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Some Sentiments About 20 Years at Stevenson
*** Last week I received an email from human resources about celebrating 20 years at Stevenson University. And I used to think the 13 years I spent at the Baltimore Orioles was a long time. When I taught my very first semester at Stevenson in January of 2000, I was pregnant with my son, Matthew, and was hired as an adjunct professor. Now, Matthew is a junior in college. When you look at it through that lens, a long time has passed. I moved into full-time teaching in 2008, when Stevenson changed its name from Villa Julie College to Stevenson University. Prior to my time at Stevenson, I began teaching…
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Some Updates on Some things
As I’ve been a little out of touch, I thought I’d share a few updates, and things that have been happening during quarantine of late, starting with… The Unnamed Boat The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of excitement. On my birthday in mid-August, my husband surprised me by purchasing a boat. Our friends upgraded to a new vessel, and he bought their boat. As I had been out on their boat several times, it was a lovely, and completely out-of-the-blue surprise. Since then, we’ve been spending as much time on the water as we can before the season ends. Growing up, my dad had boats. When I was…
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12 Tips for Being a Successful College Student
I’ve seen a lot since I taught my first class in 1993 at Anne Arundel Community College as an adjunct. As a professor at Stevenson University since 2000, and full-time since 2008, I can offer some tips to those of you who have children going off to college this year, those who are in college, and those who may be struggling in college for whatever reason. While this list is not foolproof and is certainly not complete (as I’m sure my colleagues could certainly add to it), the list merely serves as a guide for students who want to improve or are taking their first college course. Here is my…
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Tell Your College Students to Pull Out the Old Pen and Paper, Studies Find
You may want to tell your college students to put their laptops away during class lectures. It appears the “old way” of taking handwritten notes in class trumps typing notes into your laptop. If you’d like to know why, a study by researchers Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that taking notes by hand wins out for several reasons. Taking notes by hand offers you the opportunity to write key points as you listen, which engages active listening in students. Students are more selective and write down main ideas, and they highlight and circle things that seem to be…
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8 Things Teachers Enjoy During Summer Break
*** Yesterday, students at Stevenson University celebrated their graduation at our ceremonies in Maryland. As a professor in the department of Business Communication, I was thrilled to see our graduates walk across the stage and receive their diplomas. They worked hard the last four years, and it paid off. As for my colleagues and me, that means we are done teaching until August (unless some are teaching a summer course). While we certainly have preparations to make for the Fall 2017 semester (and I will be teaching a newly created course as well that requires a lot of work), we are free to do some things we want to do…
