No. 45 September-October 2009
Contents 1 WELCOME TO THE NEW-LOOK Po‘okela!
“Po’okela serves HPU faculty and an outside mailing list of readers interested in our work, with the intention to prompt community building and reflection on professional practice, and to encourage innovation in teaching.”
Hawai‘i Pacific University • Teaching and Learning Center • http://tlc.hpu.edu
WELCOME TO THE NEW-LOOK PO‘OKELA!
1 Faculty Profile – Jerry Agrusa, Ph.D. 3 Professor Karbens 4 A Mug Shot Reminds Me Why I Teach 6 10 Worst Teaching Mistakes (Part Two) 7 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES – Po’okela 8 When Educators Speak…
Teaching and Learning Center Staff Director: Michael Dabney (808) 543-8048 mdabney@hpu.edu
Dear Faculty Members, We’re starting the new semester with a fresh look to the Po‘okela newsletter. Special thanks, as always, to Michaela Gillan of the Graphic Arts office, who patiently helps me plan the layout of each newsletter. Thank you, too, to Eddie Merc, who has taken us a step further into the age of technology by transforming the newsletter from the standard print and PDF version into an online magazine version. This issue features the contributions of two faculty members – Jerry Agrusa, Ph.D. and Adam Burke. We welcome your feedback and contributions! If you’d like to tell us what’s worked (or hasn’t worked) in your teaching or what you do outside of teaching that makes for interesting reading, please write smeyer@hpu.edu. See our Submission Guidelines in this issue for more details.
Administrative Coordinator: Sandra Meyer (808) 356-5250 smeyer@hpu.edu TLC Hours and Location: Monday to Friday 7:00 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. Saturday 7:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Opening hours change during summer and winter sessions. 1188 Fort St. Mall, Suite 139 Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96813 The Po‘okela newsletter is a bimonthly publication featuring articles of interest to faculty regarding pedagogy, scholarship, and service at Hawai‘i Pacific University. Opinions in this newsletter are those of the authors. Articles are chosen for their power to encourage reflection and discussion and do not reflect endorsement by the Teaching and Learning Center or Hawai‘i Pacific University.
Faculty Profile – Jerry Agrusa, Ph.D. as told to Sandra Meyer
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Jerome “Jerry” Agrusa is a professor of Travel Industry Management (TIM) at the College of Business Administration at HPU. He joined HPU in 2001, after receiving his Masters in Hospitality Management from the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston and his Ph.D. in Tourism Sciences from Texas A & M University. In the 20-something years that he has been teaching, Agrusa has energetically juggled his research in the areas of hospitality and tourism with his teaching duties at HPU. He is on the editorial board of five international tourism research journals including being the editor of the Asia Pacific Tourism Association (APTA) and is past president of Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA)-Hawai‘i Chapter. He has, to date, published more than 100
research articles, and has been recognized for his dedication to the craft. In 2005, Agrusa was awarded Hawai‘i Pacific University’s Board of Trustees’ Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2007, he received HPU’s Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Scholarship and he was recently awarded the prestigious Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant.
Jerry Agrusa, Ph.D.
Agrusa keeps a keen eye on tourism trends in Hawai‘i, which draws the bulk of its income from the tourism industry. The dwindling number of visicontinued on page 2
Faculty Profile – Jerry Agrusa, Ph.D. continued tors to the islands, particularly Japanese tourists, traditionally the biggest spenders, is an area of concern for the state. Agrusa and his team of students have consistently been involved in analyzing trends in the annual Honolulu Marathon, which last year drew 27,000 runners from around the world and generated an economic impact of $101,890,000 for the state. The marathon survey instrument which Agrusa and his team draw up and administer at each marathon, analyses data on participants’ spending for food, lodging, and other activities. The results are helpful in determining the economic benefit that the Honolulu Marathon has on the state of Hawai‘i.
