University of North Alabama
15 episodes listed below
Campus expertise, made plain.
UNA Talks is a faculty interview series built around careful explanation rather than campus gloss. Lee Taylor guides professors through practical questions about caffeine research, occupational therapy, nursing leadership, pop culture history, marketing, simulation, and school leadership.
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UNA Talks is a campus-based interview series about the work University of North Alabama faculty do in classrooms, labs, clinics, and community-facing programs. It is calm, explanatory, and practical. Lee Taylor frames each conversation with friendly curiosity, then gives guests room to translate their specialties into ordinary language. That structure makes the show feel less like a lecture and more like a guided office-hours conversation. Recent episodes lean heavily into health professions and education, with discussions of occupational therapy, nursing leadership, simulation training, kinesiology research, special needs care, and laboratory school leadership. The show also reaches into marketing and history. A conversation with Dr. Lauren Killen turns caffeine into a discussion of perceived exertion, public misconceptions, sports performance, and student research. Dr. Laura Smith describes occupational therapy as a field that keeps changing with social needs, from rehabilitation to community-based life skills. Dr. Anne-Marie Irons connects nursing leadership, informatics, simulation, and the nurse’s role as a bridge across healthcare teams. Dr. Rachel Winston brings emotional depth to care for patients with special needs and to the empathy built through caregiving. Blake Ball uses pop culture, including Batman, Dirty Harry, and Peanuts, to talk about 20th century American political, social, and cultural history. Dr. Alicia Horky treats marketing as a study of people, not just surveys and analytics. Dr. Eric Kirkman connects school leadership with how students and teachers are made to feel in a learning environment. Dr. Will Brewer makes hands-on simulation central to understanding. Across these episodes, UNA Talks keeps returning to a simple question: how does specialized knowledge become usable in real life? The result is a warm, accessible show for listeners who like faculty expertise without academic fog.
Made for: UNA Talks is for listeners who enjoy thoughtful faculty conversations about teaching, healthcare, education, marketing, history, and applied research. It especially suits prospective students, alumni, educators, and curious general listeners who want academic work explained through real examples.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its translation layer: it takes campus specialties and keeps asking what they look like in practice. Instead of chasing hot takes, it lets faculty connect research, classrooms, professional training, and personal experience at a human pace.
UNA Talks is a bi-weekly podcast from the University of North Alabama focusing on our outstanding faculty. At UNA Talks, we seek to gain their expert insights on various professional and academic topics while learning what makes their classrooms unique. The University of North Alabama offers a massive array of high value programs on campus and online taught be these and our many other talented professors. To learn more, visit una.edu/online.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Faculty conversations connect marketing decisions, workplace technology and professional education to the judgment required in practice.
UNA Talks lets faculty expertise lead, with Lee Taylor asking the plain questions that connect classroom ideas to working decisions. The range runs from marketing measurement and customer behavior to nursing leadership, healthcare technology, occupational therapy and exercise…
Marketing metrics meet caffeine myths when your curiosity refuses to stay in one department.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear look at OT as a changing healthcare field and a new UNA pipeline.
UNA Talks frames occupational therapy as a field defined by steady adjustment, not a fixed classroom subject. Dr. Laura Smith, the program director for UNA's new occupational therapy program and an assistant professor in the Anderson College of Nursing and Health Professions,…
A practical caffeine discussion that stays grounded in real-world use and classroom-to-career value.
UNA Talks uses caffeine as a practical lens on how exercise science reaches beyond the classroom. Lee Taylor introduces Dr. Lauren Killen, an associate professor of exercise science and director of the Human Performance Research Lab, then follows her from a master's thesis on…
Nursing leadership, technology, and teaching meet in a focused conversation about how the work is changing.
The episode traces nursing as a profession that keeps widening, moving from pre-nursing and pharmacology into adult health, critical care, nurse leadership, and nurse education. Dr.
A nursing conversation about feeling, care, and the lessons disability support can carry into daily life.
Dr. Rachel Winston reads as a nursing professor who insists that care still depends on feeling. She answers the hardening myth around ER work with a steadier view: the best nurses can still feel, hurt, and cry, and then come back the next day to help someone else.
Marketing works best here when people, product value, and audience fit stay aligned.
UNA Talks presents a plainspoken case for marketing that keeps people at the center. Dr. Alicia Horky, an associate professor of marketing in the Sanders College of Business and Technology, steers the conversation toward motivations, needs, and wants, and toward knowing a…
Campus radio from the wrong side of reality.
Campus decisions, Northeast news, and Northeast priorities.
How research culture changes in practice.
Conversations from inside the IT channel.
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Lee Taylor opens by asking whether caffeine is always a good thing or whether drawbacks come with it.
Occupational therapy starts with daily life.
Lee Taylor opens with the idea that leaders can be shaped, not just born.
The conversation starts in the emergency room.
The host welcomes a guest who teaches marketing in the Sanders College of Business and Technology.
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