BY KATHY LALUK
One of the best things about being in college is meeting new
and interesting people. Getting to know your fellow students is essential to
your college social life, but what a lot of students forget is that professors
can be just as cool as their peers. That’s why we’ve searched the local
campuses and found some of the most interesting and unique professors around,
and provided a peek into their lives in and out of the classroom. Keep in mind
that we couldn’t include every awesome professor (this guide would be endless),
so ask around and see who’s the cream of the crop at your school.
Music man
UR prof brings rock
‘n’ roll to the classroom
John Covach is laid back, friendly, and well spoken. You’d
never guess that he’s UR’s own rock
star. Armed with a guitar and a passion for popular music, the UR
music professor and chair of the music department at Eastman School of Music is
getting students to appreciate and understand hit songs in a whole new way.
Covach is
somewhat of a legend on campus. In addition to his class load, he plays in
several local rock bands — 60’s cover bandthe Smooth Talkers, Genesis/Peter
Gabriel tribute The Waiting Room, Pink Floyd tribute Heroes for Ghosts, and Yes
tribute Going for the One among them —and hosts the weekly “Rock Radio”
show on WRUR FM 88.5 every Thursday at 7 p.m. and Friday at 4 p.m. On the show,
Covach plays everything from 1950’s cuts all the way to current hits, and
provides historical context to give listeners a better framework for
understanding popular music.
Covach’s
classes include “History of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “The Beatles,” and are some of
the most popular at UR — he had 235
students enrolled in his “History of Popular Music” course in one semester. But
he says he’s surprised at just how successful they’ve been over his four years
at UR.
“You know, I
really scratch my head sometimes,” he says. “The idea that somebody would want
to take a class that specializes in music, almost all of which had become
famous and fallen out of style before they were even born, is crazy to me.”
Recent UR
graduate David LeBlanc says he became a music major because of the classes he
took with Covach. LeBlanc says he was impressed by Covach’s extensive knowledge
of rock music, but more impressed with the way Covach teaches it “with a
mixture of vigor, passion, and a laid-back attitude,” he says.
“He’s not
just a scholar who read a book about this stuff. He lived through the prime of
rock music and really knows his stuff,” LeBlanc says. “A lot of students walk
into his class thinking it’ll be an easy A, but walk out thinking critically
about music.”
And that’s
the ultimate goal for Covach. “It’s a little bit of a bait and switch,” he says.
“Students show up because they think they’re going to hear fun factoids about a
band they listen to all the time, and they end up actually learning how to
think about music intellectually and critically.”
Fellow UR
lecturer and Smooth Talkers band mate Jason Titus says Covach is always focused
on making things student oriented. “He’s got a pretty good handle of striking a
balance of what students are interested in and what’s best for students,” Titus
says. “The fact that he’s a top-notch guitarist doesn’t hurt his credibility
either.”
Covach says
being able to play the guitar in class gives him instant cache with his
students — especially non-music majors. “For some reason, non-musicians think
anyone who can play an instrument has magical powers,” he says. “It’s
entertaining and it’s something that doesn’t happen in their science or writing
classes, so it helps keeps things lively.”
Covach’s
reputation extends far beyond the classroom. Before he taught at UR,
Covach was a Fulbright scholar in Vienna, Austria,
in the late 80’s, and did post-doctoral work in philosophy under Charles
Bambach at the University of Texas-Dallas. He’s written a textbook called
“What’s That Sound?”, which he uses in his classes, and is one of the most
sought-after rock music experts in the country.
“John is
kind of a big deal,” Titus says. “In the study of popular music, he’s probably
one of the top people in the country, which I don’t think students realize. And
that’s OK. He’s so laid back and approachable; students really respond to that
and want to learn things from him.”
But Covach
says he’s constantly learning from his students too. He’s an expert on all
things classic rock, but admits his students are more familiar with the current
music scene than he is. And he’s OK with that.
“It’s a
perfect exchange — I turn them on to music from my generation, and they keep me
updated on what’s going on in music today,” he says. “The only problem is, I’m
afraid I’m going to run out of room on my iPod soon!”
PULLQUOTE: “Students show up because they think they’re
going to hear fun factoids about a band they listen to all the time, and they
end up actually learning how to think about music intellectually and
critically.”
Getting back to his roots
Geneseo ecology prof teaches from travel and experiences with
nature
By the middle of his junior year at ConnecticutCollege, Gregg Hartvigsen still
wasn’t happy with his major, and he felt himself floundering. So he did what
any unsatisfied college student would do: he dropped out, sold all his
belongings, and hitchhiked across the country.
With just a
sleeping bag and backpack, Hartvigsen walked out of his parents’ house, went
straight to the highway, and stuck out his thumb, hoping a friendly passerby
would take him somewhere new. Over the next two and a half months, he traveled
about 10,000 miles cross-country and got the real-life experience he was
looking for.
