Irish, Parker, Wysocki Distinguished Teachers
Associate Professor Michael
Irish (Fine Arts), director of the jazz studies program, is this year’s
Distinguished Teaching Award winner in the associate professor/professor
category. In addition, two faculty members will receive the 2001 award
in the assistant professor/lecturer category: Gordon Parker (ME-EM) and
Anne Wysocki (Humanities).
“The Distinguished Teaching
Award Committee was deadlocked,” said Nancy Seely, assistant director
of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Faculty Development. “Instead
of not awarding it to anyone, we received additional funding from the
administration allowing us to give two awards. Both candidates were equally
qualified.”
In evaluating Irish, one of
his students wrote, “Mike Irish is the only person who will drop
everything to help anybody.”
“It’s hard for me
to turn down a student,” Irish said. “I don’t like to use
a business analogy, but our students are our customers. They do come first.”
He recalled a time when his
predecessor, former faculty member Don Keranen, allowed Irish, then an
MTU forestry undergraduate, to sit in on jazz band rehearsals. Irish played
the guitar, and with only one guitar per band, it wasn’t easy to
get to play. “And after about a month, Don, in his quiet way, said
‘Why don’t you bring your guitar to class?’ I thought that
was the greatest thing in the world,” Irish said. “I suspect
he thought, ‘Jeez, if this kid is willing to sit here and ask questions,
I’ll give him a chance.’ That’s what I feel students need,
a chance. So it’s hard for me to turn down a student if they ask
a question.”
“I’m very proud;
this award is well-earned,” said fine arts chair Milton Olsson. “Mike
is a fabulous teacher. He works very patiently, methodically. And the
quality of his direction! His groups win awards year in and year out at
jazz festivals, and it’s because of his really superb teaching. It’s
at the point where it’s assumed that Michigan Tech is going to come
in and walk away with all the marbles.”
Irish has no regrets about
devoting his career to teaching non-music majors. Scientists and engineers
have qualities all their own. “The real secret is that the students
who come her are not your average college students,” he said. “They
have a lot of horsepower. You’ll find that, though they are tops
academically, they were probably out for forensics, first or second chair
in band, student athletes . . . They have a lot of talent.”
For their part, his students
are happy to live up to his expectations. “He works us like we aren’t
engineers, like we’re real musicians, and makes us love every minute
of it,” said one. “He has shown me what it takes to be an awesome
jazz musician, and he is walking with me down that path,” wrote another.
At least one of Gordon Parker’s
students isn’t registered in any of his classes. “I am not in
his section, but I am sitting in on it to understand the subject matter,”
a student wrote in one of Parker’s teaching evaluations. “He
must be doing something right.”
“He loves what he does
and is passionate about it,” wrote another. “Also, he wants
everyone to be passionate.”
“The students are pretty
generous,” said Parker, who was recently promoted from assistant
professor to associate professor. He credits his success as a teacher,
first, to being organized, and secondly, “but more importantly, I
try to put myself in the students’ shoes. I think of how to present
the material from the standpoint of someone who knows nothing. . . . Also,
I respect the students, and that usually gets returned.”
Parker’s specialty since
coming to MTU in 1996 has been controls, “the notion of automatically
manipulating something,” from the temperature of a room to the speed
of a vehicle. “It’s pretty fun,” Parker says.
Not everyone agrees with his
assessment of controls. “He makes a horrible subject interesting
and fun to learn,” said one of his students.
ME-EM chair Bill Predebon lauded
Parker’s performance both in and out of the classroom. “Gordon
is one of those special faculty members who make it enjoyable to be a
chair,” he said. “He’s very productive, his students love
him, and in addition he’s easy to work with.”
Parker was instrumental in
developing the department’s new systems and controls laboratory.
“The students are quite excited about that, and they say he’s
very enthusiastic and can inspire them because of his enthusiasm,”
Predebon said.
Robert Johnson, chair of the
humanities department, was not surprised that Wysocki was honored for
her teaching. “As many students have attested, Anne is an outstanding
teacher,” he said. “She holds that reputation not only among
students, but among the faculty as well.”
“I’ve never thought
better, done more work, and enjoyed a class more than hers,” a student
wrote. “She makes a person forget about the bad classes that one
has in a day.”
Wysocki, who teaches graphic
and information design, visual communication, digital photography, multimedia,
and composition, has been an assistant professor since 1999, when she
received her PhD in Rhetoric and Technical Communication at MTU.
“She is the most upbeat
teacher I’ve ever had, and I actually look forward to going to her
classes,” said one of her students.
Dean Woodbeck, director of
News and Information Services, observed Wysocki teaching middle school
girls how to develop Web pages during a Girls+Science+Math class. “There
were probably fifteen girls and assorted parents,” he said. “She
took four digital pictures of them making silly faces, animated them,
made them look like they’d been slimed—that was really popular,”
he said. “But the thing that impressed me was how she taught at their
level. She was very patient, she checked around to see how everyone was
doing, and she made suggestions without being overbearing. She was an
excellent teacher, and she would be for any age group.
“What also impressed me
was how my daughter Laura’s interest in computers skyrocketed after
taking Anne’s class,” he added. “Before, Laura was interested
in e-mail. This was the first time she thought ‘I could do this;
I could make a career of this.’ That really hit home.”
Johnson agreed. “Anne
not only represents the best of what students value in a teacher, but
also the best of what we are coming to see as the teacher of the future,”
he said. “She’s caring and pushes students in directions that
explore technology and communication.”
The Distinguished Teaching
Awards, each of which include a $2,500 cash award, will be presented at
President’s Convocation on September 19.
In addition to Irish, Parker,
and Wysocki, the other finalists for the Distinguished Teaching Award
were assistant professors David Flaspohler (SFWP), Sheila Grant (Biomedical
Engineering), and John Sandell (Technology) in the assistant professor/lecturer
category; and professors Mary Ann Beckwith (Fine Arts), Lawrence Evers
(ME-EM), and Dennis Wiitanen (Electrical and Computer Engineering) and
associate professor Dennis Lynch (Humanities) in the associate professor/professor
category.