ROANOKE TIMES  
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996                TAG: 9605150034
SECTION: CURRENT                  PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY  
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: WENDY PAGONIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
MEMO: ran in Neighbors on May 16.

FROM TEACHER TO TAUGHT - FOR A WEEK

A roomful of students sat around a conference table somewhere in Radford University last week. It was the week between final exams and summer school.

Instructor Susan Kirby, an associate professor of English, looked around the room and asked for volunteers to give presentations Friday. Everyone remained quiet - no raised hands, not even a cleared throat. One student suggested drawing names, but still no one stepped forward.

"No volunteers at this point, so we'll ask again at the end of class," Kirby said.

This scene may be extraordinarily common in a college classroom.

But in this classroom, all the "students" were faculty and staff members at Radford. They participated in a weeklong program called "Our Time" that featured classes taught by present and retired Radford faculty members.

The miniuniversity program is in its third year and has generated growing interest since the co-directors of the Center for Teaching Excellence introduced it.

Lee Stewart and Coreen Mett developed the idea into a full-scale program after successfully organizing several "one-shot workshops," Stewart said.

They believed that by having single workshops spread out across the school year, faculty did not have adequate time to process and incorporate new material into the classes they were teaching, Stewart said.

Now, faculty and staff have an entire week to sharpen their skills and learn new classroom technology.

Among the 13 classes offered last week, the 120 participants could learn such skills as using the Internet, writing proposals and understanding available retirement plans.

"What we are doing is making ourselves better, more interesting teachers," Clarity James said.

James, an associate professor of music, learned about publishing on the World Wide Web from computer science professor Michael Packer and Chell Johnson, the only college undergraduate instructing in the program this year.

"It was really taxing, but it was also a lot of fun," Johnson said. "The way you teach professors is different from the way you teach students."

Some of the classes involved homework. Faculty and staff in the World Wide Web class built their own home pages during the week. On Friday, they viewed each other's work.

Students in Kirby's class, "Teaching Today's Students," had homework every day. Then there were those Friday presentations.

At the end of class Kirby asked again for volunteers to give presentations. This time a hand went up and before everyone left she had four eager presenters.

"If anyone else changes their mind, let me know," Kirby said. But by then the notebooks were being shut and the chairs scooted under the table. Until tomorrow, class was over.

LENGTH: Medium:   62 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  Radford University. Nancy Taylor, an English department 
          instructor, leads a class in "Teaching Today's Students" as part of 
          last week's "Our Time" seminar series for Radford University faculty
          and staff. color.