Teachers comment on preferred method of running the classroom

Between endless equations and ongoing class readings, students can struggle to make relationships with their professors and can have trouble understanding whether their professors are there to help them succeed or to make their lives more difficult.

Michael Evans, associate professor at the School of Journalism, and Tracy Whelan, a lecturer in the math department, shared their opinions on how they as professors teach their students to the fullest.

IDS: What do you feel should be taught in classrooms? Should there be hands-on experiences, too?

Evans: In college, students are interested in preparing themselves for the real world. They want real-world examples, real-world stories. They want things that are likely to be things they will face as opposed to artificial exercises out of an ancient textbook.

Whelan: The funny thing is that even the types of math that people think of as being very theoretical, somehow eventually we always find applications for them in the long run, anyway. It’s like first we develop the math and then somebody working in physics or relativity will look and say, “Oh look, I can use that for this particular situation and it would be helpful.”

IDS: What do you feel your students will do or read today that will help them in their future?

Evans: We might think that the best things to read are ancient books written 150 years ago that are just wonderful. That’s all well and good, but I want to make sure I’ve also got engaged in the classroom somehow pieces that the students find exciting and interesting in their own right, not just because I say they’re good to read.

Whelan: I hope some of the material will be useful in terms of what they do for a living. We try to not just teach about the mathematics but about how to use the mathematics in practical ways.

IDS: How do you bring experiences you’ve had into the classroom?

Evans: We all love talking about ourselves. It’s never something I have to work at to find a way to insert that into the class. Almost every class, somebody will say something that will click in my mind and a story will come up. The real challenge is to not spend the whole class period talking about my life and my experiences.

Whelan: Math is harder to do that with. You’re not really going to be bringing your
personal experience in. You bring in the things that are useful in terms of “this is how you solve a business problem,” “this is how you can maximize profit.”

IDS: Do you feel like these experiences help students?

Evans: It helps them because I’m speaking from reality. These are real problems, real challenges I’ve faced, and they can imagine facing them themselves once they get out of here. If students are kind of glazing over because I’ve been lecturing too long or the reading is really boring or whatever, then if I can find some legitimate way to just stop and tell them about that time I ran across the polar bears in the Arctic, they tune back in and then their attention is there again, and we can talk about whatever we need to.

Whelan: I certainly hope so. Partly, mathematics is the way we describe enormous numbers of things that happen in the world, like gambling – yes, these are the odds of this happening – or what happens when something is moving in physics or chemistry and heat is produced. It’s supposed to be a language that makes the world more comprehensive.