By John Rohlf, The Message assistant editor
Two diocesan educators will travel across the country and two more educators will travel abroad for their projects funded by the Lilly Endowment.
In all, four educators at schools in the Diocese of Evansville were awarded the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Grant. Elizabeth Browning, Rebecca Humm, William Lismore and Matt Moore were each awarded a grant as part of the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship program.
Humm and Lismore intend to travel overseas for their renewal projects.
A fifth grade teacher at Resurrection School in Evansville, Humm plans to travel through southern Europe from the birthplace of St. Thomas Aquinas to the birthplace of sports, reigniting a passion for athletics and seeking inspiration and renewal of body and spirit.
Humm is in her second year as a teacher at Resurrection School. Prior to teaching at Resurrection, Humm taught at St. John the Baptist School in Newburgh for six years. Humm said in her time at St. John, several teachers were awarded the grant.
“It’s a creativity grant,” Humm said. “So it stretches your thinking. Finding something that I was passionate about but also translates into making me a better me and therefore a better teacher, and how I’m going to bring that back to the school and community. It takes a lot of thought and research to put it all together.”
For the spiritual side of her trip, Humm will be traveling to Italy. She will visit the Vatican, St. Thomas Aquinas’ birthplace in Roccasecca and where he studied and went to university in Naples. She also participated in a silent retreat earlier this year in a monastery outside of Owensboro, Kentucky.
For the athletics portion of her project, Humm will travel to Greece and the Greek islands. She will try several different sports and activities to find something for her physical wellness.
“I was very athletic growing up,” Humm said. “Played all the sports. Loved it. Still coach. But unfortunately, I have terrible knees and they do not cooperate with me playing what I used to play. So the whole kind of premise is this renewal of both spirit and body, and finding a wellness that works for me now.”
Humm said she will also visit the birthplace of the modern Olympics. She also plans to volunteer at the Special Olympics in town.
She said the opportunity to go on the trip is “truly a gift” and is thankful to the Lilly Foundation. She is looking forward to bringing the experience back with her. She said she plans to bring a Finding Your Fitness Club to the school when she returns from her trip.
“When we talk about St. Thomas Aquinas, I’m going to have firsthand experience having stood there and seen things,” Humm said. “Share pictures. I just think that firsthand experience is really big. We try to do that for kids in school and so to be able to talk firsthand about some of it is going to be really neat.”
For his project, Lismore will return to his homeland of England to experience the literary and lexicographical landmarks of Oxford and London and reunite with family. Lismore has been a teacher at Reitz Memorial High School in Evansville since 2021.
Lismore described himself as a dictionary enthusiast. The writing of dictionaries is called lexicography, he noted.
“Oxford is the home of the English-language lexicography,” Lismore said. “London is too, to a lesser extent, being the home of Samuel Johnson, the writer of the first true monolingual, general use dictionary. I want to experience these cities as the greatest lexicographers of the past have.”
Lismore is looking forward to bringing his children on the trip. They will spend time with Lismore’s parents, who have only seen his children twice.
He said he hopes to bring his experience from the trip back to Reitz Memorial to start an etymology or philology club. He noted philology is the study of the history of language and how languages form.
“The dream is to use the same research methods used by lexicographers today to construct a dictionary of Memorial English,” Lismore said.
Lismore said it is hard to be an immigrant, stressing something is left behind when you leave home. Returning on vacation is never enough, he said.
“It’s a common misconception about immigration: even if you’re leaving for greener pastures, you very much leave a part of you behind that you’ll not get back,” Lismore said. “I was resistant to applying for this grant thinking it was selfish, like I was trying to relive the past of living in England. But I think of it now as me moving on.”
Lismore added he is going to England because it was his home, he wants his children to see it and he wants to bring part of it back to his new home.
Moore, principal at Annunciation Catholic School at Christ the King in Evansville, will participate in an Ironman competition in California for his project. Inspired by overcoming obstacles in life, Moore will train for and complete a full Ironman triathlon. The triathlon will be in October in Sacramento, California.
Moore said he has previously completed two half Ironmans.
“My grant proposal is to spend 2025 preparing myself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, going on a lot of runs and a lot of bike rides and swimming a lot of laps in the pool and swimming a lot of miles in the lakes to kind of help challenge myself as a person,” Moore said. “To set goals, to see goals through and just to really challenge myself a little bit.”
Moore has been a principal in the diocese for the past 12 years, with the last eight years at Christ the King School. He said he tries every day to be the principal God created him to be.
“Completing an Ironman is just all about perseverance and endurance and setting goals and having expectations for yourself,” Moore said. “And just always be looking for continuous improvement. And so I hope that all of those things are reflected in who I am as a person and who I am as a principal and what I want for our school community.”
Moore said he is grateful and appreciative to the Lilly Endowment for funding his project. He noted there are many costs in participating in a triathlon.
“We don’t get into education for the money. And we certainly don’t get into Catholic education for the money,” Moore said. “And so having Lilly recognize the efforts that we make as educators and how we sacrifice and dedicate our lives to young people, I kind of see it was them saying hey, thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your passion. Thank you for your dedication and what you do for our young people in our communities … You go do something that is going to renew you and something that’s going to bring you joy and inspire you to be even better educators than hopefully you are now.”
A teacher at Reitz Memorial High School, Browning was also awarded a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship grant. For her project, she will explore and photograph wild spaces and offbeat places on a 5,000-mile journey from Indiana to Alaska.