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The art and heart of teaching
by Frank Whitlatch
 Social work professor Francis Yuen (right) with a student “I consider him a mentor because of his dedication to students, his knowledge in the field of social work, his ability to encourage his students to do the best they could and that he always treated each student with respect.” Outstanding Teacher nomination excerpt, Kim Konovaloff, ’02, M.S.W., social work |
The now semi-retired government professor took the lessons to heart—ask anyone who’s taken his popular class on war and the media.
The same lessons, championed by Sac State’s founding professors, have also endured across the University. While those early professors have largely retired, their emphasis on student-professor contact has remained.
| Alumni remember... “Maryjane
Rees had high standards for us. She expected a lot from
her students and she gave a lot. She instilled in us the motivation
to continue our education once we were out, and to get involved
in the professional organizations. I remember that you were never
late for her class, and you were ready to take notes right when
class started.” “Professor
Ken Kerri taught my water and wastewater systems
class. Teaching the technical parts of an upper-division engineering
class is difficult and time-consuming. It is difficult for a professor
to allocate time to relating the technical problem solving to real
world circumstances. Dr. Kerri found a way to do that. Field trips
and solving problems presented in a real-life format helped me focus
on what would become my career.” “What
Dr. William Van Velkinburg did, as my professor,
was to recognize my potential and encourage me to the possibility
of going on to UCLA for graduate work. He not only inspired me to
apply, but he also helped me get accepted into UCLA,his alma mater,and
to successfully compete for a U.S. Health Services scholarship.
I grew up in Vacaville and, at that time, it seemed like a big leap
of faith to go to UCLA. I think that of all the things a college
professor can do, the most important is to open up that door of
possibilities and invite the student to step through it.” “Bill
Harris referred me to special education work. I took a
main-streaming course for my teaching credential and unbeknownst
to me he recommended me to the San Joaquin Office of Education as
someone who could have a tremendous impact in special education.
It literally determined where I am today. He saw some-thing in me
that I didn’t see and that made all the difference.” “Shirley
Biagi was one of my first journalism instructors and she
was very inspiring to me at the time. She was passionate about writing,
dynamic and quite compassionate. Plus, she had a calmness and a
sense of confidence about her. I thought she was pretty cool, and
I learned a great deal from her. And I’m still writing feature
articles more than 20 years later.” “In
the early ‘80s I was in Joe Serna’s
political science classes in the day and covering his city council
meetings at night for KGNR news radio and then KFBK news radio.
What a dream situation for a government journalism major! Joe’s
passion, knowledge and enthusiasm for ‘good government’
were infectious, at least to this student. I credit him for turning
me into a political news junkie for, as a professor and ‘one
of the people,’ he was able to cut through the bureaucracy
and political-speak and explain what the real issues and solutions
were. Twenty-one years later, I’m still covering city council
meetings at night and still enjoy my task of connecting government
to the people.” “I
took Bill Dorman for a journalism class and he
was really good, really into his material. He would come out and
shake that long finger with his shaggy curly hair—he was bigger
than life and challenged us to get into the material, too. I was
a freshman and it was the first time I saw the world was not always
what it looked like, that you had to dig deeper—that was probably
one of the biggest lessons. The funny thing is, I wasn’t even
a communication studies major.” “Lynda
Radican is phenomenal. She inspired me to be an English
major and changed my essential ideas about how I write, how I think
and how I view the world. Lynda is the true definition of a teacher.
She’s patient and helps you re-examine things in a new way.
She’s been my teacher, my mentor, my adviser and my friend.” “In
1998, during the first class meeting of Government 1, Dr.
Tim Hodson told us that it was his goal to give us a class
experience that might change the way we viewed politics. In August
2001 I had finished my role as the president of the statewide student
government for the CSU and was working for him at the Center for
California Studies. In late August he told me that it was time for
me to move on. I met with him that next afternoon and shared my
life plan with him. He looked me in the eye and told me to get to
work. Two years later, I am the vice president for government affairs
with the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.” |
“We
really take that seriously, our mission of teaching,” says Elaine
Kasimatis, a mathematics and statistics professor. “This is a place
where classes are small, and professors have their doors open to meet
with students and really get to know them.”
Many of Kasimatis’ classes are for future elementary teachers and
many of her students are wary of math. But she takes the challenge in
stride. “I find that if I pose intriguing questions, I can get them
doing mathematics and get them excited about it. You have to rekindle
the excitement about learning math that kids have—kids don’t
start off afraid of math or disliking math.”