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Agrusa feels that he has a passion for teaching and believes one has to bring a positive energy and enthusiasm to the classroom, make his or her students feel welcome and fully accountable for their presence in a class. He has always taken the same approach to teaching in the classroom as he did when he managed employees, that is, let them (students and in the past employees) know what is expected of them, inform them when they are doing things correctly (praise loudly), and provide feedback on the areas that need improvement (critize quietly.) “Students as well as employees,” Agrusa says, “need to know
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Meeting and interacting with classmates from different cultures prompts many of his students to want to experience overseas internships in the hospitality industry. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, Agrusa was raised in New York City and educated at an all-boys Catholic school before moving to Boston. Teaching was something he fell into by accident – quite literally. He was working as the general manager of a five-star restaurant in Houston, having worked his way up from the position of busboy. The perks were good, and things were going pretty smoothly for Agrusa – that is, till he snapped his foot on a curb and had to be laid up in a cast for nine months. It was at this time that events took at strange turn. Professor Ted Wasky, then dean of the University of Houston, had been a regular client at the restaurant Agrusa managed, and noticed his prolonged absence. He enquired after him and visited Agrusa’s home. Wasky himself had just undergone a life-transforming event and was doing his part to make a difference in the lives of other people. This led to Agrusa completing his Masters in Hospitality Management at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston. Agrusa was contemplating taking on a possible job offer at Exxon – where he would be tapped for his considerable business and people skills, and had just delivered a paper at a conference in Las Vegas - when Joe von Kornfield , then dean of the Travel Industry Management College at Hawai‘i Pacific College (HPC), came up to him and suggested he enter the teaching profession. Agrusa was sufficiently tempted, and spent the next three summers in Hawai‘i teaching travel and industry management at HPC, while completing his Ph.D. coursework at Texas A & M University. He taught at the University of Louisiana for five years where his talent for research was first recognized: he received an award for Endowed Professor for Research in Hospitality and another for Community Coffee Endowed Professor. It appears that von Kornfield’s initial assessment of his teaching skills was correct.
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that someone is watching and understands the effort they put into their work and that what they do really matters. I believe learning should be fun and because of this belief, I always try to bring energy into the classroom.”
With tourism being Hawai‘i’s largest money generator, he frequently invites people from the industry into his classroom so that his students experience firsthand what they are likely to encounter when they join the rank and file of the travel industry. It is usually a win-win situation for Agrusa’s students as many of them take on summer internships in worldwide locations. It is advantageous, he acknowledges, that HPU has a very diverse student population. Meeting and interacting with classmates from different cultures prompts many of his students to want to experience overseas internships in the hospitality industry. (HPU’s internship program allows students the flexibility to work abroad in other countries while attending HPU. They need to fulfill 600 hours of internship.) HPU’s TIM program is currently ranked 59th in the world for research published in the leading tourism journals (based on a study done by the College of Charleston-South Carolina.) Agrusa himself is committed to delivering his side of the bargain when it comes to putting HPU and Hawai‘i on the map. This July, he will deliver the keynote address, “What Does Paradise Do When Recession Hits? A View From Hawai‘i” for the 8th Asia Pacific Forum for Graduate Students Research in Tourism in Seoul, Korea. Events like the Honolulu Marathon are but one means of providing positive publicity for HPU. With its emphasis on building a global community, Agrusa believes it is important for HPU to gain more visibility in areas of research, particularly as HPU continues to expand its operations worldwide.
The letter below (lightly edited) was written by HPU student, Reid Hirata, to his former instructor, Dr. John (Jack) Karbens, associate professor of accounting and finance at Hawai‘i Pacific University. Both Hirata and Dr. Karbens have granted permission for this reprint.
