Steps coordinators, and other not-for-profit and government agency personnel.

The training team usually presents the program in a five-day format that is broken down into separate two-day and three-day sessions.

“We wanted to find a way in which we could offer this unique training to ISU students who are pursuing careers that will put them in contact with children and families,” Littlejohn says.

The course was offered to graduate students from the Department of Educational and School Psychology. Littlejohn, who has been invited to teach a two-week CPS course for the University of Winnipeg during July 2003, developed the class with some input from his colleagues at Buffalo-based Creative Problem Solving Group, Inc., which has a licensing agreement with the Blumberg Center.

“As part of our overall mission to connect ISU students and faculty with the Blumberg Center’s work, we thought offering CPS training to EPSY graduate students would be a great thing,” Littlejohn says.

A core group of “traditional” graduate students attended the course on campus, while several ISU graduate students in other fields who are working professionals (including a teacher, an assistant principal, and a college professor) took the course through distance education.

As the instructor for the CPS class, Littlejohn adapted the material from its traditional format and then added some extras, including guest speakers who use CPS “in the field” in a variety of ways.

“The versatility of CPS makes it an extremely beneficial tool. You can conduct a day-long CPS session with a room filled with people to work through a problem from beginning to end, or you can sit down by yourself and use one of the tools to help devise a solution or plan of action for yourself,” says Kimberly Trate, a graduate student in psychology, who expects to graduate in May 2005.

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Contact:
William Littlejohn, director, Blumberg Center, ISU School of Education

Writer:
Nancy Mayfield, special contributor to Campus Connection, ISU Office of Public Affairs

ISU Public Affairs:
(812) 237-3773 or http://isunews.indstate.edu