Dan Flory History & Philosophy Bok Sowell Animal & Range Science Jayne Downey Education Jeffrey Conger Art Kay Chafey Nursing Lynda Sexson History & Philosophy F. William "Bill" Brown Business MSU Educators Share Their Passion for Teaching by Jean Arthur, MSU Communications Services Packing a passion to teach and an avocation to learn, Montana State University professors use innovative teaching methods to engage students. Many professors have either retrofitted or abandoned altogether the traditional lecture format to adapt to the manner in which contemporary students synthesize knowledge. That may seem like alchemy, yet through hard work, intensive research and contagious enthusiasm, professors meld students' base knowledge and energy into gold. Some of the outstanding faculty members whose dedication to teaching is exemplary are highlighted here. Dan Flory, History & Philosophy When 90 students in a lecture hall discuss the philosophy of moral theories applied to popular culture, some might hear chaos. To Dan Flory, it's music. When he began teaching at MSU in 1996, he sought ways to encourage students to engage in unfamiliar abstract ideas and theories. With large unwieldy groups, a discussion where all students participate seems impossible. "Working in groups of three to five, students interpret the ethical choices of fictional characters by using philosophical concepts and approaches," says Flory. "In a semester, I give students between 10 and 20 projects. I find that the more projects the students do, the better they understand and enjoy the material." In groups of five or less, each student has the opportunity to participate and learn. The projects lend themselves to rotation of roles and responsibilities. Students examine narrowly focused aspects of moral theories or concepts and apply them to the moral choices faced by characters in classical and contemporary fiction and films ranging from "The Maltese Falcon" and "Vertigo," to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." "The procedures are modeled on those developed by Quakers to structure discussions without formal leaders," says Flory. "It works well with undergraduates who often feel uncomfortable with formality. The students choose their own group members, recorders and facilitators." Flory lectures two-thirds of the time and offers discussions with the class as a whole, yet finds that the projects enrich the material by giving students concrete examples with which to understand difficult theories. "These projects make students active participants in their own education, show how theories and concepts operate in detail, and demonstrate how they apply to their lives," he says. Bok Sowell, Animal & Range Sciences In the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park, Bok Sowell and 16 students examine willows, aspen and sage brush of the Northern Range. The freshmen and sophomores discover an interaction between wildlife grazing and plant responses. "We want to demonstrate that science is a process of testing ideas." says Sowell who taught a new Core 2.0 program test course, this fall, called the Nature of Yellowstone. He designed the natural sciences class to encourage non-science majors to participate in the scientific process. The new Core 2.0 curriculum, required for all incoming freshmen, is a discovery-based, multidisciplinary seminar that encourages students to participate in a shared process of intellectual inquiry. Students explore arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences through foundations of diversity, written communication, quantitative reasoning and contemporary science. The range sciences professor and students spent three days and two nights in Yellowstone in September taking vegetation data. They proposed hypotheses and collected measurements to test their ideas. The students combined all their information and compared results when they returned to the classroom. "We spent more time talking about how you arrive at answers rather than just looking at answers," says Sowell. "We have students on the same project with different answers. One of our objectives was to demonstrate why similar studies reach different conclusions." Students know that the Nature of Yellowstone is definitely not a conventional science course where they sit in class memorizing facts. "It's hands-on and the students definitely like that," says Sowell. "But it's more of a challenge than a traditional class. Because the course is less structured, it requires more discipline. When you get away from multiple choice exams to essay writing and synthesizing information, some students accelerate." As the course evolves to meet new Core standards, Sowell fine tunes activities and assignments for the non-science majors. "At the end of the course, the students have learned some methods of scientific inquiry, and they recognize how scientists arrive at some of their answers," says Sowell. "And perhaps, they will like science just a bit more." Jayne Downey, Education New to MSU in fall 2002, Jayne Downey quickly endeared students to her style of teaching in which education majors experience a wide range of ways to be actively engaged in learning. "I have a very lively classroom," says Downey, an educational psychologist. "We examine different theories of teaching and learning and then work on applying those theories to various classroom problems and scenarios." One of Downey's specialties is teaching future k-12 teachers how to work with "at-risk kids." Her research examines what's called "Educational Resilience," exploring the school-related factors that help youngsters overcome adverse circumstances. She shares these results with her MSU education students in hopes of equipping them with tools to be effective k-12 teachers. "I found that the most successful teachers are ones who build strong relationships with their students," says Downey. "Successful teachers find ways to engage and motivate all the kids including the ones who are at risk for dropping out or failing. I show my students what they as teachers can do to help kids overcome tough situations." Downey considered pursuing a career in counseling psychology but decided to focus her efforts in education instead. "Good educators play an important role in their stu-dents' lives," she says. "So I want to spend the rest of my life helping prospective teachers learn how to be effective in the classroom. If I can teach 200 teachers every year how to motivate and inspire students, and they each teach 30 kids every year, I know we can make a difference in the lives of many children and adolescents around Montana." Jeffrey Conger, Art Flame jobs, hemi engines and hood scoops capture the hearts of the high-octane culture and intrigue students in Jeffrey Conger's graphics and photography classes. The professor was recently named by