From There to Here: Award Winning Adjunct Faculty Discuss Excellence in the Classroom

by Greg Beatty

It’s the start of a new class. You’re about to enter the classroom, but you pause for a moment just outside the door. You have a vision of where you’d like to be at the end of the class. It’s a vision full of practical rewards and the joy of learning—but how do you get there from here? What can you do to entice students to join you, and to make your shared journey of exploration a successful one?

Well, several adjunct faculty who have won awards for their teaching would suggest you’ve already taken the first crucial steps. Now all you need to do is share them with your students. Harry Reicher, who was awarded the 2004 Adjunct Teaching Award at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, puts it this way.

“On that first day of class, my goal is to convey a sense of drama, of an adventure unfolding, one that will continue to unfold throughout the semester.”

Reicher does this by walking students through an overview of the course, explaining how conceptual and historical factors they’ll be exploring together are actively shaping the world in which they live.

Other award-winning adjuncts agree. Dave Koranda, who in 2002 won the University of Oregon’s 2002 Marshall Award for Innovative Teaching, says he explains course content, the conceptual frame in which the class will take place, and even the methods he’ll use to teach it. He accents the need to “create a dialogue with students as quickly as possible,” so that he and students can have exchanges, rather than a unidirectional flow of information. Ernestine Rombouts, Outstanding Faculty of the Year at the University of Phoenix Washington Campus in 2003, speaks of the first class as a time to set the ground rules for the course, including behavioral guidelines.

“I spend an enormous amount of time doing introductions. I want to get know the students, not just their names, but who they are, what they want, and what their expectations for the course are.”

Recognizing students as individuals is essential to what happens in these award-winning classrooms, most fundamentally as a sign of respect. When asked about his high teaching evaluations, Koranda says they came from the respect he demonstrates for his students.

“Never disparage a student,” Koranda said.

Harry Reicher would agree, noting that his students often praise his ability “to treat all views with respect.” However, Reicher takes that principle even further.

“No student is ever embarrassed in my class. I work to create an atmosphere in which anyone feels free to ask any question whatsoever,” Reicher said, “and I work very hard to uncover the good points that can be brought out of any question, to show the students the important ideas implicit in their comments.”

Respect is also important as a stepping stone to another goal: creating a congenial learning environment in which students interact as equals, and according to their individual learning styles.

“It isn’t necessary for every student to speak up in every class. Different students learn in different ways,” Reicher said, adding that some may feel most comfortable learning by scribbling copious notes in silence.
Acknowledging this goes a long way towards making students feel at ease in his classrooms, but Reicher does considerably more.

In many law school classes, a final exam accounts for 100 percent of the grade. On the first day of class, Reicher gives students a choice. They may choose this traditional method of evaluation, or they may have the exam count for a smaller portion of their grade (40 percent), and write a research paper on a topic of their choice. Reicher works with students on their papers, encouraging them along the way both to follow their personal interests and to advance their professional goals; Reicher’s students have published their papers as notes, or even full articles, in law journals.

Teaching at Olivet Nazarene University, John Von Thaden places a similar value on communication skills independent of content of the business classes he teaches. Von Thaden takes great care to not only involve the students, but to provide multiple avenues for learning that fit the specific contexts in which he encounters students. Von Thaden teaches in adult learning situations, and in classes that meet only one evening a week. In those classes, besides planning for discussion, “it is important to bring groups (not always the same teams) together to collaborate.” Von Thaden regularly has those teams present their work to the class. He also requires group work outside of the classroom, so that individual learning is re-enforced by peer to peer learning.

Dallas Lacy, who in 2002 won the University of Texas at Arlington’s Adjunct Teaching Award for Outstanding Teaching in the College of Liberal Arts, accents the need to shift teaching techniques even from class to class in the same context, because “what works for one class may not always work great for another.

” After describing one successful class, Lacy said, “when I repeated the same approach the following semester, I did not achieve the same success that I had the first go around. I think my excitement on the first go around carried the day. I think the lesson from my freshman teaching was that ‘newness’ is valuable primarily from the standpoint of a teacher’s enthusiasm. But ‘new’ approaches have considerable value after all because of the teacher’s enthusiasm.”

He added, “I wouldn’t be too surprised if creativity is not proven to be the most important trait of an effective teacher.”

Finding ways to maintain one’s freshness, and to incorporate creativity in each class, is clearly crucial. A major way to keep things fresh is to organize the class to accent student experience. Rombouts described the difference as phenomenal between two versions of a class focusing on working with groups. She had inherited a course plan which asked students to write individual research papers as their final project; Rombouts changed that to an applied exercise in facilitating a group, the nature of which students did not know until they entered. On a more basic level, Rombouts brings in the actual documents and handbooks students will use in the field, to show them precisely what they’ll be dealing with.

