Perhaps it’s no surprise that the co-hosts of an online character workshop have become best friends – they talk about ways to be nice, after all.
But it was a surprise to Grand Canyon University online professors Dr. Crystal McCabe and Kimber Underdown how enthusiastically their Lopes Lead with Character group has taken off. Nearly 80 participants have logged on each of the last two monthly meetings, giving up pleasant summer evenings to join the Canyon Center for Character Education offering.
They attribute that success to creating community.
It can be challenging for online students to experience it, but “we hope this is one step in the right direction towards making them feel included, cared about and connected,” said Underdown, an associate professor.
The students come from all over the world – “it may be bedtime or it may be the middle of the day,” said McCabe, depending on what time zone – to talk with one another about a subject that McCabe boiled down at the start of Wednesday night’s session: “Trying to be a better person tomorrow than we are today.”
That’s part of CCCE’s mission, utilizing a three-year grant from the Kern Family Foundation to support a national movement around character education. Lopes Lead with Character started as an in-person meeting with traditional students on campus, mostly from McCabe and Underdown's College of Education, but not only spread to other colleges but online in September 2023.
McCabe helped launch it, and Underdown at first joined for moral support and, a year later, as co-leader. It was a natural fit.
The first day of work at GCU in 2013, they found each other waiting to be onboarded. They realized some of their kids were the same age, they had both taught in special education fields and both just returned the day before from Disneyland.
“There was no denying our paths in life were supposed to cross, so our friendship was just such an easy, immediate thing that happened. And now we spend our holidays together – we were just together for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day – and we do vacations together,” McCabe said. “And our moms love each other.”
When McCabe’s family suffered through a home fire, Underdown was there to help raise money; when Underdown’s grandchild went to the emergency room, McCabe was there to help.
Underdown has the pink-colored hair, quick one-liners and easy laugh; McCabe is the kind-faced, bookish and wry sidekick.
“We’re actually opposites, in the sense that Kimber is an extrovert and I’m an introvert,” McCabe said. “So we feel like we balance each other so well.”
When McCabe, with her charts and slides and massive notes, pauses to get organized during presentations, Underdown picks it up. “Kimber’s like, 'I don’t even need a script, let’s just go!’”
They have become a great model of character – always there for each other, as they were Wednesday night.
Their presentation, “Virtues Vacation,” was designed to show the virtues that we take wherever we go, even on vacation, and what we can pick up from those venues. Underdown led with some humor on how their families’ vacation to Florida together was so humid – and McCabe picked up the story from there – that her new clothes' colors bled through to leave her skin “looking like Skittles.”
A student from Florida chimed in to say it wasn’t that bad if you go the right time of year.
It’s the kind of easy banter they try to illicit. “It’s more than a meeting; it’s a place to grow, reflect and have a little fun along the way,” McCabe said. “At its heart, Lopes Lead with Character is about becoming the best version of ourselves – together.”
They showed videos and made presentations about a word that signals virtues from five travel hot spots – Greece, Japan, Brazil, Kenya and Hawaii.
While Greece’s “philoxenia” (hospitality) was a popular topic and Japan’s “gaman” (patience) led to discussion about things that tried students’ patience, the group hit a community spirit after hearing from a student from Kenya, with that country’s word, “ubuntu" (I am because we are) was introduced.
“We just love people. We love to party. We love having a good time, and we also love God,” said student Yudelle Shi.
In breakout sessions, smaller groups explored their favorite virtue, and one group made up predominately of students in behavioral health fields chose patience. Two were in social work or in child welfare and said they can have occasions to inspect homes and take children away, leaving parents screaming in their faces. Patience and living in another’s shoes, imaging what they would be feeling, is a vital virtue.
Or for any encounter throughout the day: “We don’t know what they woke up to,” said another student.
Student feedback has shown McCabe and Underdown that they love to connect with each other in groups after each of the monthly themes, typically the second Wednesday night of each month, are explored.
They are people who juggle jobs and raise children but take time to go beyond academics and “focus on who they want to be,” said Emily Farkas, CCEE program director, crediting the impactful presence of the group’s leaders. “Through this focus, they are not only given time to think about how to better their own lives, but how to better the lives of others around them.”
It’s been the case with McCabe and Underdown. Since that first day of work, they’ve become a dynamic presentation duo, speaking at conferences across the country and writing textbooks together, ones where you can’t tell who has written which chapter, Underdown said.
“Honestly, Kimber and I run the Lopes Lead with Character almost like you would picture a podcast of two best friends sitting together, talking back and forth, and then making sure we engage the students as well,” McCabe said. “We are a perfect match for partnering on this.”
Indeed, while McCabe was trying to start a video for the group, Underdown filled in by telling a story about a tree she liked to stand under as a 12-year-old. “It gave me a lot of joy and calmness.”
The word in Brazil for that would be alegria.
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at mike.kilen@gcu.edu
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