My Favorite Professor

Below is a letter I sent today to my favorite professor, as well as to her boss and program director. I have been to four local college and I can say that Baker has better-than-average instructors. However, Professor Wakefield takes the cake.

When something is really wrong, I find that I cannot keep quiet. Therefore, I think that when something is really right I should make sure to also point that out.

As a society, we tend to think that because teachers are paid something, we can take their efforts for granted. However, there are few jobs in this society that work so hard and have such a dynamic effect on our lives. All teachers everywhere deserve more thanks than they have received. I am starting with Professor Janet Wakefield:

Dear Janet,

Now that I am completely done with my undergraduate studies at Baker, I want to make sure that I write you and tell you how much I appreciate you as an instructor. I can honestly say that I received more from your two classes than I did from any other 10 classes or any other 10 instructors--and that is not an exaggeration. I believe that I will retain more from your Global Business and Cross-Cultural Risk Analysis classes than I will from any other classes due to the subjects that we focused on, the methods we used, and the direction we received.

I really like the fact that the final project in the class is large, but that we are building it in each module. I am really proud of the projects I completed for these two classes, and they remind me of how much I learned-- and how much I enjoyed learning it. It helps that the subject matter is interesting to me, but it also helps that the instructor has spent time planning to ensure that the subjects are interesting and digestible. By the time I assembled these projects, I had no idea how much I had already written, consumed, and digested. I have kept a hard copy of each of these projects because they are that important to me.

I also like the way that you get discussions started, keep them going, and switch gears as needed. I have been in other classes where discussions were a method of regurgitating what was in the book, or were a string of one sentence statements that did not really synthesize the information. In your classes, even people who would usually make incomplete statements seemed inspired to think about the topic and make some analysis. We regularly hit all five levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, I think. We could probably publish a decent journal article or create a workbook based on the discussions in your classes. For myself, I really felt the need to think about information from a new perspective, and to correlate information from several sources that I would not normally have considered.

I also gained a lot by considering the experiences of you and the other students. By encouraging us to add our own eyes and thoughts to the material, to share our experiences, and by doing so yourself as a great example, gives the subject added dimension. Making the information interesting and useful is great. However, making it personal is the best way, I think, to make it memorable.

On a personal note, you made a statement in our first class together that has stuck with me, and will probably affect the rest of my life--for the better. You made a comment on a paper I wrote that said that my work was graduate-level work and that I should consider graduate school. Up until that point, I had thought "maybe" about graduate school, but had not given it much positive thought. After that comment, I considered my interests and abilities, as well as all the feedback I had received from you and other instructors, and realized that I could and should pursue a graduate degree. I haven't made a final decision on a school or degree, but I have made the final decision to pursue a Masters program in 2008. Without your timely, sincere, and encouraging comment, I am not sure I would have had the confidence and motivation to take this step. It really helped me make a huge paradigm shift, just as I needed it.

No other instructor has impacted my studying, thinking, writing, interests, and paradigms as much as you have, after four colleges over ten years. Thank you for working hard and caring deeply for your students; it has made a tremendous difference in my life.

I have copied Amber and Terri on this email because I wanted to deepen your blush. I am sure that one of them can make sure that this ends up in front of the right eyes. I would like the powers-that-be at Baker SPGS to know that there is at least one instructor who goes above and beyond and makes a big difference.

Thank you again,

Larry Slobodzian