Most Dartmouth students think their professors are pretty much on the ball; after all, most of them know their names by the end of the first week of classes, grade their papers quickly, are always available by Blitz and make time other than their set office hours to sit down to chat. Some of our professors, however, extend their time and energy beyond the classroom and into the community.
Upon closer exploration of these projects, it's clear that what drives professors to extra-curricular altruism is their love of learning and teaching: using their training as academics to heighten the educational experience of both those they teach, and themselves.
Roberta Stewart, a professor in the classics department, runs a reading and discussion group for war veterans based around Homer's Odyssey -- the tale of a veteran's arduous return from war. Ann Kraybill, a licenced independent clinical social worker, and Jane Cowan '08, a veteran of the war in Iraq, co-lead with Stewart to provide a forum for discussion and exploration for veterans through reading the Odyssey. Veterans relate their own experiences to Homer's epic and the ancient depictions of warfare and its effect on an individual and his family.
Stewart acts as facilitator, not a lecturer for the group. "Roberta guides you through stuff," Cowan explained.
Stewart reinforced that she did not consider herself an authority within the group. "One of the things that prompted this was the desire to do what I do without the formality of a classroom. But I don't consider myself to be teaching [Cowan] or to be teaching the guys."
Stewart believes that she is constantly learning from the discussion group and that the members of the group often have insights that she does not have as a civilian. "One of the vets said 'Lots of heroes survive Troy, but not many survive the homecoming.' That's not me, that's one of our vets."
Pete Mathias, '09, who is working on a thesis with Stewart, explained, "I don't think Professor Stewart views this as community service. Certainly it's selfless, but it's more of an opportunity for her and everyone else involved to take an experience they've had and explore it in a text that's...[so] old ."
Stewart believes that she gains as much from the group as the veterans do. "It's really an extraordinary experience for an academic to sit down with people who have seen up front what most academics have only read about in old texts," Mathias said.
Even though Stewart's discussion group does not aim to impact students, they nonetheless find her work inspiring. Lauren Hartz, '09, who has had Stewart as a professor, was struck by her investment inside the classroom, and sees Stewart's discussion group as an extension of this involvement. "You don't have to be in the classroom to see how inspiring she is," Hartz said.
Mathias agreed. "I don't study the classics just so I can impress some girl with Latin poetry. I hope there is some insight it can give with our own modern struggles. Professor Stewart does something that very few people do in the classics: taking an epic from 1200 BC and relating it to people of 2008."
Karolina Kawiaka is an architecture professor in the studio art department. Working with the Tucker Foundation and the environmental sciences department, Kawiaka has made community service a part of her classes in architecture and sustainable design. Her projects with her students, she says, stem from her own interests. "More and more I've been giving students projects that interest me, like super insulated zero energy projects. The students are very bright and research things and come up with ideas that I would never have come up with. My design work feeds off of my teaching work," she explained.
Thus, bringing a service project into her curriculum was only natural. "I did a big project [with my classes] on Route 12 -- a sort of anti-sprawl development project -- and it got a lot of local press and a lot of great conversation with the local planning board," Kawiaka explained.
Kawiaka believes that a hands-on educational experience allows students the opportunity to learn a lot more than they may in a lecture, in addition to giving them an opportunity to help the community.
"The students learned a lot and we had a positive impact on changing the zoning for the area," explained Kawiaka. "[The project allowed] students ... to talk to the public and work with the public -- [opportunities] that private people hired by real estate development don't have."
Kawiaka emphasized that a real-world project did not only help the community but allowed her students to learn in a way that is unavailable in the classroom. "There's a complexity to community projects that we all learn a lot from as opposed to giving us sort of an imaginary project."
In addition, Kawiaka was quick to say that the students aren't the only ones who learn through these community-oriented projects.
"I'm learning with the students," she said. "Every term it's new problems and new classes, so as a professor it's exciting for me. It's also difficult and I think that when the students see that I'm learning, too, and that it's more about a process where there's no right answer ... it's inspiring for the students to see that."
Like Kawiaka, Bridget Coggins stressed the benefits of experiential learning for students through involvement in projects outside of the classroom. It's a process she witnessed firsthand as the female faculty advisor for last summer's Project Preservation, which sends students to Eastern Europe to restore Jewish cemeteries that have been abandoned, or worse, since the Holocaust. In 2007, the project went to a cemetery in Yugoslavia after visiting Holocaust sites in Krakow and Aushwitz, Poland.
"It's not just going to historical sites, but taking knowledge of these atrocities' part of our world's history and turning it into something positive," explained Coggins. "This is something you can't get in a classroom."
Coggins, a professor in the government department, decided to join with Project Preservation, which is cosponsored by Dartmouth Hillel and the Dickey Center, after one of her students approached her. Her status as a young professor made her eager to get involved in student projects, and Project Preservation provided her with the opportunity
"It was a time to work with students outside the classroom, both collaborate [with students] and work in the service of good," said Coggins.
Coggins pointed out that her field in particular lends itself to service-oriented projects and urged students to seek involvement if they are interested. "Particularly in the work that I do, there are many different social organizations that impact the community ... "
She was particularly impressed by the students who participated: "The students self-select; they are all highly motivated and dedicate themselves to the project."
Juliet Coffey '09 was one such student on the Project Preservation trip to Yugoslavia. Coffey appreciate Coggins's involvement even before the trip started.
"Bridget was at all our meetings, and really made an effort to get to know all the students one-on-one," recalled Coffey. "She made an effort not to be an authority figure but to be a group member and our friend."
Coggins' interest in experiential learning was also clearly absorbed by the student members of the trip. Coffey described her Project Preservation experience as being educational in a way that sitting in a classroom could not be. "I've read a lot about the Holocaust, but [being in Lithuania] it takes on a whole new reality. You hear about all these Jewish people dying and you go there and they're not there, they have no descendents."
Still, Coffey believed that it was Coggins' energy, as a group member and as an educator, that made the trip a success
"When we got to Lithuania, she got right to work with us, lugging cement around the cemetery," said Coffey. "She brought a life to the trip that wouldn't have been there if she wasn't there."
Amy is a deputy editor for The Mirror.
