Stakeholder for Innovative Teaching Methods at Furman University
- 1. Name: Entrepreneurship Fanatical! About: He graduated from John Hopkins University (surprisingly not a Business degree!) but spent most of his teaching profession on Entrepreneurship. To him, “you can be in any field to do Entrepreneurship, you just have to have the guts to fail so many times!” *My favorite exclamation of his: • “It’s really interesting that you mention walls as boards, guest speakers, or group working. That’s exactly what we need now at Furman!” What surprises him: • One of his students when asked “So what do you think about the class?” says: “I will never do it!” He said: “I’m very surprised, but glad because he realized he needed many failures before successes could come!” • Stories of entrepreneurial successes from other majors than Business What surprises me: • Problems are not related to Southern tradition, but rather because of the school size which makes it unable to open an Entrepreneurship minor. • How creative Business professors are in teaching in general • This professor is so interested in UIF PLUS he is the Chair of the Business Department makes it easy to launch further I&E onto the department.
- 2. Name: Advisor to the Star About: A typically casual Southern Californian who is open to anything new and fun. He got his Degrees in prestigious schools: Pomona College, University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, and University of Utah, and had work Experience in CNN. He has been teaching Communication Studies at Furman for 13 years. Thoughts about teaching at FU: • FU students meet his high expectations, they are smart but some can be rigid. • Had some creative, group assignments fail because of those “rigid” students. • Finds the use of Discussion Questions per lesson is a good way to bring discussion to Class. Attitude towards Innovate Teaching Methods: • Is open to everything new and fun as said! • Already involves physical movement into the class (4-min break for each >1 hour Class with fun YouTube videos on). • Integrates news on campus and makes joke to make students interested in the Lessons. • Would love to know about more creative teaching strategies such as in the CETL experiment: sticky notes, students standing up and brainstorming (I sent him that!).