“My kinesiology degree came to life through the lens of S.M.I.L.E., and you can say that everything about my academic career started there.” 

So says Dr. Meghann Lloyd (’01).  

Lloyd, who was involved with the Sensory Motor Instructional Leadership Experience (S.M.I.L.E.®) program during her four years as an Acadia student, is currently a professor at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, ON and senior research associate at Grandview Children’s Centre with a focused area of research in adapted physical activity.  

It was through her participation in the S.M.I.L.E. program that she learned that adapted physical activity was an actual academic area of study, and she knew immediately that this was what she wanted to do for her career

“Acadia gave me the opportunity to combine my passion for working with kids with disabilities with my academics,” says Lloyd. 

Nikki Matthews (’22), a current Acadia kinesiology master’s student, says her decision to come to Acadia was primarily because of the opportunity to volunteer with the S.M.I.L.E. program. Matthews has been involved with S.M.I.L.E. for the past seven years and is currently employed to coordinate and support the programming.  

The Sensory Motor Instructional Leadership Experience program was started in 1982 by professor Jack Scholz as a part of a physical education course that provided students an opportunity to work one-on-one with a child with a disability in a physical activity setting. Since then, Dr. Emily Bremer, a professor in the School of Kinesiology and research director of the program, says the program has grown tremendously under the leadership of Dr. Roxanne Seaman, who took over as director of the program in 2001. New program options, locations, and types of programming and instructional strategies have developed and changed over the years, she says.  

The number of volunteers has grown from six to 10 in the beginning to 100 to 150 student volunteers in the ’90s to 400 student volunteers each semester for the last 15 years, says Bremer. Literally thousands of students and volunteers have been impacted by the S.M.I.L.E. program in the past few decades.  

“S.M.I.L.E. is such a special program, with a long history, and is often considered an essential piece of the Acadia experience,” says Bremer.  

Despite its well-documented success, and the anecdotal stories gathered, program organizers lacked empirical evidence, especially when it came to the long-term impact participation had on student volunteers, says Bremer. Although a service-learning program, S.M.I.L.E. does not only benefit participants, but it also plays such a big role in the lives of Acadia student volunteers, she adds. Many studies in the service-learning literature only examine the short-term impact of a program, after one semester, a year, or even at graduation, explains Bremer.  

It was time to research this more purposefully.  

 

Together, Acadia’s Nikki Matthews, Mary Sweatman, Roxanne Seaman, and Emily Bremer designed and implemented a research project to examine the long-term impact of S.M.I.L.E. on past volunteers’ educational and career trajectories. The results of this study were recently published in the International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement.  

Results of the study showed that S.M.I.L.E. had a positive impact on student participants in several areas, including their relationship development, empathy, attitudes toward individuals with disability, their accountability, and their knowledge and skill development.  

“The impact of S.M.I.L.E. is long-lasting and extends beyond the university experience, suggesting that it can help to foster social change among past volunteers,” says Bremer.  

For the researchers, the one thing that surprised them the most was that most individuals involved in the study had graduated 10 to 20 years prior. To hear how S.M.I.L.E. still featured so prominently in their memories of Acadia and really shaped their Acadia experience was quite inspiring, says Bremer.  

“To hear how volunteering with S.M.I.L.E. shaped so many career paths and positively influenced perspectives of disability truly demonstrates the scope of impact the program has beyond their time at Acadia,” says Bremer, noting that this really helps solidify the long-term impact of S.M.I.L.E. on student volunteers. 

This might mean choosing a career path to work directly with individuals with disabilities, or in the health and education sectors. Sometimes it means taking their knowledge with them to a seemingly unrelated career but applying the skills they learned in S.M.I.L.E. to this area, explains Bremer.  

Study results underscore that through S.M.I.L.E., Acadia provides students with quality applied-learning experiences. They are being trained as leaders, to be empathetic and caring members of their community, to work with individuals with disability, and to recognize the importance of quality physical activity programming.  

As Lloyd says, the S.M.I.L.E. program is unique. The commitment of the program’s facilitators, the community, the students, and the families in the program is unparalleled and it is important that there is now some published research on its impact.