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? Are there any life experiences that have influenced your teaching at UMUC? If so, please share one story.

Deborah Griggs:

After completing my M.A. at San Francisco State University, I came to Germany. While attending classes at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, I heard about UMUC-Europe. At first, I intended to work for a limited period. Soon after beginning, however, I realized UMUC suited not only my interest in adult education but also my commitment to education in a broad cultural environment.
 
I've taught at a German college, undertaken writing projects, and most importantly been a part of my daughter's life. I've worked at the Goethe Institute in cultural programming, done some translation and am currently completing a dissertation in Media Communication and Philosophy.

All of my life experiences have influenced my teaching. The work on my dissertation, in which I've been doing some intensive reading in Philosophy, has influenced my teaching extensively, as has my experience in online communication and networking.

Interviewer:

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

Deborah Griggs:

I have been told by my students that I'm of the "tough but caring" school of teaching. I will always go out of my way to help or accommodate students who are engaged but dealing with other obligations or lack solid preparation for college. I also believe that every discipline is connected to all disciplines and that no knowledge is superfluous, even when it doesn't immediately seem vocationally significant. I like to answer questions. I like to be challenged. I like to encourage original thinking. I don't know how this translates into categories of a particular style. For me, education is a personal experience. There is no objectivity, but there is clarity of the matter at hand and the criteria or system used to explore it.

I would say that the privileges that I experienced as a child formed a big part of my educational philosophy. In primary and in secondary schools I earned very high grades. I was singled out for this in a way that alienated other pupils. As a result, I became friends with the "worst" students in the class. I rebelled against the accident of my abilities as a criterion for recognition of myself as a person. I remember as early as third grade being appalled at how teachers belittled some pupils or weakened their belief in themselves. I also noted how I was praised and used to control others. This kind of thing alienated me from school environments in which human qualities—values and character—were confused with quantitative knowledge of a very particular and limited kind. I still rebel against this kind of judgment. This led to my philosophy that, while I may assign a failing grade, I never confuse this with a person who is of less character or value than one who earns an A. All students earn respect and caring—it should be what they go into the class being allowed to expect. My mother always said, "I assume that I will love anyone you love and bring home to our family. It will be up to that person to undermine that basic belief." I feel this way about students—they have my respect until they undermine it. So I guess I learned from my mother as well as from my own educational experiences.

Interviewer:

Please explain if you do something special or unique in your teaching and what made you develop this.

Deborah Griggs:

I talk about the apparent arbitrariness of grades, admitting on the one hand that there is no objectivity in culture, but only a kind of an institutionalized cultural subjectivity. However, I then say that this is irrelevant for our work, since what we do does not have its basis in objectivity, but rather in academic reality as defined by our cultural majority. On a practical level, this means that while students have the right to analyze a story or novel according to their own subjective reader responses, a university class requires that they learn to play a specific "game" or see through a certain lens and describe a work in these terms – that they learn skills in order to transcend or augment them in the end. I'm an idealist to the core, but also pragmatic.

Interviewer:

What do you think it is about your teaching style that appeals to students?

Deborah Griggs:

Perhaps students perceive that I see each of them individually and want each of them to succeed, or maybe they just see that I love my work and subject matter, as weird as either may seem to the world! Just last term, one student downrange, i.e. in a war zone, said, "You really enjoy this, don't you? I hope I find something I like to do as much as you like to teach." It is success for me to see students looking for what sets them on fire or what they enjoy, believing that there really is a calling for them.

Interviewer:

Do you teach face-to-face, online, or both? Do you have a preference between teaching face-to-face and online? If so, please explain.

Deborah Griggs:

I teach both online and face-to-face. I like both equally. Both have very different advantages and disadvantages.

Interviewer:

Please tell us about your chosen discipline-i.e., what made you interested in the area initially? What do you do to stay current in your discipline? What do you like best about teaching in your discipline?

Deborah Griggs:

I was chronically ill as a child and read a lot. That started the whole thing. Right now I'm working on a dissertation. Otherwise, I've written curriculum, read incessantly, taken part in faculty activities and networked with colleagues.

The class is never the same twice. What students write about literature or communication is always different. The examples are always new, the views slightly or sometimes radically different. I can teach the same basic subject matter with new objects of examination (novels, plays, poems, philosophical reading) every time I teach. Unlike science, as my quite unscientific brain perceives it, a work of literature is a problem or formula that will never be completely solved.

Interviewer:

What is the most challenging to you in teaching in this area? What teaching strategy do you use when you encounter the challenge? Are there any special challenges to teaching your discipline online?

Deborah Griggs:

The biggest challenge in Humanities is the poor training that many students have received in reading and writing. All we can do is teach and offer help and encouragement. We can help make students believe they can gain these skills while making them aware that results will be slow.

Writing, literature, and communication are naturals for online delivery of classes. Every post that students write gives them practical experience in the skills they are required to master. There is no wasted moment in an online writing or literature class. The only challenge I see is in time management. It takes an immense amount of time to design, write, and update good activities!

Interviewer:

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

Deborah Griggs:

Read. Learn to see without prejudice and with curiosity and imagination what goes on in front of your eyes every day. Look at how character is revealed in actions, words, thoughts, objects, or interaction. Look at the contingency of a text or story as you look at the contingency of your everyday life. Know that at any given moment, you can move in any direction, but that you move in one for a broad range of reasons that may not be immediately clear. Taking the awareness of the world into the search for a meaning of a text makes for original and interesting criticism, and for good stories.

Interviewer:

In your opinion, what makes UMUC the college of choice for students?

Deborah Griggs:

I began studying at the University of California Berkeley and transferred to San Francisco State University. People thought I was nuts. I like an open enrollment environment. I like being around people with different experiences and backgrounds. In my opinion, UMUC is a good choice for adult learners, for those who work and go to school and for those who have families and go to school.

Interviewer:

In your opinion, what makes UMUC the employer of choice for future faculty members?

Deborah Griggs:

This is harder. The current employment practices of U.S. universities who rely on adjunct faculty for reasons of cost-effectiveness do not impress me as a long-term solution for higher education. That said, I think that UMUC has the best overall online program I've seen, and I investigated quite a few while participating in our accreditation process a few years ago.

Interviewer:

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

Deborah Griggs:

Take online training. Network with colleagues. We have a wonderful community of faculty for those who seek it out.