THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 6, 1994 TAG: 9407060374
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Nearly every student has that one professor who changed her life.
For Cathleen Smith, a recent Tidewater Community College graduate, it was Bill Reese in economics.
She wanted to get into a Washington seminar that required an 11-page paper and a course on trade with China. ``He basically created a class for me, worked with me and believed in me enough to say, `Go, go, go!' '' Smith said. Even now, she still asks him for information - and he gets it for her.
For Linda Brown, a Virginia Wesleyan College junior, it's political scientist Del Carlson. He's got a tough-as-nails reputation, but he's easy to talk to: ``It doesn't matter how many times you ask the same question, he always tries to give you a different way of explaining it. He's just wonderful.''
Johnnie Long, a Norfolk State University junior, loved Anthony Preston's course on TV production because of the freedom he gave students. ``He enabled us to produce our own shows that were broadcast on cable stations. He just really enabled us to expand our minds and come up with our ideas and produce those ideas.''
Last week, four local college students got together to talk about professors - the good, the bad and the deadly dull. The best professors exemplified what they most wanted out of their instructors - freedom, accessibility and ardor.
``A really good professor,'' said Smith, 33, of Virginia Beach, ``is somebody that empowers the students, rather than somebody who says, `Read chapter such-and-such' and you regurgitate it back on a test.''
And the top-notch professors, they said, also invite students' questions, and not just about the course material. ``This year,'' Long, 20, of Portsmouth, said, ``I've had a lot of personal problems, medical problems, and I had professors who were willing to listen to me and I wasn't ashamed to sit down and talk to them.''
Sometimes, they agreed, it's best not to listen to student advice on professors. At Virginia Wesleyan, said Brown, 19, of Virginia Beach, the word is ``never take a Dr. Carlson class.''
Tamara Menear, a 21-year-old Old Dominion University senior from Norfolk, cited sociology professor Helen Rountree for her excitement for the subject: ``She's, like, an expert on the Powhatan Indians, and she is an amazing woman. You can tell that she goes home and thinks about the things that she's thought about all day, and she enjoys what she does.''
Without that passion, a professor can be as ineffectual as Brown's freshman biology teacher: ``For the whole 50 minutes, this man does not move, his voice is monotonous. Nothing ever changes. You come in, you sit, he lectures, you leave.''
But faculty shouldn't give students too much slack, either. ``Don't let the students run your class,'' Brown said. ``There are a lot of teachers that try to be too friendly and too nice, but people like to know they earned their A.''
And that's what she hopes to get from Carlson. She's had him for three courses, and she hasn't gotten an A yet, but she'll keep trying next year. MEMO: Staff writer Holly Wester contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Johnnie Long
Linda Brown
Tamara Menear
Cathleen Smith
by CNB