“I wanted to
live a little more deliberately,” he says. “Being a vagabond was a very
formative experience for me. You’re forced to learn things about yourself that
no other situation can possibly teach you.”
It wasn’t
until he called the hills of Boulder, Colorado,
his home that he realized he had found his passion: ecology. “I would go hiking
and notice trees growing differently on different hillsides, and I would think,
‘Huh. I wonder why they’re doing that,'” he says. “To put it simply, I was just
happy when I was questioning things in nature.”
Hartvigsen
eventually decided to go back to school, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree
in environmental science. A few years later, he earned his masters in zoology. Now
a professor of biology at SUNY Geneseo, Hartvigsen is bringing his real-life
experience and passion for nature to a new generation of college students.
“What’s
really rewarding about teaching for me is getting students excited about things
they never dreamed they’d be interested in,” he says. “It’s the best feeling in
the world when students tell me that they thought that a course in ecology was
going to be really boring, only to discover it can be fun and interesting.”
Hartvigsen
teaches a variety of traditional science courses at Geneseo, like “Biological
Statistics,” “Biological Data Analysis,” and “Principles of Ecology.” But one of
his more popular classes is less typical. In his “Six Degrees of Separation”
class, which is designed for first-semester freshmen, Hartvigsen has students
examine the dynamics of social networks. And though Kevin Bacon has never made
a guest appearance in the class, Hartvigsen says his students are psyched to
research networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and to see how their
group of friends develops over the course of the semester.
“I try to
get students to really think about their place in the college and how that changes
over time,” he says. “Students seem to like the course because they get to
think about themselves, and I like the course because it’s related to my
research.” Hartvigsen’s research interests include everything from how online
social networking can affect global cooperation, to the shifting deer
populations of Western New York.
Students
don’t seem to mind the demanding workload of Hartvigsen’s classes, especially
since he tends to take them on trips outside the classroom to expand their
studies. Traveling had such an important impact on him when he was younger that
he believes in getting his students into the field to discover more about
themselves and the world around them. Hartvigsen has taken students to
destinations like the Adirondacks, Galapagos Islands,
and Ecuador to
study the ecology of new environments. Next year, he plans to take a small
group of students (sorry, biology majors only) to Belize
for a two-week mini-course.
Even though
he’s a professor now, Hartvigsen still likes to relax by playing tennis and
guitar and just enjoy life. “I’ve learned a lot since my college days and I’ve
certainly grown as a person since then,” he says. “But at the core, I’m still
the same easy-going, fun-loving, nature freak I was back then.”
PULLQUOTE: “Being a vagabond was a very formative experience
for me. You’re forced to learn things about yourself that no other situation
can possibly teach you.”
You have 1 New Friend Request
Naz professor examines Facebook from sociological perspective
“Go home and go on Facebook.” Not too many professors will
encourage their students to spend hours perusing the popular social networking
site for homework, but Kim McGann, assistant professor of sociology at Nazareth,
says she regularly asks her students to log on for her classes.
“There’s so
much that can be said about our society and how we function through sites like
Facebook, and the Internet in general,” she says. “I want them to think
critically about what we’re doing. It’s good for them to draw examples from
their lives, but I want them to be able to take it out of the context of their
lives and apply it to sociology too.”
In addition
to teaching a senior seminar about relationships and technology (that’s where
the Facebook assignment comes in), McGann also teaches many of the department’s
core classes, like “Intro to Sociology” and “Social Problems,” and some more
unique classes, like her “Marriage and Relationships” class (which, despite
popular misconceptions, is not a marriage or relationship counseling class, she
says).
It’s only
her third year at Naz, but McGann is no stranger to teaching. She’s taught at Finger
LakesCommunity College
and SUNY Geneseo, and worked as a TA for a few courses while earning her master’s
degree at RutgersUniversity
and her Ph.D. at SUNY Buffalo.
Sociology
kind of fell into McGann’s lap when she began her junior year in college and
was forced to pick a major. After waiting in a huge, long line to register for
classes (back in the day when registration wasn’t an online process), she was
told she still hadn’t declared her major. “I hadn’t really thought about it too
much, and I asked if I had to decide right then and there,” she says. “They
said I didn’t, but if I came back, I’d have to wait in that huge, long line
again. So I just sort of picked sociology.”
The decision
wasn’t as random as that story might suggest, she says. McGann took several
sociology classes that sparked her interest in the subject. One assignment in
particular — a reading about abortion and the sociological reasons why people
feel the way they do — helped her make up her mind.
“It’s not
that it changed my mind, but it made me understand why a group of women would
be strongly for abortion and why others would be strongly against it,” she says.
