Arts & Humanities Monthly Features
A Passion for Teaching
By Lyman Grant
One of the pleasures of serving Austin Community College as a dean is reviewing the Faculty Evaluation Summary Forms — believe it or not.
Reading these evaluations is instructive and inspiring. I am deeply gratified to see that students at ACC rate their instructors very highly.
This past spring, as I reviewed the Faculty Evaluation Summary Forms, I felt very good about what we accomplish in the Arts and Humanities Division. But, suddenly, something shifted for me. One of the rhetorical strategies used by administrators nation–wide clicked for me — not as a truism, but as an actual fact. The truism goes like this: faculty are the college’s primary resource. We have all heard something like this hundreds of times. This time, though, I decided to act as if I knew the truism to be true.
As I phrased it to myself in my office in March: If I want to know what excellent teaching is and what it is composed of, I should ask excellent teachers. So as I read the evaluation summaries this year, I began to make a list of teachers whose evaluations somehow popped out at me. My list grew to about 40 adjunct faculty members from all seven departments. I then invited these professors to meet me and each other in one of three meetings held April 28th at Rio Grande, April 30th at South Austin Campus, and May 1st at Northridge. I want to thank the 21 faculty members who made time for meeting.
Our discussions in these meetings ranged over topics including faculty relationships with and desires concerning ACC, student skill and intellectual levels, college support services, technology in the classroom, and others. But one question was primary: Why do you think ACC students rated you as an excellent instructor?
I have to say that these were three of the most informative and inspiring meetings I attended last academic year. We have compiled the results of these discussions, and of a questionnaire we sent to the faculty, and placed them on the division’s web site http://www/austincc.edu/ah.
Almost to the professor, the answer to the question is that these teachers are passionate about teaching. I mean really passionate. They love teaching, love sharing knowledge, love enticing students to learn. These teachers don’t want to sit around and discuss how students are poorly prepared, rude, demanding, etc. They want to talk about getting students to work hard, about creating an environment in which students can learn, about an intricacy of their subject and how they have found a new way to communicate it that sticks.
I have worked at ACC for 30 years now, first as adjunct and then as full–time professor. However, in the past three years, as dean, I have taught only two classes, and I did not teach last year at all. This fall, however, I will be teaching a class, as an adjunct, and I will carry the wisdom of those 21 fellow faculty into the classroom with me. At their urging, I will be passionate, positive, organized, supportive, and curious about my students.
I want to encourage all faculty in the Arts and Humanities Division to find ways to rediscover what excellent teaching is, to refuel if we must, to reconnect with that deep desire to communicate that pulled us into this profession. I look forward to talking with you during the semester to experience your passion for teaching.