I.D. Magazine (International Design) as one of the top 50 influential artists in America. As a photographer with classic training in graphic design, Conger fuses seemingly divergent materials--metal and film--into page layouts and magazine covers. As a professor, he encourages students to merge their creativity with commercial interests. "Our role as professionals and educators is to first educate in the ways of graphic design, and then help students explore combinations of artistic talent within a narrative context that will lead to a successful niche," says Conger. "Take a student who rides horses, then comes to Bozeman to study graphic design. After graduation, he or she may be hired as art director for Appaloosa Quarterly." From Bonneville Salt Flats to American LeMans, Conger transformed his early machine shop experiences into text and photos for national automotive magazines. His images of sports cars and hot rods have been displayed at more than 30 galleries and museums across the country. During fall semester, he and three colleagues took 33 students to Seattle to meet leading designers in the region, visit advertising agencies and art museums. "The trip was a big hit," he says. "In the creative field, job matches are based on personality and portfolio so creative teams can exist and be productive. We exposed graduating seniors to real-world experiences and look now to have them placed in and around the Rockies." He notes that recent grads currently work in-house at some of the West's largest corporations including Nike, Adidas, Scott USA, Tower Records, Seattle Times, Boeing and Starbucks. "Anyone can teach a computer program, but to offer a successful arts-design course, you need content, creativity and innovation, which can only be cultivated, not taught," he says. "All the faculty members are proud that the stu-dents in design graduate with their personalities intact." Kay Chafey, Nursing Shells, bells, quills and fringe are not part of traditional graduation gowns. Yet when Kay Chafey's nursing students put on the mortarboard, they also wear traditional Native American dress. They display their heritage and their pride as part of the Caring for Our Own Program (CO-OP). "We call it the CO-OP program to emphasize the partnership of university nursing educators with tribal leaders and native health professionals," says Chafey, project director. Participating tribes include the Blackfeet, Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Rocky Boy, Fort Belknap, Fort Peck and Wind River (in Wyoming). "The CO-OP seeks to increase recruitment, retention and graduation among the Native American students." She notes that there is a serious shortage of American Indian nurses. She says that Native American graduates will provide leadership and excellent culturally sensitive care. The College of Nursing received a Nursing Work-force Diversity grant and a $1.5 million Indian Health Service award to increase the number of Native American nursing students in Montana and northern Wyoming. As project director, Chafey pays close attention to special needs of her students. "Many in the CO-OP program have family, children and financial demands that are challenging," she says of the 30 participants among the nursing school's 764 students. "Without our assistance, they may drop out." She teaches, she tutors, she encourages and sometimes pushes, yet Chafey holds the respect of her students. With the help and support of the CO-OP, Native American students have a much greater chance for success during their initial transition from small towns and tribal colleges to the large university system. Thanks to Chafey, "Pomp and Circumstance" is accompanied by the chimes of shells, bells, quills and fringe, an ode to Caring for Our Own Program. Lynda Sexson, History & Philosophy "Education does not fit the consumer model," says Lynda Sexson, "but is a gift exchange where the good cannot be hoarded, where the good has transformative power." As a humanities professor, Sexson continually evaluates her role as a teacher and as a student herself, curious, analytical and inventive. She models teaching after some of the world's best-known instructors: Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, whose teaching strategies advance the difficult partnership of independence and cooperation. "The writings of these philosophers and teachers enhance our tolerance for the complex and the iconoclastic," says Sexson. "They teach us to trust students and their ideas and experiences." Yet, she sees challenges to academic integrity in the form of the consumer model. "Students seek the most expedient means to 'purchase' bundles of information or strings of grades," she says. "To counteract this assumption, I offer a group or individual assignment with uniform grades. In seminars I am more candid, assigning students individualized, difficult research topics and short presentations." To balance the stress and challenge of graded assignments, Sexson also uses cooperative projects without grades. Initially, she says, students are baffled then animated by the chance to propose novel solutions or approaches. "If students investigate what they learn, they are empowered," says Sexson. "Ultimately, I want students to read and to write, to invent and nurture, to know the close call between word and world." F. William "Bill" Brown, Business "For students to really engage and learn, we have to make what we present simultaneously interesting and useful," says F. William "Bill" Brown, who intersperses what he calls "lecturettes," short explanatory presentations, amidst a variety of other class activities. "I organize my classes so we shift activities about every ten minutes." He notes that a solid educational psychology exists behind his class format or that which accommodates different learning styles. Lecturettes typically occur between case studies, focused listings, small group responses to questions, extemporaneous debates and a variety of experiential exercises followed by discussion and application. Brown says his objective is to infuse business students with the technical skills required to succeed in business organizations combined with effective general interpersonal skills and leadership skills. He finds that typically, undergraduates arrive at the university with little or no managerial experience and not much personal context to understand business and organizational dynamics. "I constantly relate the things we discuss in class to contemporary business/managerial situations and to the basic issues of their personal and interpersonal development," he says. "Teaching this way can be one of the few truly sustainable professions. I consider teaching to be a life- and energy-giving experience. Students infuse me with energy, interest and a sense that I have to prove myself to each new group."