Creative Approaches: Faculty Spotlights

Peter Cleary Yeager
Associate Professor of Sociology
Associate Chairman of
the Department of
Sociology
College of Arts and
Sciences

Using Current Events

"What I enjoy most about teaching is using current events to generate students’ understanding of sophisticated explanations of the social worlds they inhabit. The dramatic, often seemingly distant facts of crime and punishment are among the most compelling interests in our popular culture, and the challenge for me is to transform our typically simplistic, common sense understandings of them into perceptive analysis of the social institutions that we all share."

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William DeJong
Professor, Social & Behavioral Sciences
School of Public Health

Giving Time to Students

"I was fortunate to attend an undergraduate college that expected faculty to devote equal measures of time to teaching and research. Having benefited from that experience, I have always pushed myself to make as much time available to students as I can. I'm not interested in preparing dazzling lectures with over-produced slides, but want to make sure that I put the time in to give students extensive critical feedback on their written and oral work, helping them organize their thoughts and refine their presentation. Good teaching at the graduate level requires nothing less than that kind of commitment."

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Wayne W. LaMorte
Assistant Dean, Education
Professor,
Epidemiology

Active Learning

"My education consisted primarily of lectures and textbooks. These, of course, continue to be vitally important to learning, but I have learned that the key is to create an environment that promotes active learning. There are many techniques for doing this, even in large classrooms with more than a hundred students. The new audience response systems (clickers) and interactive online modules are terrific, but there are also many other low-tech ways of stimulating active learning. Real cases and problems engage students, particularly if they are current and controversial. Even in a large class I will frequent interrupt my lecture to give the students five to ten minutes to work on a problem that requires concepts that I've been discussing. Sometimes I'll ask the students to solve the problem on their own, and then I'll ask them to compare their solution to those of the students sitting with them. It's a great way to break things up and keep them actively engaged with the learning objectives."

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Kristin Collins
Associate Professor
School of Law

Weekly Mini Quizzes

"I give weekly mini-quizzes in my Civil Procedure class using the assessment feature on Courseinfo. Each quiz consists of two to four multiple choice or true/false questions based on the prior week's materials, so they are designed to facilitate review. First year law students are anxious. They generally have little experience with legal reasoning and they face an exam at the end of the semester that usually determines their entire grade. My goal is to get them to think like lawyers about the cases and rules we read and to give them lots of practice at it. Practice makes perfect."

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Janice Furlong
Clinical Associate Professor
School of Social Work

Drawing Inspiration From Others

"I have taught at BU’s School of Social Work for ten years, and draw often on lessons learned from my own most inspiring teachers. These master teachers had strikingly different styles. Some were sharply focused, while others surprised us regularly with unplanned meanderings into a new topic; some were funny and others somber; some were highly interactive while others used primarily a lecture format. What they all had in common, though, was an interesting combination of confidence and humility. These were people of great heart, mind and spirit, who displayed breathtaking depth and breadth of knowledge, who read widely, who thought critically about the subject at hand. At the same time, they were quick to acknowledge the limits of their knowledge and never in the least defensive when confronted by these limits. Perhaps they were all channeling Mark Twain, whose response to a difficult question was quoted to be 'I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I didn’t know.' "

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Robert G. Bone
Richard L. Godfrey Faculty Research Scholar
Professor of Law
BU School of Law

Helping Students Understand

"I like to tell my students that learning the law is like learning to swim—one learns by doing, not just by listening to a lecture. Like learning to swim, learning the law involves some awkwardness and unpleasantness, and even some embarrassment—the legal equivalent of water up the nose, flopping around and the like. What I want students to understand is that I am there to help them through the process, and that I understand how difficult it can be. "

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Shelly Rambo
Assistant Professor of Theology
School of Theology

Translating What They Learn

"One of the challenges I face in my classes is helping students to “translate” what they learn from the study of religion into discussions taking place about religion in a variety of contexts—from politics, to economics, to international law. One of the ways I do this is through their final course project. I ask them to identify the audience they want to address, which determines not only the language they will use in the project but the form of the project itself. For example, in thinking through issues of religion and the environment a student may write an editorial for a local paper. "

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Karen Jacobs
Clinical Professor of Occupational Therapy,
Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Services

Taking Challenges

"I’ve been teaching at BU for 25 years – and every year is new and exciting. One way to keep it that way is to take on new challenges, which I’ve recently done with distance learning. I didn’t know much about distance learning when I agreed to teach my first online course – and figuring out how to bring my classroom style to such a different environment really was a challenge! In the classroom I can engage students with my enthusiasm and humor. I often start class off with a description of a funny situation I’ve been in or something new I’ve tried and that will start a lively discussion. But I had to really think about how to do that online. One way I’ve found is to just to be in regular communication: if I can’t tell the story in person, I can tell it in an e-mail or in an online chat. Technology helps, too. I use a webcam so students can more directly see that I’m excited about the course and the material we’re covering. Because I’m teaching some of the same content in both the on-campus and online courses, I find I bring new insights from each model to the other."

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Lisa Sullivan
Professor and Chair,
Biostatistics
Associate Dean,
Education,
School of Public Health

Real Stories to Make Material Relevant

"The most important thing I do in teaching biostatistics is to take articles and stories from the news to make the material relevant. Clinical trials are a perfect example. We read stories every day about new drugs to prolong life in patients with cancer, drugs to lower blood pressure or to raise our good cholesterol, new stents or heart monitors. The efficacy of these drugs and devices is determined by carefully designed studies and appropriate biostatistical analysis. When students see these applications it really helps them to understand the principles they’re learning in the classroom"

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Anatoly Temkin
Assistant Professor
Associate Chair, Computer Science; Metropolitan College

Engaging Students

"Teaching has always been my passion. There is nothing more rewarding than watching the light of recognition in a student’s face as an abstract theory converts to an applicable reality. I sustain students’ attention by infusing my lectures with humor and facilitate a comfortable environment for sharing any ideas and questions. I engage students’ participation from the beginning of the class to the end by challenging them with numerous questions throughout the lecture. I consider my course a success if students bring eagerness and enthusiasm to learn to the classroom"

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