In this entry, Associate Professor, Jorge Del Pozzo Gonzalez, in the Department of Language, Culture, and Communications, reflects on the Teacher/Scholar model:
In Spanish, as well as in English, the four P´s (in commonly used business jargon) refer to: Place, Product, Promotion and Price. In his recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education (see link below), Professor Rob Jenkins of Georgia Perimeter College identifies an alternate set of four P´s that he sees as the main characteristics of great teachers: Personality, Presence, Preparation and Passion. I know firsthand that many of my faculty peers in CASL exemplify these characteristics. Teaching/learning is a relationship: like a plant it requires both internal and external inputs to grow and bloom—nurturing, water, sunlight, care. Both the faculty members and the students in this relationship are constantly aware of how that relationship is evolving.
Too many people tend to dissociate teaching from research, yet the University of Michigan-Dearborn emphasizes the importance of the teacher-scholar model. How are these two activities linked and how does one inform the other? How do faculty balance these two pursuits? Students sometimes find themselves at the same crossroads: Studying or working? Additional classes or an internship? Any college of arts and sciences, particularly our very own CASL, is an ideal spot for developing and disseminating the concept of balance and connection. The link between teaching and doing research is just another relationship that needs some love in order to bloom.
Recently, in another article about careers that appeared in blogs.sciencemag.org (see link below), Dan Albert offered ten reasons why including humanities in preparation for a scientific career is crucial, and this applies to students and faculty alike.. Albert’s 1st and 4th points, “Humanities prepare you to fulfill your civic and cultural responsibilities,” and “Humanities study strengthens the ability to communicate and work with others,” respectively, address the role humanities can play in striking a balance between home and the workplace.
I’ll conclude with Albert´s 10th point: “The study of humanities teaches that the supposedly sharp dichotomies that separate sciences from humanities do not really exist.” Said another way, culture influences science and science influences culture. Whatever your career, your major, your passion, find your equilibrium, juggle all worlds possible and live them to the fullest. As a faculty member, balancing the teacher-scholar model presents its own challenges. I may not be very good at it, but I don´t think it matters: I believe demonstrating a balance is and should be our nature, our way of living. Furthermore, it should be the main way to keep up our relationship with our students in order to show them how teaching and scholarship are intricately connected, as are personal and professional success.
http://chronicle.com/article/The-4-Properties-of-Powerful/228483/
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Friday, April 3, 2015
The Art of Thinking
Another in our ongoing series of guest faculty blog posts; this one by Professor of Mathematics (and Associate Dean) Michael Lachance:
The single greatest export from a mathematics department is not mathematicians, but clear thinkers. Under the guidance of an instructor, students in mathematics classes, at every level, practice thinking. These days words like creative and critical adorn the main activity of thinking, but those words distract from what is really important: practicing thinking.
Mathematics does not have a lock on thinking. In every classroom around campus students are engaged in the practice of thinking, guided by teachers whom themselves are skilled in the art of thinking. At a university there is a path, a practice, for nearly every interest. It is tempting to distinguish among the paths—disciplines, minors, majors, and degrees—attributing a cloak of purity, perhaps exclusivity, to some over others. To do so is unfair to the student who pursues a passion or a dream, in either case a path, who chooses a form of practice with a distinct focus, under the guidance of a host of teachers who possess that passion.
Professors at a university are at once teachers and students. Their role in guiding and developing students is profoundly important, but the reason that they are given that opportunity is because of their past and ongoing commitment to their discipline, to their own thinking. Their effectiveness as a model is a function of their practice, their discipline, and this they deepen with each investigation, experiment, article, or book.
Young men and women who do not attend a university think no less than those who do. But the former are in effect responsible for developing their own thinking skills, sometimes missing the directed instruction that teachers provide. They have teachers to be sure—family and friends, workplace associates, structured religions, and media outlets. Even so, these students are less likely to be aware that these are their teachers. Students at a university, by virtue of their exposure to different thinkers and ideas, thoughts and models, are more likely to see themselves as engaged in a practice, to be reflective, self-aware, to see themselves in a context.
There is a phrase in some Buddhist traditions that is germane: “which must be cultivated to be known fully.” Cultivation is the key, whatever one’s pursuits or talents. And practicing thinking, for students and teachers alike, is how we come to know more fully.
The single greatest export from a mathematics department is not mathematicians, but clear thinkers. Under the guidance of an instructor, students in mathematics classes, at every level, practice thinking. These days words like creative and critical adorn the main activity of thinking, but those words distract from what is really important: practicing thinking.
Mathematics does not have a lock on thinking. In every classroom around campus students are engaged in the practice of thinking, guided by teachers whom themselves are skilled in the art of thinking. At a university there is a path, a practice, for nearly every interest. It is tempting to distinguish among the paths—disciplines, minors, majors, and degrees—attributing a cloak of purity, perhaps exclusivity, to some over others. To do so is unfair to the student who pursues a passion or a dream, in either case a path, who chooses a form of practice with a distinct focus, under the guidance of a host of teachers who possess that passion.
Professors at a university are at once teachers and students. Their role in guiding and developing students is profoundly important, but the reason that they are given that opportunity is because of their past and ongoing commitment to their discipline, to their own thinking. Their effectiveness as a model is a function of their practice, their discipline, and this they deepen with each investigation, experiment, article, or book.
Young men and women who do not attend a university think no less than those who do. But the former are in effect responsible for developing their own thinking skills, sometimes missing the directed instruction that teachers provide. They have teachers to be sure—family and friends, workplace associates, structured religions, and media outlets. Even so, these students are less likely to be aware that these are their teachers. Students at a university, by virtue of their exposure to different thinkers and ideas, thoughts and models, are more likely to see themselves as engaged in a practice, to be reflective, self-aware, to see themselves in a context.
There is a phrase in some Buddhist traditions that is germane: “which must be cultivated to be known fully.” Cultivation is the key, whatever one’s pursuits or talents. And practicing thinking, for students and teachers alike, is how we come to know more fully.
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