Sac State has grown from humble beginnings in 1947 to a large university
with some 28,500 students.
But small classes remain the rule—they usually have just a couple
dozen students, and nearly all have fewer than 30. That allows professors
to focus more energy on their teaching.
Lindy Valdez, who teaches kinesiology and health science, says he and
fellow faculty members talk nearly every day about teaching—often
informally as they meet in the halls after an especially good (or bad)
class session. They’re always searching for new strategies to spur
class discussion, make presentations more memorable, help students learn.
“You see it all across the campus—professors are involved
in their students’ lives, and that makes a big difference,”
Valdez says. “Teaching is my art and my passion. When I look back
to my time in school, it was the teachers who were passionate about what
they were doing and about who they were teaching who were really good.
I try to be like that.”
Social work professor Francis Yuen has found that everything from corny
jokes to proverbs can help his students learn. “Part of the fun
of teaching is telling useful stories,” he says. “They may
not remember the whole lectures, but they may be reminded by the stupid
jokes.”
Communication studies professor Virginia Kidd focuses on hands-on activities.
Her students often role-play or do projects as a group, and then spend
the rest of the class discussing what they did.
“I learn by doing, and so I like activities more than lectures,”
she says. “I like it when the students are willing to try things,
have fun and laugh—all while they’re learning.”
Students seem to appreciate the effort. In a recent survey, more than
80 percent of recent graduates said their professors had been enthusiastic
and enjoyed teaching.
The Sac State experience is much different than at large research-driven
universities, where huge lecture halls are the norm and undergraduates
are often taught by graduate students. In fact, the rest of Sac State’s
bustling, urban campus is quite different from its small classes.
That’s just the way Sac State professors strive to keep it.
“Small classes are a real advantage to the students. They get more
feedback, and they learn more,” says Mark Stoner, a communication
studies professor who spends a good deal of his time mentoring newer faculty.
Stoner says Sac State’s small classes and diverse faculty backgrounds
make it more likely students will encounter a professor who not only teaches
them well, but changes their lives.
“Students all have different ways of living, thinking and learning,”
he says. “That’s the real value of having such a diverse faculty
with diverse ways of approaching the world. It improves the chance that
a student will make that strong, personal connection with a professor.
“I think I have inspired some over the years—I’ve been
told that my course changed a student’s career choice, or changed
their way of living. And that’s the ultimate reward. That’s
the return that really keeps you going.”
Family and consumer sciences professor Ann Moylan credits her college
years with dramatically changing her life. She works to do the same for
her students.
“My undergraduate years changed the way I thought and who I was.
I credit many of my professors for that, for the high standards they held
me up to, and I try to emulate that.”
She says an important part of her job, in addition to teaching about child
development and families, is teaching life lessons—the importance
of integrity and of understanding other points of view.
“I like to make a positive impact on other people, and you can really
do that in the classroom,” says Estelle Eke, a mechanical engineering
professor known for both her great hands-on lessons—such as programming
small robots—and her high expectations.
“Students appreciate me more after they’re done with my classes,”
she admits, but says that’s fine with her. “These are great
students we have. If you push them, you find that they really excel, and
they have fun doing it.”
Biological sciences professor Jeri Langham keeps in close contact with
his former teacher assistants—some 600 of them. The 33-year professor
calls them his “extended family,” and hosts get-togethers
for them a few times each summer. Nearly 60 showed up for one recent gathering.
“I get close to my students,” Langham says. “I have
a real interest in their success, and many of them get back to me—telling
me where they’re teaching or where they’re practicing medicine,
for instance. Some of my best friends today are former teaching assistants.”
The University’s emphasis on teaching is a message heard loud and
clear for the hundreds of new professors hired in recent years to replace
the record number of retirees.
While the character of most of the University’s academic departments
has already changed—nearly half of all full-time professors have
been here less than six years—seasoned, tenured professors keep
the pressure on to make great teaching a priority. They stress the importance
of teaching in job interviews, and then insist
he newcomers live up to that expectation.
Every year, Sac State professors choose one of their own from each of
the seven Colleges as an “Outstanding Teacher.” And teaching
is the most decisive factor when academic departments consider granting
tenure.
Research and other scholarly activity, service to the community, and other
factors matter also, of course, but teaching ability is the key.
“If you aren’t a good teacher, you will not get tenure,”
says Rosemary Papalewis, who directs Sac State’s Center for Teaching
and Learning. “I tell new professors that students here are very
demanding as far as the classroom experience. They trust that the professor
knows the content, but they’re very demanding about how professors
organize the material and how well they teach it.”
