Back in the Classroom
By Dr. Edward T. Bonahue, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Originally published November 20, 2014.
The Wednesday Messenger has been a
no-show for most of this semester,
chiefly because my Wednesday nights
have been spent grading papers and
preparing for class. Yes, after five years
as provost, it was high time for me to
get back into the classroom and
reacquaint myself with our students
and with the core of our mission –
teaching. I hadn’t taught a class since
becoming provost, and I have also been
challenging all academic administrators
(including myself!) to do some
teaching. So when a humanities class
opened up over the summer, Bill
Stephenson kindly allowed me to take it
on.
I've learned (or re-learned) a lot from
getting back into the classroom. For
starters, I used to feel very secure in my
"teaching"; now I am learning to ask if
anyone in my class is actually learning
anything. From the first week of class,
and in each week since then, I've found
myself questioning whether my usual
teaching strategies actually do what I
had thought they were doing. Will
students get more from low-risk reading
quizzes or from group work? Should I
go over lots of information in class or
just publish the PowerPoints and use
class for case studies? Should I allow
time for engaging but slightly frivolous
videos or spend the time on solid
course content that I'll be testing? All of
us will answer questions like these as
seems best to us, and I think the only
unwise thing is to stop looking for
improvements and to be content with
the status quo.
I’m teaching a writing-intensive general
education humanities course that
includes considerable reading, two
short papers, three exams with essay
components, and a final in-class essay
examination. I’d estimate that about
half my class are freshmen and half are
sophomores or older. A handful do not
yet write at the college level, and it has
been a struggle to help them frame