Professor Karbens, Thank you for taking the time to complete a recommendation for my application for the Master’s Program (Master’s in Business Administration). During the five years I took to achieve my Bachelor’s degree in General Business, I was privileged to have many exceptional instructors and mentors. Out of all the remarkable instructors I have encountered, I must say that you have made the greatest impression on my education, career opportunities, and life in general. In September 2004, I was a freshman at HPU, working full time at Tanioka’s as an assistant catering supervisor. At the time, my priorities were different from what they are now. While enrolled in your Accounting I class during spring 2006, I recall having a discussion with you, in which I explained that I had taken the class before and failed due to class participation and attendance. During this time, I felt that this would be another college class with no significant meaning. Thanks to you though, I was challenged to understand concepts of the real world and not the things you would get out of a book. Those aren’t the only reasons I admire you as a professor and a role model/mentor. In November 2006, I was returning from a HPU basketball game, when a car crossed the middle lane and hit two trucks in front of me, then totaled my car. The 28-year-old driver was pronounced dead at the scene. I remember sharing with you this traumatic incident, and you were able to guide me and advise me on how to move on from unfortunate events of life and become a stronger individual. This is something no instructor had ever done, and I truly feel that it impacted my life. Progressing through the semester, I was honored to get a recommendation from you for that class. Thanks to your guidance, I decided to change jobs and achieve higher levels of work experience. I was able to attain a job at the Hawai‘i Prince Hotel as a banquet waiter. I currently still work there, but instead of being on the bottom, I was promoted and am now training to be a captain. My work experience has helped me learn about people, communication skills, and management operations/strategies. Professor Karbens, the advice you’ve given me has been extremely important and meaningful. The potential you recognized years ago helped me overcome many life-changing events and helped me achieve my bachelor’s degree and many goals in life. Achieving so much in life against all odds, I plan to attain a master’s degree at HPU that will assist me with the development and success for my business (Lani’s Salt Seasoning) and other life goals. I appreciate your guidance and constant concern. With Much Aloha, Reid H.K. Hirata
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As mere humans, none of us can be “up” all of the time. As teachers, we need to keep times we are “down” to a minimum, because when we are not motivated and strong-spirited, there’s no way to induce the essential qualities we don’t possess in ourselves into a classroom of students. When a unit or institution has serious morale problems, it is typically “down” most of the time. It will relentlessly suck the motivation out of most participants in that system. That situation often occurs when leaders have no confidence that the members of the system can rise to any great vision. Then, no vision really gets shared across the system among a community whose members really do want this. Where campus leaders’ main motivation is simply to maneuver into and remain in highly paid positions, they are the equivalent of faculty “deadwood,” and they cannot even imagine why anyone else in the system might feel discouraged or unmotivated. Constructing an institution that is characterized by being dominantly “up” and encouraging across all constituents is a great help to any individual during her/his inevitable down times. There, we can experience discouragement, but we can use that supportive affective field (Rhem, 2008, National Teaching and Learning Forum, v17, n2 p4-5) maintained by others to quickly get discouragement swept behind us. Such places have high retention of faculty. A campus with low morale translates into constituents getting needed healing and motivation other than from the place that is draining it. There, a faculty member has to remember the lifeguard’s #1 priority--not to drown. ~ Ed Nuhfer, director of faculty development and professor of geoscience, borough of faculty development, California State University, Channel Islands. Taken from the Professional Organizational Development Network (POD) listserv of July 21, 2009. Reprinted with permission.
A Mug Shot Reminds Me Why I Teach by Adam Burke I’ve been likened to Woody Harrelson, Greg Norman, and Dennis Hopper. I would like to discredit all three characterizations, if I may. I’d enjoy telling you about my most recent likeness to fame. It caught me off guard and made me laugh. It reminds me of why I dedicate my life to teaching. And I hope it might inspire you as well! I had been teaching communication as an adjunct instructor at Hawai‘i Pacific University for over four years. A healthy appetite for adventure prompted me to trade my whiteboard pens and briefcase for online classes, a plane ticket, and the horizon. I packed my textbooks and followed my passport to South Africa – halfway around the world. I had been there before, and I knew I could easily insert myself into the challenged communities, making a visible difference. While my main focus was to support my online students (and not forget the 12-hour time difference when resetting quizzes on WebCT), I also felt called to positively impact the lives of local youth in South Africa. I volunteered at an all-Black church, organizing and facilitating events and activities for the youth. Soon, my role in the community increased. I frequently accompanied the head pastor 4 Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela
as he circulated among rural schools, including Pinnacle Boarding School in Matsolana District, motivating their students. I became a motivational speaker overnight! No training. Just a podium. The school facilities were basic, yet respectable–brick walls, no classroom decoraAre you Owen Wilson? tions or technology, dirt playgrounds, open courtyards between classrooms that looked like post offices. Back to my story of mistaken identity and the pedagogical motivation I promised you! This particular morning, I traveled to a school alone. It was a boarding school with students as young as five years of age up to age 18. Would you believe that some parents willingly send their children to boarding schools at such a tender age? Hot water for morning showers, adult supervision, and extracurricular activities are scarce. It’s no surprise that role models, encouraging words, and warm hugs are in high demand.
