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.

Sharon Levin

After teaching at the community college level for two years, I realized my professional development could be enhanced if I had access to university level teaching and learning resources. Even while working toward and achieving tenure at another university, I continued to teach part time at UMUC because its faculty development program is exceptional. Once I secured a full time teaching position at UMUC, I had even greater access to programs offered by the faculty development team.

From a teaching perspective, UMUC students are the most dedicated students I have taught in over 20 years. The military students are especially committed to their studies despite oftentimes studying and learning in very harsh environments. I am inspired by their steadfast journey to obtain a college degree while defending our country.

Teaching at UMUC is my full time job, so I don’t have a lot of time for other work. However, one of my passions is environmental accounting and I have been fortunate enough to be involved in the EPA ENERGY STAR program. While on sabbatical in 2000, I helped develop the curriculum for Webinars designed to teach energy efficiency in commercial buildings. hile the EPA’s goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many organizations are more interested in learning how reduced energy consumption impacts their financial statements. My role is to teach environmental stewardship and explain how saving the environment contributes positively to profitability and asset value.

Interviewer:

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

Sharon Levin

I think of my teaching philosophy as a work in progress as it continues to change and adapt to the dynamic educational environment in which we teach and learn. A big picture perspective of my teaching philosophy would include the following four essential elements:

1. Self directed learning. It is important to provide opportunities for students to become self-directed learners. Today’s employee must continually learn and retrain just to maintain their current employment positions. For advancement, employees must be proactive about gaining new knowledge and developing new skills beyond what is required of them.
2. High Standards and Goals. I set high yet attainable standards and goals. Doing so forces students to work hard, stretch beyond their comfort zone, and expand their learning potential. While there are moments of discomfort whenever students are taken outside of their comfort zone, I provide plenty of positive reinforcement regarding their successes to help ease the discomfort and encourage a commitment to achieving excellence.
3. Diversity. The classroom environment should celebrate diversity. This is a principle I also apply at home with my daughter. If we as parents and teachers are not preparing our children and students for the highly diverse world in which they will live and work, then we simply have not done our job.
4. Ethics. Given the plethora of unethical practices in the business world, I feel compelled to heighten my students’ awareness of ethical behavior. To achieve this goal, I create writing assignments to help students identify ethical dilemmas, evaluate alternative responses, and choose the best possible ethical response to the dilemma.

Sometimes we adopt a teaching philosophy from previous teachers we admire. I have done the opposite by wanting to avoid a scare technique used by one of my accounting professors. My first few accounting courses were taken at a local community college where one professor taught several accounting courses I had to take. He began each semester by telling students that half of the class would fail his course, and out of the remaining half, only a handful would achieve a grade higher than a C. I was so stunned by his negative approach to motivate students that I vowed to be positive were I ever in a position to motivate others. Thus, I have made it my personal mission to encourage students through positive motivational techniques. Not all of my students will choose accounting as their major, but hopefully I instill enough positive energy that they choose to continue their studies, graduate, and perhaps pursue a graduate degree.

Interviewer:

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

Sharon Levin

My sense of reasonableness and fairness combined with my consistent message that it takes hard work to achieve excellence. I believe that students inherently want to do their best, earn high grades, and strive to meet their academic goals. Unfortunately, some have never been taught how to stayed focused at an intense level long enough to reach their fullest potential. I am available to my students everyday in the virtual classroom. In addition, some students need to hear explanations to grasp complex concepts, thus I also encourage students to call if they think a telephone conversation would be more helpful. Also, I have recently added optional live teaching sessions to my asynchronous classroom, and share archives of those sessions for those who cannot attend. Having the ability to speak and be heard has transformed how my students are learning. Grading final exams this semester brought great satisfaction as I could visibly see how students were applying what they had learned in our live sessions.

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.

Sharon Levin

Over the past 20 years, I have taught both face-to-face and online classes. Currently, I teach all of my classes online. Originally displeased and resistant to teaching online, I have come to love this modality of teaching and learning. My academic training is in economic and social history and problems of modernization. I am sure that my family background, both my parents’ families were farmers and my grandfather was an agronomist in Russia in the early 1900s, influenced my interest in these areas of study. I worked for the World Bank Group where addressing economic development issues is central to the institution’s mission. It is a small step from problems of economic development to international business management and the challenges of globalization, topics in a course I teach in the AMBA program.

I attend professional meetings, read professional journals, and occasionally facilitate workshops outside the United States. What is particularly appealing in teaching international business management is the variety of topics, the fact that they deal with current and future social, economic, and political issues, and that the information and issues develop and change on a daily basis.

Yes, it is more time consuming and challenging, but it offers tremendous opportunities or one could say, demands an enormous commitment to learning new technological approaches to teaching. Thus, I am in continual pursuit of discovering new technology to enhance student learning. Student feedback regarding my use of technology in the classroom has been extremely positive.

