Center for Teaching and Learning

Faculty Excellence at UMUC

Faculty Interview
Alan Sutherland
Technology

Alan Sutherland has been an executive first in the public sector and then in non-profit organizations for 35 years. With a Ph.D. in Public Administration (with a focus on health and epidemiology) and a B.F.A. in commercial art, he has creatively worked in the areas of mental health, homelessness, AIDS, and disabilities. All these diverse experiences have contributed to his teaching effectiveness in his classes. Originally asked to develop and teach a graduate level face-to-face (f2f) non-profit financial management course for UMUC in 1998, he soon began to teach other f2f and online courses. In January 2000, he became a full-time faculty member.

It goes back to Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." If you wanted to make a difference, in the 60's and 70's you went into government, but by the 80's you went into non-profits.

My students keep me interested in the topic. They never cease surprising me in our discussions. They challenge me. Of course, in order to have a classroom full of give and take, I need to keep on top of the literature. I learned it from a professor and I pass it along to my students, "Never stop reading."

My courses always encourage critical thinking. I don't want my students to take things at face value. They should be comfortable challenging me. I also find live chat sessions to be very useful. They can be hard to set up with UMUC's worldwide student body, but the interaction and humor they encourage are worth it.

I like to tell war stories, but I use them to make theories pertinent. When I use a case study, I don't pick one out of a book but rather create it from current events. Having the students apply their book knowledge to a real situation keeps the students, and me, interested.

I try not to be pedantic. Encouraging free thought in students is very important. I attended a small liberal arts college as an undergraduate where my professors were always available to me, whether in the classroom or the coffee shop. That relationship can be disarming to students, even in graduate school, and that is unfortunate. I want my students to challenge me. I want them to challenge the authors of the texts. When they read a text, I want them to ask, "What is it here that future authors are going to point to and go--'Ha! That's not right!'?" That, to me, is what teaching is all about.

Theories are theories; they aren't facts. I lived through a lot of the debunking of theories that I read in my texts in school. No doubt, there are statistics to support those theories, but statistics can be read in a number of different ways. We need to ask: "What statistics are misleading? What other information would be useful to have?"

Tell them your needs. Ask them questions. And listen.

Do not plagiarize. Be honest.

As for work, don't confine your vision. Look at all sorts of organizations and how they are run. If you think you work at a non-profit so profit is unimportant, you are missing part of the puzzle. Profit can be put in reserves, used to expand a program, or start a new mission. As for the public sector, it has long been the leader in many of these fields. Seeing how the government goes about what it does can only help you make your own organization better.

Keep it current. Use real world cases. I tell my students up front, "One of the texts for this course is a good, metropolitan, daily newspaper."

Try to keep it entertaining. I realize my students can be watching a Madonna concert in the same browser they are using to access my class. Use different approaches. Provoke their interest. Be interactive and consistent.

Don't make promises you can't keep. Online teaching and learning can be immensely time-consuming. Realize you can't do it all.