When most people think back to middle school health education, common memories involve boring lectures and awkward slide shows or videos.

UW-Whitewater Associate Professor Cristy Jefson is changing the way future students will remember this middle school rite of passage with her recently published health education book, “Crew 66: Health Education Dialogues for Middle School Students.”

Jefson wrote the text of the book and collaborated with UW-Whitewater sophomore Aimee Leonard for the illustrations and characters in the book.

The idea for the health book came about when Jefson was attending a health education conference and realized there was a need for reading material on health concepts at the middle school level.

“The eight characters in the book represent the eight national health education standards,” Jefson said.  “An example of a character would be Rumor. He helps students recognize the influences of other people in their lives.”

To make students more actively engaged in the classroom, Jefson created 40 two-paged plays that students can pair up and read . They also can act out the conversations.

This way of learning allows the students to absorb the information in a fun way, Jefson said.

Jefson met Leonard after she had originally hired the student to help her work on a blog project.

Jefson later found out that Leonard was a skillful artist and started to collaborate ideas for potential images for the characters of her health book.

Leonard and Jefson worked together to come up with images for the characters that would reflect their personalities.

“During the collaboration, we would get together, and Cristy would tell me how many male or female characters she wanted, what their personalities were like, and we even tweaked minor details like outfit colors,” Leonard said.

The title of the health book, “Crew 66,” is a play on the words Route 66. The book takes place in the Southwest near where Route 66 was originally located.

Since the book incorporates students working together to solve a common problem, Jefson thought the word “crew” would also be a perfect fit.

The experience of a professor and student working together on such a big project was a unique one for Jefson and Leonard.

“I thought it was really cool that a college professor could work directly with a student,” Jefson said. “It was serendipitous that she fell in my lap for a different project but ended up being hired by my publishers to illustrate my book.”

Although such a collaboration could have presented problems or challenges, Leonard and Jefson said their experience was rewarding.

“Aimee was so easy to work with, and she really listened to what I said,” Jefson said. “It was awesome to share with her my ideas and then see it come to life on paper.”

As an art minor, Leonard said she is always working on her art skills and enjoyed being able to use her talents for an actual published book.

Each character would take a few weeks to refine and improve, Leonard said. The whole illustration process lasted about half a year.

Leonard drew eight characters and worked hard to make sure each character’s personality fit his or her individual look and overall appearance.

Jefson and Leonard spent a great amount of time finalizing the illustrations before the book was set and ready to go.

“It was great working with Professor Cristy, because she really encouraged me to do my best and would always compliment my work,” Leonard said. “I’ve worked jobs with previous employers who don’t really care about how far you succeed, but Cristy genuinely appreciated my hard work and encouraged me to know that I will continue to move on to big things.”