Andrea West has been teaching composition and English courses at MTC for two decades. She's explored and developed many creative, effective methods to help her students with core skills that they'll use in many aspects of their education and careers. She sees great value in the versatile and fundamental skills the School of English and Humanities provides to students. Regardless of their goals, the ability to critically analyze information and to communicate effectively in speech and writing will help students in their professional and personal lives. These are skills that further connection between people and their communities. 

Getting to know your fellow instructors in other parts of the college can be a great boon to our sense of community. If you'd like to have a conversation about writing in your classes with Andrea or with other instructors about teaching across the college, reach out to the CTE. As English majors love to say, "only connect."

At MTC, we look into the college and our teaching and we look outward into the community to align our classes with who our students are and what they need. Janie Kronk, who teaches Architectural Engineering, lives in this doubleness, often moving back and forth across the college’s threshold. Janie is an architect who only recently joined our teaching community. That freshness of perspective is an important part of our community. In my conversation with her, I see her very much at the threshold between the teaching community and the external community. She looks inward at the skills she’s teaching her students and then outward at the community projects she connects students with.

This flow with our larger community is something that's happening in many ways all over the college. It can

be more subtle in some departments, but I see Janie constantly stitching teaching with non-teaching praxis. In our conversation, here is yet another unique and important perspective on our flow with the larger community.

Come spend some time with Architectural Engineering. 

Robert Marchi, another community professional who left his practice to become an educator, teaches in the School of Healthcare. 

He sees our college as a vital component of healthcare in our state. MTC confers certifications that gets people directly into the workforce at many levels. Being a part of sending good healthcare workers into our communities is a source of joy and satisfaction for Robert. 

He also feels the stakes of his instruction: without a good foundation, students won't go on to succeed and be compassionate and competent caregivers. So he sweats the details. His attention to broad issues and unit details make him a conscientious instructor. On the episode webpage, you'll find some fun examples of his creative teaching: multilinguistic "words" he and his students have cobbled together to engage their mastery of medical roots, stems, and suffixes. You'll also find some information about how he frames emotionally difficult topics, which abound in medicine. 

Come spend some time with Healthcare.

Kari Beaty, child of and grandchild of teachers, swore she would never teach. Her teaching career has now spanned 47 years. 

In the second of our conversations with life-long instructors, Kari charts the way she discovered teaching and how it's stayed alive for her over the years. Kari teaches Math in the School of STEM. She also teaches those learning to be K-12 Math teachers. The creativity and art of teaching is something she's given a great deal of thought to.

She also talks about the emotional investment teaching requires and how much wisdom a professor needs--and how that wisdom can be very hard won and sometimes come much later than we would wish. 

Come spend some time with Math.

Drew Casper is another trained expert, a psychologist, who left his practice to go into teaching the community. In my conversation with Drew, you can hear the myriad subtle and deliberate ways he's observing his classes and individual students and responding to needs as they arise. The humanist base of Drew's teaching philosophy is crystal clear: the humanity of his students comes first - and his own humanity is present with theirs. As we talk, you'll hear how his habits of reflection and inquiry allow him to better reach his students. He's also willing to talk about handling mistakes in the classroom and handling student crises, which college instructors are often witness to. His years in the classroom have lead to big changes in his teaching methods as he's discovered who he wants to be as an instructor and how he finds his students learn best. 

Come spend some time with Psychology.

Greg Colley, originally a professional engineer, teaches Math in the School of STEM. He approaches teaching with an engineer's eye for design and solutions. When I talk with Greg about his teaching and his students, I hear him consistently asking, what is needed? What's the best way to get there? In my conversation with him, I heard the value of this patient, persistent evaluation and search for solutions that will help his students and the workforce of our state. Another benefit of consistent inquiry and improvement is keeping himself engaged in his teaching. Burnout is always a risk as teaching careers unfold and Greg's consistent exploration helps keep his teaching life vital. 

Come spend some time with Math.

Leah Norris Teaches Economics in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She has a particular talent and determination to show her students how the theories she teaches are not just abstractions; those theories are describing and predicting patterns that we participate in and are touched by every day. Our conversation reminded me that in most instruction, one of our first jobs to to encounter student misconceptions and continually connect them to the reality of what we’re teaching.

Come spend some time with Economics.

This is a short excerpt from my original conversation with Errol Alger. In it, Errol offers close reading and interpretation of two paintings: The Red Studio by Matisse and Starry Night by Van Gogh. Through them, he explains how he connects this kind of learning to the important skill of critical thinking.

Errol Alger teaches Art in the School of English and Humanities. He has an expansive sense of time when it comes to his part of an education. While he’s teaching his class with its learning outcomes, he’s also aiming to alter the very way his students perceive the world around them for the rest of their lives. During my conversation with him, I realized that we constantly returned to what he, as their instructor, was bringing to his students every single class. So that’s my question for this episode: what do we bring to our students? There’s a unique answer to this in every classroom and here is Errol’s perspective.

Come spend some time with Art.