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Annual Retreat Reports

The Role of Spirituality in Teaching

The Biggest Challenge in my Teaching is:

What I Learned in College

How to Encourage Students to Look Outside Their Disciplines

Facilitating Communications Skills for Students

The Future of Education is not Technology

How to Balance Teaching, Research, and Service Demands

Excerpt from A Life In School

What I Try Hardest to Accomplish in my Teaching is:

How Do You Balance your Personal and Professional Lives?

Dreams and Reflections

Readings

University of Colorado
President's Teaching Scholars Program
Fall 1999 Retreat Report

What I Learned in College

Panelists: J.J. Cohen. Robert Camley, James Palmer, and Mitch Handelsman

Mitch Handelsman told the story of going to Washington, DC for a fellowship. He had no previous training in policy or politics. When people asked him what he learned from the experience he could say, "everything." "I went to a small Quaker school that altered my values," Mitch said, "because I came from a family that valued education much more than thinking. At college I sat around tables like this being intimidated because I was around professors and students who could think. I learned to participate instead of just digest information in 50-minute chunks. This is why I am a professor; I am still trying to get right what my professors did for me." There was also a strong sense of community at this school, Mitch added. There was a sense that individual human beings can make a difference. "Relationships with people rather than with information are what made me who I am," Mitch said. "I worked in the mail room and knew everyone's name. Having a sense of being in college for a reason was really important for every student."

Jim Palmer was an undergrad at Dartmouth, which had great teaching and a lousy campus atmosphere. "I learned early on, there were a lot of people smarter than I was. I was an English major and when I got a paper returned to me it looked as if it had been stabbed to death with red ink. I talked to a guy next to me who wasn't an English major and he had an ŒA' on his paper. I thought I'd better figure out what kind of strengths I have. I had one good instinct. I read the guy's paper. I learned I was in college to learn what I wanted to know rather than what I wanted to do." Jim mentioned that Hazel Barnes taught some brilliant courses and Les Brill. He thought he could be a good teacher if he could tie himself to good teachers. Also, Jim admired Nancy Hill, Bob Pois, and Jack Kelso as teachers. "I guess I learned that I am not that smart but that I can learn from others," Jim said. "My father didn't like lawyering; he liked building a fire and reading. He read all the time until late into the evening. I took my father's avocation."

Robert Camley said that he went to almost every class his university (CU-Irvine) offered—Pre-Columbian art, film. Whatever. He didn't sign up for them all. In college he found an enormous amount of information available to explore. CCHE with its four-year limit on degrees seems to have forgotten that.

J.J. Cohen started college at 14 and went to McGill University for 14 years. "I could never get out of there," he said, "the fees were so low in Canada that I had to stay there. The thing I remember most was not what l learned but who taught me. My Psych 100 was taught by Donald Hebb, founder of biological psychology. I remember thinking, I can't believe he is taking the time to do this. There was also an endocrinologist, Martin Hoffman. I worked on his ward. He died, and I never told him that I patterned my professional life after him. Wilder Penfield was another, he was almost the founder of neurosurgery. He would draw a picture of the brain on the board using both hands. He knew it was important to impress students. In my school there is not one chair who teaches an entire intro course; how did the teachers I remember find time?"

Judy Stalnaker pointed out the differences in gender. She remembers not going to school to get a career. "I never intended to work a day in my life; we went to college to get married. It was a good thing; I had fun." She saw Marcel Marceau. She loved to study and learned so much. She kept a spiral notebook of quotes that meant something to her. She remembers how difficult things were for women during those years.

Don Kleier attended Xavier in Cincinnati and drove the only car of the family in and out of the city. Then he went to the University of Kentucky in Lexington and lived a couple of blocks from the university. These were two very different experiences. He grew intellectually and socially when he was close to the campus. "My personal and lifestyle growth took off," he said. "I was developing and changing in ways that were more important than what I learned in class. It makes me wonder about the experience of distance learning and what it means not to be associated with a community."

Clayton Lewis mentioned that he meets with introductory students one hour per week. When he once asked how many of them wanted to be educated people only half of them raised their hands.

Denny Webster said that her father didn't think she should go to college, so she went to nursing school. After graduating from nursing school, and when she decided she wanted to go back to college, she didn't get any credit for her nursing school experience. She attended a university without walls, a community college before obtaining two masters and a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. She has since combined experiential and didactic approaches to learning in her own teaching.

Bill Krantz told the story of going to see his undergrad advisor the first week at college. The advisor happened to be Jewish and noticed all the Catholic schools Bill had attended. The advisor told him that they didn't get many Catholic students in the engineering school because Catholic students couldn't separate science from religion. Bill couldn't get that thought out of his mind for many years. Up to that point he had gotten good grades and didn't question anything. That comment changed his life. "I decided to do something that reminded me every day of what I am not doing creatively, " Bill said. "I will ask a question at every lecture I go to."

Jack Kelso was the first person in his family to go to college. "I felt like an imposter in college, like I didn't belong there. It was a small college in central Illinois." One professor made a difference for him. He taught him that using his mind could be enjoyable. Jack got the idea that he wasn't so bad at studying after all.

Dennis Van Gerven mentioned that he was the first person in his family to go to college also. Dennis agreed with J.J. that people make a difference. He remembered a teacher that had suffered a terrible accident. He was damaged and that affected his teaching. He was almost inarticulate; he had nervous tics, and his student evaluations were a disaster. What struck Dennis was that this teacher would try so hard. "I wanted to ache that badly," Dennis said. "I never forgot him."

James Burkhart said that when he attended grad school it occurred to him that this was a racket. You actually get paid to learn, and he thought, how neat that is. That is when he decided to be a professor. He said that in one of his recent intro to physics classes, he got mad at his students. "I can't believe I am doing this great lecture," he said to his students, "and you aren't enjoying it; you are having a time in your life that you will never have again. You are getting paid to learn."

Don Warrick said that he came from Alva, Oklahoma to the University of Oklahoma and experienced culture shock. It was the most amazing time of his life until he got his grades and had a 1.7 grade point average. He couldn't get an athletic scholarship and couldn't pledge a fraternity. He went home a loser and in disgrace. This is when he grew up. He learned that you have to work at things and then you can do almost anything. This experience affects the way he treats students. By the second class, usually 45-50 people, he remembers everyone's names then they mean more to him than just a roomful of faces. Don also remembers going to grad school at USC, and a professor there taught him to think rather than just regurgitate information. He taught him to understand principles and apply them to a situation. Don was stunned by this approach to learning. It motivated him to learn how to think and now he tries to teach his students how to think.

Rick VanDeWeghe learned that teachers can be very powerful and still not know much. In a 9th grade class, his teacher told him that he should never take another math class. His senior advisor told him that he would not write a letter of reference for him to go to college because he wasn't college material. Rick went to college and graduated. His dad was going to punch the counselor in the nose. Rick went on for a master's in English and took the exit course first. It was heavily theoretical and his professor said to him that he really didn't belong in graduate school. Rick didn't quit. People asked him why he would go on for a Ph.D. because he would never get a job. "All these people were saying no, no, no to me and I had to overcome it," Rick said. "It makes me realize what I don't know. I need to be cautious about the advice I give students."

Dennis Van Gerven told the story about his high school counselor. Dennis said that he told his counselor that he was thinking about going to college and the counselor laughed at him. "You are going to be a truck driver like your old man," the counselor told him. After Dennis got his Ph.D. he went back to the counselor who was still there. The counselor was speechless at what Dennis had accomplished. "Don't you ever do that again to anyone else," Dennis told him.