Along with the high expectations comes a great deal of support. Many new
professors have just completed doctorates at research universities where
classroom teaching might not have been a priority. They often need teaching
strategies—and quickly.
To that end, the Center for Teaching and Learning serves as a sort of
“homeroom” for faculty, coordinating faculty-to-faculty mentoring,
hosting workshops on everything from class management to new teaching
technologies, and holding special sessions on topics requested by the
faculty. New faculty get a special two-day session the week before classes
start in the fall.
The center’s prominence on campus reflects a lasting commitment
to helping professors be great teachers. It’s a tradition at Sac
State.
Peter Shattuck, who taught history at Sac State for three decades, vividly
recalled his first encounter with Jack Livingston, an early government
professor who inspired not only students but other professors. He described
the meeting in a 1998 documentary on the University’s 50th anniversary.
|
“One
morning I sat down with a group of people, one of whom I didn’t
know who was a little older. A couple of us were saying things like,
‘Well, we expect to be someplace else pretty soon,’”
Shattuck said. “And this one guy said ‘You know, this
is a very important place to be. The state of California has made
a promise that nobody else has ever made—that if you’ve
got the ability, if you’ve got the talent, you can get low-cost,
high-quality, public higher education.’ And he said ‘That’s
why I’m here.’ “That’s something I’ve remembered all this time.” Today, it’s a big honor for a Sac State professor to be chosen to present the annual lecture named for the late Professor Livingston. Sac State professors also remain acutely aware of the type of students they’re teaching. Many are the first in their family to attend college, and often they’re working part- or full-time. Bill Dorman, the government professor, says that makes the work especially gratifying. “Perhaps the most exciting thing about teaching in a university like CSUS is that the lives and destinies of most of our students are not pre-ordained, unlike, say, at Harvard or Yale,” Dorman says. “Many of our students are still making up their minds about who and what they’d like to be, what values are worth holding, which directions in life they ought to pursue.” Though Sac State is not a traditional research university, an increasing amount of research is being done here. And much of it involves students, many of them undergraduates who wouldn’t have such an opportunity elsewhere. Sociology professor Amy Liu has dozens of students help each year with her “Annual Survey of Public Opinion and Life Quality in the Sacramento Region.” It helps get students excited about a tough class many of them dread—research methods. “When you’re teaching students about research, I think you have to let them do it. The process is important,” Liu says. “The students tend to be afraid of the statistics. But they get excited when they realize they can do original research. And with the annual survey, they can see the real impact of social research.” The art of teaching has also been expanding quickly into the digital realm at Sac State. Jean-Pierre Bayard, an electrical and electronic engineering professor, helps run a special technology institute over the summer through the Center for Teaching and Learning. In it, professors learn everything from putting class information on the Internet to organizing information for interactive, animated lessons on CD. They also learn about various units on campus that offer technical expertise with such endeavors. Almost 50 professors took part in this summer’s session. “The idea is to provide the sort of engagement that you couldn’t have otherwise,” Bayard says. “We’re using technology to allow students to approach the material in their own way, in their own time.” He says today’s students, raised with computers, expect some level of technology in their classes. Sac State professors have found students particularly like lots of choices, and feedback in the form of quizzes that tell them why an answer is wrong or let them compare their short essay answer to the professor’s. The students, Bayard says, often finish such assignments even when they’re not required, and then ask for more. Many professors now offer classes in part or fully online. Others are teaching classes that allow students to watch the lecture on cable television while interacting by telephone. And that requires a special effort by professors to use the technology to teach rather than be drowned out by it. Paula Gardner, a special education professor, has been teaching televised classes since 1998. Some students watch her on television, while others attend live. “I
begin every class by saying, ‘Let’s connect with those
students learning at a distance.’ I show their pictures and
the class says hello,” Gardner says. “The distance students
say this makes them feel like important members of the class.” |
Outstanding Teacher award recipients
The Outstanding Teacher award is presented annually to a professor in each of Sac State’s seven Colleges.
