Faculty Excellence at UMUC

Interviewer:

Please tell us about yourself—what made you decide to teach at UMUC? What kind of work do you do when you are not teaching at UMUC? What life experiences have influenced your teaching at UMUC?

Barry Pollick:

When I heard about UMUC's overseas program in 1996, I had taught traditional students in a traditional, stateside campus setting for four years, so I was attracted by the challenge of teaching nontraditional students in nontraditional settings thousands of miles from home.

As for my non-teaching work, I volunteer as the director of an on-base conversation group called JEEP (Japanese-English Exchange Program), which meets for two hours each week and is composed of a dozen U.S. military members and UMUC faculty members, along with 30 local nationals and UMUC Japanese students anxious to practice speaking English with Americans studying Japanese.

As for my previous jobs, I have worked as an interviewer, a journalist, and (briefly) a college radio talk show host, and these experiences helped me develop strategies to ignite class discussions and keep them focused and stimulating—even at 10:40 pm.

Interviewer:

Please tell us if you teach face-to-face, online, or both and explain what made you choose that format of teaching.

Barry Pollick:

I taught online when distance education was in its infancy and initially loved teaching in a "global classroom," but as I gradually stopped answering nonessential (i.e., my friends') emails, I decided to forego online teaching, lest I lose lifelong friendships.

Interviewer:

What do you find most satisfying about teaching in your chosen format(s)?

Barry Pollick:

I love the spontaneous teacher-student interaction in the "live" classroom, and relish the chance to make students grin in appreciation or wince in slightly embarrassed recognition when—if I'm lucky—my lesson induces an epiphany.

Interviewer:

What do you find challenging about teaching in your chosen format(s)?

Barry Pollick:

Two aspects of face-to-face teaching challenge me here in Asia . First, it takes ingenuity and energy to keep students alert and thinking critically at 10:40 p.m. when they have already completed an eight-hour workday and must rise at 6:00 a.m. Second, our students have frequent military exercises and deployments, so we must be flexible and accommodating, while maintaining rigorous academic standards. Striking that delicate balance requires equal amounts of patience and pushiness.

Interviewer:

Please tell us about your chosen discipline�how long have you worked in or taught it? What made you interested in the area? What keeps you interested in the area?

Barry Pollick:

I have taught English/Speech since 1992. Always fascinated by narratives and editorials, I majored in English as an undergraduate, and journalism and mass communication as a Master's student. I also worked as a journalist for three years. But I grew disillusioned with journalism as I discovered how narrowly journalists even at prestigious papers focused on the ever-entertaining "horse race" aspects of elections, as opposed to issues far more critical to a thriving democracy—e.g., candidates' often equivocal stands on issues, and the quid pro quos some candidates arrange with major donors and lobbyists. So I wrote my Master's thesis on the use of the horse race metaphor in U.S. and U.K. election coverage and my Ph.D. dissertation on what metaphors and syntactic strategies U.S. and U.K. candidates used to frame issues.

Interviewer:

What joys do you experience in teaching in this area?

Barry Pollick:

Students on military bases might expect teachers to treat them like buck privates, who must memorize many rules, ask few questions, and follow endless orders. Such students might have even more anxiety in English classes, which often evoke painful memories of bewildering grammar lectures and embarrassing trips to the chalk board. So I delight in watching my students loosen up and begin to realize how passionate and provocative literature and composition classes can be.

Interviewer:

What challenges do you experience in teaching in this area? Please describe any special challenges you face if you teach online in comparison to teaching in a face-to-face classroom.

Barry Pollick:

Perhaps my most pressing challenge is helping my students to examine their assumptions about the controversial issues raised by our readings. Some of our readings challenge our military students' core beliefs—about traditional gender roles, for example. So, I help students critically evaluate all arguments—their own, classmates', the texts' and mine—and thereby transcend their emotional attachments and preconceptions. Toward that end, I include among the questions on English and Speech essay exams the following option: "Write one essay supporting a controversial position and another refuting that position. Each essay will be graded on its merits." What amazes me is how frequently students change their passionately-held views (e.g., from supporting to opposing state-sanctioned torture) after researching and writing the two essays.

Interviewer:

How would you describe your teaching style or philosophy? What experiences or person(s) have influenced your style or philosophy?

Barry Pollick:

I'm stubbornly Socratic—which can be a challenge with an audience trained to seek the testable answer rather than raise the provocative question. My style has been influenced by Professors Wayne Booth and D. Ray Heisey. Booth would present a literary conundrum that we had to solve. Then he would raise his voice, throw up his arms, chide us with mock anger—anything to dramatize the urgency of solving this puzzle, which then obsessed us. Heisey motivated me through his positive feedback. Although he'd fill my paper with corrections and comments, his tone was always positive and hopeful, which motivated me to diligently redraft subsequent papers. To honor Drs. Booth and Heisey, I've tried to employ warmth, animation and a dramatic persona to motivate my own students.

Interviewer:

Please explain if you do something special or unique in your approach and how you developed that approach. What do you think it is about your approach that appeals to students?

Barry Pollick:

I strive to turn my students into weapons of mass deconstruction, who realize that language is not neutral but favors hegemonic groups in subtle but compelling ways. To illustrate this favoritism, I write on the board these terms: "Males Playing the Field"; "Middle-Aged, Unmarried Males/Females"; "Male/Female Assertiveness." Then we deconstruct such terms as "playboy" (and the female equivalent ) from a feminist perspective, and my students become startlingly adept at spotting hegemonic assumptions in the text, my lectures, each other's speeches and papers, and the media. Moreover, the lesson seems to inspire more trenchantly written papers—particularly from students who analyze the works of, say, Kate Chopin or John Steinbeck.

Interviewer:

What suggestion would you give to students who are interested in majoring or working in your discipline?

Barry Pollick:

Read as broadly as you can and take an eclectic mix of courses, so you can draw your analogies and examples from myriad fields. Such a varied literary background will allow you to appeal to a more diversified class or literary audience.

Interviewer:

What suggestion would you give to new faculty who are interested in teaching in your discipline at UMUC?

Barry Pollick:

Have fun. Make every class an adventurous intellectual journey whose points of interest largely emerge from the interplay between you and the students. For example, tell your students that you have planted a falsehood or logical fallacy in your lecture, and offer them course credit for finding and documenting the fallacy. You will find that your students will pay very close attention to your lectures and that some of the most memorable lessons in critical analysis derive from unscripted moments—serendipitous errors by you or the students that illustrate course concepts better than the most carefully prepared lecture can.