“And that was so cool to me. Anything that can take an issue that is that
emotional and make me understand where other people are coming from, without
necessarily agreeing with them, is so interesting to me.”
In the same
vein, McGann likes to spice things up by keeping the topics and readings relevant
and interesting to students. Her classes read articles with titles like “The
Rise of Viagra” and “Becoming a Marijuana User” (which she says is focused on
classic sociology rather than an actual how-to guide). “I never worry that
they’re not going to do the readings,” she says. “It’s criminal to bore your
students. I try to always keep them engaged.”
Amanda
Santamour, a recent Naz grad who took several classes with McGann, says she
always looked forward to the assignments and McGann’s classes. “She’s not into
lecturing at all. She likes to make class more interactive,” Santamour says,
adding that McGann was one of her favorite professors.
And it’s
easy to see why. McGann is a true performer, always gesticulating with her
hands and arms to make a point and keeping her voice engaging and friendly. “I’m
always the first to crack a bad joke,” she says. “Being a professor is like
being Jay Leno with a Ph.D.”
Theatrics
aside, McGann wants her students to become seriously engaged in an area of
study she says is generally mistaken as a negligible subject. “Sociology is
like a big buffet of interesting topics,” she says. “You can sample a little of
this, a little of that, and really keep things fresh and interesting.”
PULLQUOTE: “It’s criminal to bore your students. I try to
always keep them engaged.”
Outside the box
Professional cartoonist teaches RIT students to sketch their own
comics
Ever gotten bored and doodled in class? Jason Yungbluth is
one professor who doesn’t mind. Yungbluth, an adjunct professor at RIT and full-time
comic-book artist, teaches introductory and advanced courses in cartooning, and
he encourages his students to think outside the box — or frame, as it’s called
in the comic world.
“Of course I
want my students to draw well, but it’s more important to me that the storyline
is different and unique,” he says. “I certainly appreciate comics that are well
drawn, but it’s more fun to read something that’s intelligent and witty.”
Yungbluth’s
fascination with cartooning started at a young age with traditional superhero
comic books like Superman and Batman, and as he grew, so did his comic book
collection, and his love for the art form. It’s in his blood too: many of his
family members (his father, grandfather, and uncle to name a few) were all
professional cartoonists.
Yungbluth has
achieved some fame for himself as a cartoonist — a few of his comics have
appeared in Mad Magazine — but Yungbluth says he’s more interested in doing
long-form storylines.
“I always
wanted to be a newspaper comic strip artist, but at the same time, I wanted to
do a funny gag strip. I wanted to include some more crude humor and I wanted to
do a strip that I was happy with and proud of artistically,” he says.
“Newspapers don’t allow me to do that.”
So he
decided to do his own thing and publish his own stuff. Some of his more popular
comics include “Deep Fried,” an off-color comic that parodies and mocks
anything and everything geeky, and “Weapon Brown,” a look into the world of a
post-apocalyptic Charlie Brown. Yungbluth publishes both comics regularly on
his website, whatisdeepfried.com, but has also published a handful of comics.
Doing both projects,
he says, allows him to strike a balance between doing cartoon-y sketches with
some rude humor and a superhero-like action strip with a more detailed and
constructed storyline.
Yungbluth
says that with the way the publishing market is shifting to the web, he expects
Web comics (hopefully including his), to prosper in the future. He says that
unlike newspapers, websites are more consumer-oriented and can get away with
more crude humor.
And crude
humor is something his students don’t mind, he says. “I’m not saying everyone
needs to do jokes about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” Yungbluth says. “But it’s
not something I would object to. I want my students to do the kind of humor
they want to do, but I also want them to be intelligent about it and understand
comedy. Like why some punch lines work and others don’t.”
Yungbluth
says being a professor was not something he had in mind, and the teaching job
at RIT was spontaneous. A friend of his was originally teaching the cartooning
classes, but when he moved, RIT called Yungbluth and asked him to start the
next day. “Teaching is something that sort of just fell into my lap,” he says.
“I love it, though. Seeing students succeed and just get it. When that little
light bulb finally goes off in their mind and they get excited about what
they’re doing, that’s what I love about this job.”
Even though
it wasn’t in his plans, Yungbluth says he intends to stick with teaching for a
while, as long as it doesn’t stifle his creativity as a comic book artist. And
although he’s admittedly not the most famous cartoonist in the world, he’s
still striving to put out his best work.
“I strive to
be the person doing the most funny, the most shocking, and yet still the most
true and genuine comics I can do,” he says. “As long as I can do that, the
fame, the money, all that stuff doesn’t matter.”
PULLQUOTE: “I want my students to do the kind of humor they
want to do, but I also want them to be intelligent about it and understand
comedy. Like why some punch lines work and others don’t.”
This article appears in Aug 19-19, 2009.