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?

Sharon Levin

I had been a partner in a service company for a number of years and was leaving to start what came to be a chain of retail athletic stores. During this transition, it became obvious that I needed a better understanding of accounting and finance. I started taking courses at the local community college in Annapolis, MD and soon found that I really enjoyed accounting; it was much easier to grasp than some of the courses I remembered struggling with in undergraduate school. Although my original intent was to take accounting courses to improve my skills as a businessperson, eventually I completed all of the courses in the accounting curriculum. I never intended to become a practicing CPA, but decided to sit for the CPA exam to see if I could pass, which I did on my first attempt.

To maintain my CPA license, I must take at least 80 hours of continuing education biannually. This requirement is easily met with both live and online seminars. Whenever possible, I take computer-based courses to enhance my skills and to learn new ways to use technology in the classroom. In addition, the United States (US) is considering the adoption of international accounting standards (IAS), which could replace the current set of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Whether the US adopts these international standards or continues on its current path of convergence, all US CPA’s should learn IAS. Thus, one of my professional goals is to focus on understanding how IAS will impact accounting for US companies that have foreign subsidiaries, foreign companies that have US subsidiaries and or operate in the US, and US companies that may be required or permitted to use IAS instead of US GAAP.

Mostly, I like the objective nature of accounting. While there is more room for flexibility and creativity when practicing accounting, students are taught accounting theory such that there is typically only one correct answer, especially at the introductory level of accounting.

I prefer to teach at the introductory level for several reasons: 1) the learning curve is quite high and my teaching style works well for student s with little or no prior experience in accounting; 2) the process of observing students transform throughout the semester to become competent in preparing and interpreting financial statements provides me with a great level of satisfaction; 3) to help develop the accounting program at UMUC. All disciplines require sufficient enrollment to maintain a continuous flow of graduates for the university. I believe it is imperative to assign introductory level courses to full time faculty members who are committed to “putting in the hours” necessary to give students the requisite foundation to major in accounting, if they so choose. As a full time faculty member, teaching is my job and my first priority.

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 in teaching this subject matter online? If yes, please explain what could be done to meet the challenges.

Sharon Levin

Learning accounting requires a significant time investment that some students are not willing or cannot commit to in order to successfully pass the course. Unless a student has prior accounting experience, there really isn’t any way to avoid having to spend a large portion of each week studying accounting.

One strategy is to be present in my classroom at least six days per week, and usually seven days. This provides an example for students to follow, as they too should be logging into WebTycho more often. Likewise, my daily WebTycho presence and answering of student questions about the homework, permits students to continue working on homework problems without delay. Another strategy is that I create classroom discussion questions that are relevant to our daily lives. For example, one discussion question requires students to compare the cost (not gasoline) efficiency of buying a hybrid automobile as compared to a traditional gasoline powered automobile. The quantitative analysis is relatively easy. By introducing a current real-world example, the assignment is more interesting and the time spent doesn’t feel so arduous. Lastly, having recently introduced weekly live sessions, I have learned that demonstrating how to solve accounting problems and providing students with an opportunity to ask questions verbally in real time eliminates the time they would have spent struggling to understand explanations provided in the textbook and other learning resources. Of course, the live sessions are optional and I do create archived recordings for later viewing/listening.

In my opinion, accounting is the perfect discipline for an online format because of its objective nature. In addition, professional organizations, publishers, and state boards of accountancy have developed an abundance of resources to assist online student learning. Working as an accountant could be accomplished completely online. Clients send electronic documents to their accountants and the CPA returns financial statements, reports, and tax returns via electronic means. Thus, if the career works well online, teaching the discipline also works well online.

Interviewer:

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

Sharon Levin

I keep an anonymous quote taped to my desk and it goes something like this: accountants are known for their extraordinary attention to details and high regard for ethics. It is not necessary to be detail oriented when you first start the accounting program, but you will develop this skill throughout the curriculum. While some may argue that the accounting profession has been tarnished by unethical/illegal conduct in recent years, a very high majority of CPA’s continue to maintain an unsurpassed degree of adhering to our professional standards of ethical behavior. Students who are willing to work hard, pay close attention to details, and maintain high professional and ethical standards will be rewarded financially, achieve personal fulfillment, and professional stature.

Interviewer:

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

Sharon Levin

In the twenty plus years I have taught for UMUC, I have worked with exceptionally talented faculty colleagues who are committed to helping UMUC students achieve their educational goals.

Interviewer:

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

Sharon Levin

There is no shortage of administrators at UMUC and in my experience; the accounting program administrators are outstanding. They have always been available to assist faculty members with both administrative and student issues.

Interviewer:

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

Sharon Levin

One unique aspect of teaching for UMUC is the high percentage of military students and their families. To be better prepared to teach and serve this segment of our student population, I recommend taking the faculty development Military Learners Workshop.