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A Mug Shot Reminds Me Why I Teach continued My task was to motivate just over 750 students for 10 minutes at the morning assembly. Consider the opportunity – I had the good fortune to speak directly into the hearts and minds of attentive children. I had the freedom to speak on any topic. Yet, I struggled to develop a meaningful script this particular morning. As an educator by profession, I felt compelled to advocate the importance of education, to validate the power of dreams, to inspire each child to take his or her daily decisions captive, all the while developing healthy study and lifestyle habits. Basically, I was inclined to persuade the students why they should consider my perspective. And that’s what I did. I was later scheduled to motivate the Senior Class. While en route to the classroom, a young boy, around seven years of age, motioned me down to his height as he held up a torn page from a magazine. I expected a question about my talk at the assembly. Instead, he pointed to one of the 30 Hollywood celebrity mug shots on the page. “Is this you?” His index finger indicated the photo of Owen Wilson. I laughed hysterically and asked the young boy if I could take a picture of him pointing to Owen Wilson’s mug shot. I had to remember this! Here’s the irony – I was so concerned with verbalizing educational and vocational maxims to the student body during my talk that I lost myself in the moment. I focused on what I thought the children needed to hear. What they should be told. I quickly realized that this kid must have been waiting through all 10 minutes of my “motivational” speech to ask me if I was indeed Owen Wilson. (Aside from the crooked nose, this kid wasn’t far off.) I’m sure he listened to my morning message, but he was most focused on who I was. I spent the next 10 minutes asking the young boy about his life, his dreams, and his family. That morning, my identity/role as a motivational speaker overwhelmed my ability to focus on the individual passions of each student. It prevented me from being a friend and intentionally supporting students on a personal basis. Quickly, I realized that
Adam’s Group this happens to me all the time at HPU. I become engrossed with clarifying content from the textbook, monitoring student comprehension, assessing if classes are meeting the learning objectives set for the course. This young boy and his fascination with Owen Wilson both reminded me why I chose to be in the classroom. I love working with students. I love learning about their dreams and passions. I love hearing about what they plan to do with an HPU degree. Now, I think about HPU from the same perspective as that of that young boy in South Africa. The kid with the mug shots. I wonder – just how available do we as HPU faculty inspire, encourage, and care? Do we consider our students as learners, or as people, or both? The way I now see it, many of our students want more than to remember what they learned in class. Our students want to remember us as individuals who intentionally made a difference in their lives. They want us to lend an ear, to extend a helping hand, to offer guidance. So, the next time you feel a tug on your shirtsleeve (while sitting at your desk or standing at the whiteboard), remember Owen Wilson’s mug shot. And remember why you love teaching!
