THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 6, 1996 TAG: 9608060374
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 141 lines
Lin Logan started her education class with a seemingly simple question: Are teachers professionals?
Broad agreement from the 10 Virginia Wesleyan College students: They sure are.
``Teachers are basically the managers,'' junior Karen Johnston said, ``and students are the employees to fill the goal, and the goal is to learn.''
Then Logan, coordinator of Wesleyan's education department, began taking aim at their assumptions.
Do teachers really enjoy high status in America?
Nope. ``It's thought of as a woman's job,'' senior Linda Terry said, ``and women are thought of as second-class citizens, if that high.''
They don't have their own professional jargon, as doctors and lawyers do, or their own professional boards to discipline incompetents, Logan said. And how about pay?
Lousy, the students agreed. But once again, Logan challenged them.
``Let me argue that point,'' she said. ``Starting at $25,000 a year, that's not bad. These folks work 10 months; they get Christmas break and Easter vacation off.''
Lorraine Nute, a junior in the class, said Logan is ``one of the first professors I've had who really encourages students to dissect the material and come up with their own opinions.''
No surprise, then, that Logan was among five local professors who recently won outstanding faculty awards at their institutions. Logan, 47, is casual and feisty in the classroom. Her goal: to coax students out of their ``comfort zone.''
``I'll throw questions out like `Why do you think that?' '' she said. `` . uncomfortable enough to investigate them.''
But never will she bore in on a student to the point of humiliation. ``Learning has to take place in a safe environment,'' she said. ``Students have to know their ideas are going to be respected.''
Logan was the only one of the five professors teaching a class week before last. But in interviews, Logan and the others sounded similar themes in describing the keys to their success:
Keep talk in the classroom civil. Don't rely on straight lectures. Keep your office door open to students and your eye open to confusion in class. Be prepared. And love what you do.
``The first step to good teaching,'' Logan said, ``is to know the topic you're teaching and have a passion for it.''
Speaking in a monotone is a definite no-no for profs, says Dr. E. Stephen Buescher. No fear of that from Buescher, an associate professor of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School's Center for Pediatric Research.
In conversation, he is wildly animated, his eyes bugging out, his voice rising and breaking into a high-pitched squeal to make a point. He's no different in the lecture hall.
``You're talking to people who were up till midnight the night before,'' said Buescher, 46. ``How do you capture their attention? I'm loud, I ask questions, I make parenthetical comments.''
And he keeps looking at his students ``to figure out whether what I'm saying is registering. If I'm getting double zeroes on their faces, I'll back up and say, `Another way of saying this is . . .' ''
Like Logan, he'll keep testing their assumptions. A favorite classroom technique is to describe a case and ask the students whether it's tuberculosis. If they're sheepish, he'll boom out, ``It is or it isn't. Commit. Tell me what you think.'' Some will say it's TB. Others might guess hepatitis B. Whatever the answer, he'll challenge them to reconsider the evidence.
And then, the last time Buescher tried it, ``one student finally said, `Dr. Buescher, I'm frustrated; we can't tell from this case.' I looked at her and said, `Bingo, you've got it.' ''
For Page R. Laws, an associate professor of English at Norfolk State University, passion is the thing.
``You can't expect students to buy everything you're selling,'' said Laws, 44. ``But they certainly can learn something if you are excited about the material. I always tell my students that whatever they're reading is the greatest thing ever written.''
Laws, a former newspaper feature writer and theater critic, is also director of Norfolk State's honors program, which offers special classes and cultural activities to more than 130 students. She spent eight weeks this summer in South Africa, on a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
``On a good day,'' Laws said, ``teaching at Norfolk State is the best teaching I've ever done or ever will do. . . .Many of our students are the first generation to go to college. When you give them love and attention, they just thrive on it.
``Even if their skills happen to be weak, you have a sense of something opening up.''
Surendra N. Tiwari, eminent professor of mechanical engineering, has taught at Old Dominion University for 25 years. Even so, he spends seven hours researching for every hour he's at the chalkboard, he estimates.
``Once you have that confidence, you're able to project that,'' Tiwari, 60, said. ``You're not scared yourself.''
He also avoids dwelling on the theoretical: ``When you show them the practical applications, that starts getting their attention.'' While lecturing about thermodynamics, he might display graphs or pictures of the ascent of an airplane into the sky or the descent of a spacecraft into Jupiter's atmosphere.
Tiwari is equally respected for his research. He receives about $500,000 in grants annually and spends two days a week at NASA Langley. His specialties include hypersonic air flows, which are five times faster than the speed of sound. Understanding them could help produce a more durable, faster spacecraft.
His research doesn't conflict with his teaching duties, Tiwari said. The days he's at ODU, he usually stays till 7, and students are free to drop by his office. Plus, his NASA work keeps him up to speed in his field, so his students are, too. ``If you don't have good research professors, they will not be able to give a broad perspective,'' he said. ``They'll be pumping out students with no big picture.''
Joseph L. Umidi, a theology professor at Regent University, specializes in the ``practical'' classes - preaching, counseling, urban ethnic ministry. He makes sure his students get practical experience outside the classroom, too.
Umidi helps direct Kempsville Presbyterian Church's partnership with Refuge Church in Chesapeake, which is predominantly black and low-income. He gets his students in on it, too: requiring them to interview Chesapeake residents, draw up a plan for linking churches and - maybe most important - participate in the joint events, like basketball games and just talking to kids.
``You can't understand the content of what I teach unless you see it in the context of the community,'' Umidi, 49, said.
It also shows students how to maximize their influence when they reach the pulpit. ``Evangelicals think their responsibility is to tell people the good news,'' he said, but some forget ``to be the good news, not just to tell the good news.'' Dropping a leaflet or a good-will basket isn't enough, he said. ``Scripture makes it clear, in Isaiah 58, that God calls for a lifestyle of service to the poor, not just an event.''
Umidi said he encourages discussion, but always in a civil tone. During one class, when some students took pot shots at President Clinton, he reminded them that, like him or not, the president should be respected.
``I don't believe in the Rush Limbaugh spirit,'' he said, ``which is sarcastic, putting people down.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
OUTSTANDING FACULTY AWARD WINNERS
Lin Logan
Dr. E. Stephen Buescher
Page R. Laws
Surendra N. Tiwari
Joseph L. Umidi by CNB