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Faculty Excellence at UMUC
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Faculty Interview
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| 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? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | I had been surfing the Internet one night and found the ad to teach for UMUC Asia. My department chair at the college where I worked had taken classes while he was a young man in the military and told me that it was a great program and that I should do it for a year. I decided to give it a try, signed that one year contract, and ended up staying here for over 7 years. I teach full time for UMUC - Asia. |
| Interviewer: | Please tell us if you teach face-to-face, online, or both and explain what made you choose that format of teaching. |
| Christine Kikuchi: | I teach in both formats. I started teaching DE when I got into administration because it allowed me to continue to teach while traveling around Asia to see the CMST faculty during my class visits. |
| Interviewer: | What do you find most satisfying about teaching in your chosen format(s)? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | I prefer teaching face-to-face because I like the instant interaction and being able to see the light bulb going off when a student grasps a concept. However, the DE environment allows me to travel, which is good. |
| Interviewer: | What do you find challenging about teaching in your chosen format(s)? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | The only challenge I have for the face-to-face courses is commuting. It is difficult to teach back to back classes for 5 hours and then have to take a bunch of trains to get home by midnight. The biggest challenge with the DE courses is the time that they take. I spend about half more time on my DE classes. Creating the lecture notes, responding to the students, and grading the work is far more time consuming than an face-to-face class. |
| 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? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | My first involvement with using computers was when I worked as a financial analyst. This job meant that I had to use spreadsheet and graphics software programs. I discovered that I was able to learn how to use applications easily and decided to open a corporate software training company. The first computer course I taught was an introduction to computing course. I had been teaching a back to work program that consists of teaching English, math, personal finance, job hunting, and basic software applications for the business department of a community college and the department head suggested that I teach the intro to computing course. At my next college, I started teaching programming, information systems, and networking courses. While I was Stateside, I kept my hand in the field of computers by running my own software training company and working for companies doing networking, software training, program debugging, and database. |
| Interviewer: | What joys do you experience in teaching in this area? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | It is never boring! In the field of computers you must keep up with the latest technologies and concepts. I like that, in my overseas classes, I have so many students who work in the field of computers daily. It is fun for me to get these experienced people in my classes and be able to be the one to tell them why they do something a certain way. A student might have worked in computer security for 15 years, but in the military, you are taught how to do a job or task and never taught the why of it. I love that I am teaching in a field that is so open and changing. |
| 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. |
| Christine Kikuchi: | We have so many wonderful tools and techniques available to us, but it is hard to be able to utilize them because of money problems in teaching for the overseas division. When I was visiting Adelphi, I was jealous of all of the cool toys that computer teachers get to use. When it comes to online classes, I always have to worry about bandwidth because some of our students are in areas where they only have access to dial up connections to the Internet. I might be able to set up some great things for the students to see in my classroom, but usually chose to not do so because I feel that every student in the class has to be able to see whatever it is I am trying to show. |
| Interviewer: | How would you describe your teaching style or philosophy? What experiences or person(s) have influenced your style or philosophy? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | My teaching style is to make the class sessions as much fun as I can while covering a lot of material. I try to prepare my students for the real world as much as possible. Therefore, I do not accept late work or have anything like extra credit assignments because these things are not seen in the business world. One of biggest influences in my teaching career was a former department chair who challenged me to teach classes that I had thought were outside my sphere. Since my background was business, I had focused on information systems and he made me prepare to teach in programming and networking because he thought it would make me a better teacher. He was right and I thank him for pushing me every day. |
| 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? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | I think that because I entered college so late in life (10 years after I graduated from high school) and I was married with a step son at the time I started school, I can remember my college experience very clearly. I know what it is like to try to juggle work, family, and school and try to do well at all of it. My students appreciate that I keep up with the latest things in technology and offer so much business experience. I try to give them what they want and that is a course that makes them work very hard, yet prepares them for real jobs and careers. |
| Interviewer: | What suggestion would you give to students who are interested in majoring or working in your discipline? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | Keep up with what is happening in the computer world. Never think you are done with learning no matter how much college you have. Find ways to connect what you learn to doing your job better. |
| Interviewer: | What suggestion would you give to new faculty who are interested in teaching in your discipline at UMUC? |
| Christine Kikuchi: | I would give them the same advice I gave to the students in question number 3. I would also tell them to not be afraid to make the students work for their grades and to make assignments challenging. |
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