Build upon strengths, and weaknesses will gradually take care of themselves. ~ Joyce C. Lock, author, poet, and columnist
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10 Worst Teaching Mistakes (Part Two) by Richard M. Felder, Ph.D. and Rebecca Brent
In the last issue of the Po‘okela, we presented the bottom six of the top 10 list of the worst mistakes college teachers commonly make. We continue here with the remaining items on that list. Mistake #4. Giving tests that are too long. Engineering professors routinely give exams that are too long for most of their students. These may include problems that involve a lot of timeconsuming mathematical analysis and/or calculations, or problems with unfamiliar twists that may take a long time to figure out, or just too many problems. The few students who work fast enough to finish may make careless mistakes but can still do well thanks to partial credit, while those who never get to some problems or who can’t quickly figure out the tricks get failing grades. After several such experiences, many students switch to other curricula, one factor among several that cause engineering enrollments to decrease by 40% or more in the first two years of the curriculum. When concerns are raised about the impact of this attrition on the engineering pipeline, the instructors argue that the dropouts are all incompetent or lazy and unqualified to be engineers. The instructors are wrong. Studies that have attempted to correlate grades of graduates with subsequent career success (as measured by promotions, salary increases, and employer evaluations) have found that the correlations are negligible; students who drop out of engineering have the same academic profile as those who stay; and no one has ever demonstrated that students who can solve a quantitative problem in 20 minutes will do any better as engineers than students who need 35 minutes. In fact, students who are careful and methodical but slow may be better engineers than students who are quick but careless. Consider which type you would rather have designing the bridges you drive across or the planes you fly in. If you want to evaluate your students’ potential to be successful professionals, test their mastery of the knowledge and skills you are teaching, not their problem-solving speed. After you make up a test and think it’s perfect, take it and time yourself, and make sure you give the students at least three times longer to take it than you needed (since you made it up, you don’t have to stop and think about it)—and if a test is particularly challenging or involves a lot of derivations or calculations, the ratio should be four or five to one for the test to be fair. Mistake #3. Getting stuck in a rut. Some instructors teach a course two or three times, feel satisfied with their lecture notes and powerpoint slides and assignments, and don’t change a thing for the rest of their careers except maybe to update a couple of references. Such courses often become mechanical for the instructors, boring for the students, and after a while, hopelessly antiquated. Things are always happening that provide incentives and opportunities for improving courses. New developments in course subject areas are presented in research journals; changes in the global economy call on programs to equip their graduates with new skills; improved teaching techniques are described in conference presentations and papers; and new instructional resources
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are made available in digital libraries. This is not to say that you have to make major revisions in your course every time you give it—you probably don’t have time to do that, and there’s no reason to. Rather, just keep your eyes open for possible improvements you might make in the time available to you. Go to some education sessions at professional conferences; read articles in educational journals in your discipline; visit one or two of those digital libraries to see what tutorials, demonstrations, and simulations they’ve got for your course; and commit to making one or two changes in the course whenever you teach it. If you do that, the course won’t get stale, and neither will you. Mistake #2. Teaching without clear learning objectives. The traditional approach to teaching is to design lectures and assignments that cover topics listed in the syllabus, give exams on those topics, and move on. The first time most instructors think seriously about what they want students to do with the course material is when they write the exams, by which time it may be too late to provide sufficient practice in the skills required to solve the exam problems. It is pointless—and arguably unethical—to test students on skills you haven’t really taught. A key to making courses coherent and tests fair is to write learning objectives— explicit statements of what students should be able to do if they have learned what the instructor wants them to learn–and to use the objectives as the basis for designing lessons, assignments, and exams. The objectives should all specify observable actions (e.g., define, explain, calculate, solve, model, critique, and design), avoiding vague and unobservable terms such as know, learn, understand, and appreciate. Besides using the objectives to design your instruction, consider sharing them with the students as study guides for exams. The clearer you are about your expectations (especially high-level ones that involve deep analysis and conceptual understanding, critical thinking, and creative thinking), the more likely the students will be to meet them, and nothing clarifies expectations like good learning objectives. Mistake #1. Disrespecting students. How much students learn in a course depends to a great extent on the instructor’s attitude. Two different instructors could teach the same material to the same group of students using the same methods, give identical exams, and get dramatically different results. Under one teacher, the students might get good grades and give high ratings to the course and instructor; under the other teacher, the grades could be low, the ratings could be abysmal, and if the course is a gateway to the curriculum, many of the students might not be there next semester. If Instructor A conveys respect for the students and a sense that he/she cares about their learning and Instructor B appears indifferent and/or disrespectful, the differences in exam grades and ratings should come as no surprise. Even if you genu-
