I earned all my degrees from Kent State University. I started my college career at the KSU-Tuscarawas Campus before moving to the Kent Campus as a Broadcast Journalism major. I came to two realizations 5 courses short of my degree; 1) I probably was never going to be the radio voice of the Cleveland Indians and 2) I reeeaaaly hated my broadcasting courses. However, I found that couldn’t wait to get to get to my Psychology courses– so I switched majors my senior year. After finishing up my Psychology degree I switched to Sociology for my graduate work where I was fortunate to be shepherded through my graduate work initially by Stanford Gregory and then by Denzel Benson. I am proud to say I am Denny’s last student– although that sounds as though my antics forced him into retirement (I don’t believe that to be true– although my of the six members of my dissertation committee, four had heart attacks after they agreed to sit on the panel).
I came to Ohio Northen University two years ago to teach Classic and Contemporary Sociology Theory, Introduction to Sociology and a variety of other courses related to my specialty area in social psychology. I also am reprising my life-long role as “sarcastic pain-in-the-butt” (I’ve been told I’m very good at that).
I believe students learn more in interactive classrooms in which they can connect empirical results and theoretical ideas to their own lives. I attempt to focus equally on teaching sociological material, encouraging students to develop a sociological imagination, and pushing the students to develop critical thinking skills. This allows the students to leave my class not only with knowledge of the subject matter, but also with the ability to use that knowledge to better understand the world around them, and the critically evaluate and integrate new information that they may encounter. I try to accomplish this through class discussions, by encouraging students to raise and subsequently answer their own questions, to actively question things that they perceive to be flawed, and to search for answers to these questions from a variety of perspectives. Ideally, as students learn to view their world through various sets of eyes, they begin to understand that the world is a diverse and complex place that is not easily summed up with a single factual statement. In this way, I believe sociology is perfectly suited for diversity education– where cultural and global differences are incorporated and discussed in the subject matter as a way to highlight the impact that differing environments and social structures can alter a system of beliefs, value, and behaviors.
In short, I believe that institutions of higher learning have a primary responsibility to educate and serve those students who come to us seeking knowledge. This responsibility must be balanced with administrative, scientific, and fiscal concerns but the students MUST weigh most heavily in this balance.