THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 17, 1997 TAG: 9701160036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 112 lines
``AGING IN AMERICA'' and ``Data Collection and Data Analysis.''
These are the classes that Ben Dobrin, an assistant professor of health and human services at Virginia Wesleyan College, usually teaches.
So what was he lecturing about the other day? Alzheimer's disease? Regression analysis? Elder care?
Try wave action in Malibu.
This course of Dobrin's is called ``Surfing Explored.''
Like a revisionist historian offering a new take on a world war, Dobrin tried to break some misconceptions about surfing. For instance: Don't expect warm water if you go out to California to ride the waves.
``We think of Southern California as a very warm part of the country,'' he told his 17 students, ``but the water temperature in the summer is in the 60s,'' thanks to the ``cold-water current coming down from the Arctic region.''
He also compared surfing on the coasts. ``Here, the waves break in different places every day because the sand shifts,'' Dobrin said. In the Pacific, the reefs ensure that waves ``break in exactly the same place.''
In Virginia Beach, if you come tumbling down, chances are you won't seriously damage yourself. ``You just bounce off the sand,'' he said. In California, ``if you hit a reef, well, people have been known to die from bouncing off a reef.''
Sounds a bit unorthodox for the college classroom, but Dobrin is just going with the flow at Wesleyan these days. His class is among about 40 two-week courses in the college's ``January term,'' which ends today.
The classes run the gamut from the practical (``Rape Aggression Defense Systems'') to just plain fun (``Planet of the Apes?''). Other selections include ``The Science of Star Trek,'' ``Ethnic Foods of Tidewater,'' `Chess for Beginners'' and ``Get Your Mo Jo Working,'' an exploration of the blues. There are also two foreign trips, to Maui, Hawaii, and London.
No other school in the region features such a lighthearted academic break between semesters.
Virginia Wesleyan has offered January term since 1973. The liberal arts college requires students to take two January courses before they graduate. The courses are non-credit, but they sometimes include reading and writing assignments. Most cost no more than a $10 registration fee; the overseas trips cost more than $1,000 each.
``It's a great thing,'' said Thomas Taylor, a freshman history major enrolled in ``Creating Your Own Web Page.'' ``You can relax and learn something at the same time. It's not a stressful environment, with papers, tests and exams.''
Kathy Merlock Jackson, a communications professor who is the director of January term, said: ``It's a way for students to get to know faculty members and each other in a less structured, more intimate way.''
Deborah Otis, an associate professor of chemistry who teaches the Star Trek class, said, ``I find I make a much better connection with my students because of that infor-mality.''
Dobrin's course is formally called ``From Duke Kahanamoku to Kelly Slater: Surfing Explored.'' For the uninitiated, Kahanamoku was a Hawaiian gold medal swimmer who promoted surfing at the turn of the century. Slater is considered the world's greatest surfer now.
Dobrin has reviewed the history of surfing, including Christian missionaries' attempts to kill it off in Hawaii in the 1800s, and the introduction of foam boards in the '50s.
The class wasn't scheduled for a visit to the waves, but Dobrin was planning a trip to a surf shop to watch surfboards being shaped.
Kathy Ames' and Michael Morrison's January class on ``Creating Your Own Web Page'' capitalizes on a newer type of surfing. Four days into the class, the 20 students were already well on their way to establishing their customized pages on the World Wide Web.
What Ames likes, she said, is the lack of barriers between teacher and student in the classes. ``We don't have to grade them, so there's not that tension of us versus them,'' she said. ``So you're working more like partners.''
In a class led by Mark Templeman and Tom Lopez, two assistant professors of sociology, the subject was evil people. The title of their course: ``Enemies, Archvillains and Cads: People We Love to Hate.''
After the 15 students listed their favorite villains - including Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Scrooge and Cruella DeVil - they were asked why folks are glued to TV shows and films with evil characters.
``You have to have the ultimate conflict,'' said Jason Hammitt, a junior majoring in sociology. ``If I'm a superhero, you have to have a supervillain, or else it's not worth fighting about.''
Faye Miles, a sophomore majoring in biology, added that watching all that nastiness ``makes people feel good about the bad things in their life,'' which don't seem quite so bad after all.
Afterward, Miles said she relished the chance to take a class unrelated to her major for a change. Anne Marie Lee, a junior communications major who admitted during class that she never saw herself as the villain when a cop stopped her for speeding, said: ``It's nice to be in a class where you can feel free to speak about whatever you want. The professors are really laid-back.''
Jackson, the program director, said January term offers a rare chance for freshmen to get to know seniors, science profs to get to know humanities majors, etc. Plus, ``it's valuable for students to see faculty members step out of their disciplines and share with them ideas and topics they're enthusiastic about. That showcases faculty members as lifelong learners.''
For example, Stan Pearson, in real life a math instructor, is teaching about long-distance running. Fred Weiss, a business instructor who is a music aficionado, is leading a class in ``Faraway Places in Song and Dance.''
And there's Dobrin, the surfer. The Norfolk native said he's been surfing since he was 14.
Of January term, he said: ``I find it exciting to do something that's outside the normal academic boundaries and present it in an academic manner. . bleach-blond people with no ambition and goals.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE COURSES