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TEACHING OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM
Good teaching produces successful professionals
A great deal of teaching is done in the form of supervising
doctoral dissertations, masters theses and undergraduate theses and
independent studies. A partial list of students whose work I have
supervised is attached below. What I consider most indicative of good
teaching is the subsequent success of my former students.
Doctoral level:
I am my department's most prolific producer of PhD's. All were
able to secure desirable employment as a result of the training they
received with me.
- My first PhD is now a tenured faculty member at Bucknell
University. She teaches folklore, popular culture, and
language.
- Two of my doctoral students work at the University of
Virginia, one as a Faculty Consultant at the Teaching Resource
Center and one as a member of the Instruction Technology
Group.
- One former student is an independent consultant and has worked
for the Smithsonian Institution, the Hillwood Museum, and the
Faberge Arts Foundation. Some of her recent work has included a
Christmas festival for children based on Russian folk
traditions.
- My current doctoral student holds the position of Teaching
Technology Support Partner. He advises faculty and graduate
teaching assistants on technology that they might use in teaching;
he helps train them in the use of appropriate software and acts as
a trouble-shooter.
Students whose dissertations I did not direct, but with whom I
worked extensively, in most cases serving as second reader on their
dissertations, are also very successful.
- One is the Director of the Arts and Sciences Center for
Instructional Technology at the University of Virginia. She has
taken over one of the folklore courses I developed and teaches it
on a regular basis.
- Several are tenured at institutions such as Bates College and
the University of Kentucky. The two that are at Bates and Kentucky
both write more on the material they studied with me, namely
folklore and popular culture, than on the topics of their doctoral
dissertations.
Masters level:
Many students have earned their masters degrees under my
supervision and proceeded to further graduate work or
discipline-related careers.
- Students who went on to further graduate work did so at the
University of Virginia, Berkeley, the University of Alaska.
- The student who is perhaps my most successful MA worked for
the World Bank, was president of a Non-Governmental Organization
specializing in environmental quality issues in the former Soviet
Union and is now working for Amnesty International in Kosovo.
- One student went to work for a law firm specializing in oil
exploration law in countries of the former Soviet Union; this law
firm represents Khazakhstan.
Undergraduate level:
I have had so many undergraduate students that it is impossible to
list all of their successes. Some especially notable ones include:
Just this past semester an undergraduate interested in digital
media and the humanities worked on an independent study project with
me. As part of his project, he created a web site that allows
artistic response to an artistic text. The text is a short story and,
so far, a reader can "respond" by assembling images provided on the
web site to create a pictorial representation of the text. The user
can also create an auditory response using the sound files provided.
We are considering modifying this web site so that it can also be
used to help students with reading problems. This project was
selected as the University of Virginia entry for a national
scholarship award.
- A student specializing in folklore went on to graduate work at
the University of Indiana and later Ohio State University. She is
now on a Fulbright grant in Poland studying jewelry-making.
- A student was in the first group of 50 students and young
professionals, chosen nation-wide, to receive the International
Research and Exchanges Board Young Leader Award. She spent a year
working with women's and other civic groups in Voronezh,
Russia.
- A student went on to graduate work at Michigan and is now a
tenured faculty member at Tufts.
- A student, while still an undergraduate, published an article
based on fieldwork she did under my supervision in Ethos, a
journal of psychological anthropology.
For letters and e-mails from students, see appendix 2.
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