Curiosity, compassion propels CAHS student to top of class

When University of Cincinnati student Lisa Harris attends her weekly tutoring sessions at Rees E. Price Academy, she likes to scan the room for the quietest kid or one that is acting out to tutor.

“I sat with a quiet kid one week,” says Harris, a rising junior studying Speech Language Hearing Sciences at UC. “He ended up talking to me for 30 minutes straight about bugs. He’s definitely got a passion for insects.”

The next week, the quiet boy asked Harris to sit with him again, to help him with his English and math.

“So he could talk about bugs again, really,” she laughs. “Helping kids feel valued and nurtured and supported — that someone cares about them and will listen to them — is what I love so much about the Bearcat Buddies.”

Stewart-Adams Bearcat Buddies Tutor of the Year Award, a new scholarship in the name of one of Bearcat Buddy’s founders.

Harris was chosen from more than 450 UC students involved in the program, which matches the college students with elementary students at various Cincinnati Public Schools.

Program Manager Antione Spriggs says the awards committee had a lot of great candidates for the inaugural award, presented by UC’s Center for Community Engagement, which oversees Bearcat Buddies.

“We really wanted to give the award to someone who went above and beyond,” Spriggs says. “It had to be Lisa.”

Harris is a lead tutor in the program, the point person for a larger group of Bearcat Buddies. She helps with scheduling and offers weekly encouragement and guidance to her group and is also on the organization’s recruitment and retention subcommittee, attracting new members and working to keep them.

That’s not all Harris has her hands in outside of the classroom, says Carney Sotto, PhD, one of her professors in the College of Allied Health Sciences and program director of undergraduate studies in the Communication Sciences & Disorders (CSD) Department at UC.

“Lisa has the organizational and time management skills to accomplish a lot,” says Sotto, who is also faculty advisor to Multicultural Concerns in Communication Sciences and Disorders (MC²), for which Harris was recently selected vice president. “She has the courage to swim upstream, unafraid to stand up and speak up for what she believes in.”

Harris grew up in Western Maryland, in a small town called Boonsboro. As a child, she had a lisp and could not say some speech sounds, like the letter “s.”

“I called my sister Dudan, instead of Susan, until I was seven,” Harris says. “I don’t remember it extensively, but my parents said speech therapy completely changed my demeanor as a kid — I became a lot more confident.” She decided to pursue a career as a speech and language pathologist and enrolled in UC’s Speech Language Hearing Sciences program.

To be the best she can be, Harris is working on a Certificate in Minority Health, which is offered to any UC student pursuing any degree at UC.

“There are tremendous disparities in the quantity and quality of life — and access to health care — between different demographic groups in the U.S.,” according to the certification program’s website. The 18-hour interdisciplinary certificate helps students understand how such disparities arise and prepares them to identify and reduce inequities using needs assessments and by designing, implementing and evaluating health promotion and education programs targeted to minority and vulnerable populations.

It is opportunities like these that helps UC churn out thoughtful graduates and future leaders into all sorts of jobs in our society, says Spriggs. Bearcat Buddies takes the time to offer its new tutors trainings in mental health, cultural humility and trauma informed care.

During her studies, Harris has also volunteered in Christ Hospital’s Behavioral Health Clinic, she is a student worker in the Dean’s Office, an assistant to a professor in the Occupational Therapy Department and a rehabilitation aide at University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Harris’ service hours help qualify her to retain her Cincinnatus Scholar status, an annual $3,000 scholarship for those who complete 15 hours of community service work per semester along with a 3.0 GPA or higher.

Olivia Dieringer is one of Harris’ classmates, also studying Speech Language Hearing Sciences. They both became Bearcat Buddies together their freshman year and serve as lead tutors, still, Dieringer is never afraid to call up Harris for advice.

“As lead tutors, we did our first introduction meetings virtually and I was so nervous!” Dieringer says. “She gave me advice and calmed me down. She is someone one who relates and is not going to judge me.”

“I feel so lucky and grateful for the abundance of opportunities,” Harris says. “I think deep down, I get the overwhelming sense that everyone at UC, from the top down, really wants us to succeed.”

She can’t say enough about her learning community — today she rents a home off campus with three of the young women she met her first year. They are fast friends. The Bearcat Buddies alumni group also creates connections she wouldn’t have made elsewhere.

“I’ve even had a couple one-on-one experiences with President (Neville) Pinto,” Harris says. She met UC’s president after his wife, Dr. Jennifer L. Pinto, a psychologist, spoke to MC², a club that provides a forum for CSD students and others in their field and community to engage in meaningful intercultural dialogue, thereby enhancing the students’ leadership skills and commitment around social justice issues.

UC’s first lady shared her experience growing up as a hearing child with deaf parents.

“She was wonderful,” Harris says, “and afterward she invited me and the president of MC2 to a gala — which was so nice! President Pinto asked me where I was from and about how I had liked living in the dorms, if I liked the dining options — he wanted my genuine input.”

Sotto states students like Harris, with such curiosity and courage, are a special bunch.

“The university is lucky to have her,” Sotto says. “I see her as a rising star in our field.”

For Harris, it’s still the kids that motivate her most. The joy she sees in them. Getting to help and watch them learn. “They might go on rants about topics that I don't understand, like bugs,” she says, “but in my mind, they are all little geniuses.”