College of Arts and Letters
Robert Olmstead, English, 1996-97
Sally Perkins, Communication Studies, 1997-98
David Madden, English, 1998-99
Lucien L. Agosta, English, 1999-00
Lawrence Chase, Communication Studies, 2000-01
Randolph Mayes, Philosophy, 2001-02
Virginia Kidd, Communication Studies, 2002-03
School
of Arts and Sciences (divided into three colleges in 1996-97)
Kenneth Owens, History, 1992-93
M. Hossein Partovi, Physics and Astronomy, 1992-93
Addison Somerville, Psychology, 1992-93
William Dorman, Journalism, 1993-94
Shotaro Hayashigatani, Ethnic Studies Center, 1993-94
Peter Shattuck, History, 1993-94
Marda West, Biological Sciences, 1993-94
Daniel R. Decious, Chemistry, 1994-95
Linda Palmer, English, 1994-95
Mark R. Stoner, Communication Studies, 1994-95
Rose L. Vines, Biological Sciences, 1994-95
Juanita Barrena, Biological Sciences, 1995-96
Diane Carlson, Geology, 1995-96
Scott Farrand, Mathematics, 1995-96
Mark Hennelly, Jr., English, 1995-96
College
of Business Administration
Suzanne M. Ogilby, Accountancy, 1993-94
Reginald A. Goodfellow, Organizational Behavior and Environment, 1994-95
Lindle Hatton, Management, 1995-96
P. Michael Sparks, Organizational Behavior and Environment, 1996-97
Gail Tom, Management, 1997-98
Hamid Ahmadi, Management, 1998-99
Craig Kelley, Management, 1999-00
Manfred “Bob” Hopfe, Management Information Science, 2000-01
Merle Martin, Accountancy, 2001-02
Ralph Pope, Management, 2002-03
College
of Education
James R. Neal, Teacher Education, 1992-93
Chris Hasegawa, Teacher Education, 1993-94
William Harris, Special Education, Rehabilitation and School Psychology,
1994-95
Paula Gardner, Special Education, Rehabilitation and School Psychology,
1995-96
Nadeen Ruiz, Bilingual Multicultural Education, 1996-97
Elva Durán, Special Education, Rehabilitation and School Psychology,
1997-98
Bruce Ostertag, Special Education, Rehabilitation and School Psychology,
1998-99
Nancy Cecil, Teacher Education, 1999-00
Cid Gunston-Parks, Teacher Education, 2000-01
Paula Gardner, Special Education, Rehabilitation and School Psychology,
2001-02
Sherrie Carinci, Teacher Education, 2002-03
College
of Engineering and Computer Science
S.K. Ramesh, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1992-93
John L. Clevenger, Computer Science, 1993-94
Kenneth Kerri, Civil Engineering, 1994-95
John Gwynn, Jr., Computer Science, 1995-96
Turan Gonen, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1996-97
Jean-Pierre Bayard, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1997-98
Fred Reardon, Mechanical Engineering, 1998-99
Preetham B. Kumar, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1999-00
Estelle Eke, Mechanical Engineering, 2000-01
Cui Zhang, Computer Science, 2001-02
James Bergquam, Mechanical Engineering, 2002-03
College
of Health and Human Services
Lynn Cooper, Social Work, 1992-93
Fred Baldini, Health and Physical Education, 1993-94
Irvin Faria, Health and Physical Education, 1994-95
Krishna Samantrai, Social Work, 1995-96
Robert Hubbell, Speech Pathology and Audiology, 1996-97
Carolyn VanCouwenberghe, Nursing, 1997-98
Louis Elfenbaum, Health and Physical Education, 1998-99
Ernie Olson, Recreation and Leisure Studies, 1999-00
Candace Goldsworthy, Speech Pathology and Audiology, 2000-01
Lindy Valdez, Kinesiology and Health Science, 2001-02
Francis Yuen, Social Work, 2002-03
College
of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Jeri M. Langham, Biological Sciences, 1996-97
Michael Shea, Physics and Astronomy, 1997-98
Melanie W. Loo, Biological Sciences, 1998-99
Elizabeth Ebrahimzadeh, Mathematics and Statistics, 1999-00
Robert Metcalf, Biological Sciences, 2000-01
Richard Fish, Chemistry, 2001-02
Sukhbir Mahajan, Physics and Astronomy, 2002-03
College
of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies
Robert Kloss, Sociology, 1996-97
John Henry, Economics, 1997-98
Jeffrey Lustig, Government, 1998-99
John Syer, Government, 1999-00
Diana Tumminia, Sociology, 2000-01
Ted Lascher, Public Policy and Administration, 2001-02
Amy Liu, Sociology, 2002-03
CSUS
Outstanding Professor
M. Hossein Partovi, Physics and Astronomy, 1995-96
(award not given since)