Von Thaden, too, accents this practical application of potentially abstract course materials; when he won the Willis E. Snowbarger Award for Teaching Excellence for 2001, “students consistently praised the ability to translate business theory into workable management concepts.” To this, like Professor Reicher and Koranda, Von Thaden adds the practice of integrating current articles, which may be as new to him as to the students, and exploring them together.

Von Thaden says, “When you see students take a case or article they’ve never seen before and write a logical, well-organized, and clear assessment of how the article relates to key course concepts, you know that the students have internalized these concepts and won’t quickly forget them–that’s the sign of good teaching.”

Reicher also accents not just the practicality and applicability of his courses, showing how the material in his courses on the Holocaust and the law directly relate to his students, he incorporates multi-media. Many instructors show an occasional video; that’s pretty common. What’s striking is Reicher’s judicious and focused use of new technologies, showing all of one video if useful, but perhaps only two minutes of another on DVD. Reicher is always seeking to present the material in the most appropriate medium for student involvement and retention, and always seeking to make the material live for his students.

Ruth Walsh McIntyre, a colleague of Rombouts at the University of Phoenix, who won the Outstanding Instructor award the previous year, described all that she did to make her graduate classes in business, management, and human leadership come to life.

“I come to class with a lot of props,” she said. “Silly Putty, blocks, games modeled on television shows, class material made into crossword puzzles…they love it.”

She rarely lectures, but when she does, she calls on skills developed in her previous career as a journalist and news anchor to “do the research to make sure her information is up to date,” but also to synthesize and present the material in the most effective manner possible. Clearly, this means a great deal of work outside of class, and McIntyre admits that it is “very tiring, very time-consuming.”

So why do this extra, often unpaid work? The answers instructors gave to this question are the same as those given when asked why they work so hard to keep things fresh: an appreciation of one’s context and one’s discipline that rises to the level of love. Several of these individuals who had been singled out for awards turned around to nod in the direction of others to whom they owed much. Lacy suggested the names of more appropriate colleagues, Rombouts praised her great colleagues and how much she loved talking about teaching, and Reicher went into detail praising all that the support personnel at Penn had done for him, especially his library liaison.

These teachers appreciate their disciplines in the broadest sense. Ernestine Rombouts spoke of the need to “really love what you’re doing and make it your own.”

McIntyre also spoke openly of her love for teaching, and her voice jumped with affection and excitement as she singled out teachers she’d had in the past who served as models for her own teaching. Lacy mentioned consciously studying teaching technique, ever seeking better methods. Von Thaden accented his desire to really know the course, the material, and text, so as to avoid being that sort of teacher we all had at one point, who’s just barely ahead of the syllabus. Reicher mentioned similar vivid models of bad teaching he wanted to avoid, but also accented a simple affection for humanity inherited from his family.

Most of those interviewed mentioned the difficulty of really building connections with students as adjuncts-and then shared suggestions for how they did it. For example, Rombouts guides students in agreeing to confidentiality, so that deeply personal issues can be addressed. She described an instance in which there was a student learning team that was severely divided along racial lines. Clearly, she said, “no one had addressed it.”

But rather than going along with what was effectively a conspiracy of silence, she said “okay, a perfect teaching opportunity.” Just as clearly, addressing such issues is not comfortable, and requires commitment, honesty, and presence more than specific techniques.

Harry Reicher maintains his connection with students by being available at all hours for phone calls and e-mail; his students joke that the average response time for an e-mail sent Reicher is “about twenty seconds.” This level of accessibility cannot be easy, but it is legendary among Penn students, who have called his classes “incredible.”

What fuels this level of accessibility? In these teachers, it’s hard to see it as anything but love, for their students, their discipline, and the act of service, a love that leads to a real and pervasive humility. Rombouts says that when she won her teaching award she “literally fell to her knees” with the honor. Reicher’s discussion of his teaching is suffused with an appreciation for those he teaches, and with a joyous gratitude for the contact he’s had with them.

So now, when you come out of that reflective pause outside the classroom door, you have, like students in a well-designed class, a set of objectives and guidelines that is at once specific and ambitious, one that addresses both subject matter and shared humanity. Like them, you’re probably overwhelmed. If you need something to sustain you on your journey, and if you remember nothing else, remember, as Reicher says, “Students are number 1. Number 2. And number 3.” That should sustain you. Well, that, and love.