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10 Worst Teaching Mistakes (Part Two) continued inely respect and care about your students, you can unintentionally give them the opposite sense. Here are several ways to do it: (1) make sarcastic remarks in class about their skills, intelligence, and work ethics; (2) disparage their questions or their responses to your questions; (3) give the impression that you are in front of them because it’s your job, not because you like the subject and enjoy teaching it; (4) frequently come to class unprepared, run overtime, and cancel classes; (5) don’t show up for office hours, or show up but act annoyed when students come in with questions. If you’ve slipped into any of those practices, try to drop them. If you give students a sense that you don’t respect them, the class will probably be a bad experience for everyone no matter what else you do, while if you clearly convey respect and caring, it will cover a multitude of pedagogical sins you might commit. Richard M. Felder is Hoerst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University. He is co-author of
Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes (Wiley, 2005) and numerous articles on chemical process engineering and engineering and science education, and regularly presents workshops on effective college teaching at campuses and conferences around the world. Rebecca Brent is an education consultant specializing in faculty development for effective university teaching, classroom and computerbased simulations in teacher education, and K-12 staff development in language arts and classroom management. She co-directs the ASEE National Effective Teaching Institute and has published articles on a variety of topics including writing in undergraduate courses, cooperative learning, public school reform, and effective university teaching. This article, adapted from Chemical Engineering Education, 42(4), 201-202 (2008), appeared in Skip Downing’s On Course newsletter, online at http://oncourseworkshop.com/Getting%20On%20Course023. htm. Reprinted with permission.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES – Po’okela The Teaching and Learning Center invites submission of original work related to the teaching and learning experience of our readership. Such work may include but is not limited to essays and reflections, description of teaching strategies, book reviews, research, opinions, and interviews. Material published elsewhere may also be considered. The readership of Po‘okela includes HPU faculty and staff, and a list of mail recipients outside HPU. 1. Originality. Original submissions are those largely or wholly an author’s own. Quotes and materials published elsewhere should be identified and attributed according to an APA style guide. Submissions chosen for publication may be edited for space, consistency, or other considerations. Some articles are blind-reviewed by an editorial board or individual content experts.
2. Style and Attribution. Original published submissions should be written in a clear, informal style. References in APA style should be included. (For help with references, see an APA style guide (HPU’s at http://www.hpu. edu/images/Libraries/LibraryGuides/LIB18Aug05_a13801.pdf ) or the “Citation Machine” link at http://www. hpu.edu/index.cfm?contentID=7232 (scroll to “Special Research Tools” for limited examples). A typical article is 500-1000 words; typed one and a half spaced, and sent as a Word document attachment. High-resolution jpeg graphics (minimum 300 dpi) are welcome.
3. Manuscripts Published Elsewhere. We often publish manuscripts or portions of manuscripts that have been published elsewhere. We ask and are granted permission in writing from the copyright owner, and we attribute authorship and sources as directed by the grantor. Po‘okela contributors may submit suggested items and must include, with each submission, evidence that permission has been asked and granted for republication in Po‘okela.
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WHEN EDUCATORS SPEAK…
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They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. ~ Carl W. Buechner (1926- ), author and Presbyterian minister
The best learners... often make the worst teachers. They are, in a very real sense, perceptually challenged. They cannot imagine what it must be like to struggle to learn something that comes so naturally to them. ~ Stephen Brookfield, professor, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, Minnesota
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby, comedian
If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead. ~Gelett Burgess, humorist, illustrator, writer, and poet
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We would like to hear from you! If you have original quotes or anecdotes that you would like to share with other faculty about your teaching experiences here at HPU, please send them to the Teaching and Learning Center along with your name, your title, and your permission to publish them in the Po‘okela.
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