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LIFE
Special section inside and at Kansan.com
THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2016 | VOLUME 130 ISSUE 19
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
Foundation Distinguished Professor takes pride in teaching diverse group of students
David Roediger, an American Studies professor at the University, studies student movements and offered some insight into the recent student protests.
▶ CONNER MITCHELL
@ConnerMitchell0
Kelcie Matousek/KANSAN ate the recent student protests
As the University's first Foundation Distinguished professor of American Studies, David Roediger has spent years educating young minds and writing about race, class and social movements. However, education was not always his chosen career path.
"I was all set in the early '70s to go to law school, but I had taken an education degree, so I student-taught high school a little bit, and I liked it," he said. "When I got in the classroom at Northwestern as a [teaching assistant], I figured out that I enjoyed it a lot, and just kept doing it."
Roediger, who divides his time between teaching, writing and research, said being an educator resonates with him because of the diverse group of students he is continually exposed to in a
college environment.
"The teaching part [that I like] is that it's different every day, and it's a different group of students, and I particularly like Kansas because the students come from a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different abilities. It's a very, very interesting group of students," he said. "The writing I don't always enjoy, and sometimes it is kind of hard. But it lets me think about what I am thinking about the present at the same time that I'm writing history."
Roediger has penned nearly a dozen novels, and has a new book coming out this summer. He said his current project is a book focusing on the middle class and examining what politicians really mean when they say, "I am going to save the middle class."
So I end up trying to think about when people started using the term 'middle class' and why they started to use it and keep using it," he said. "I'm trying to think about what it is to be middle class now, and whether we should want to save the middle class, or whether we should want to say, Well, that's always been kind of a precarious place to be."
"Sometimes they think 90 percent of Americans are middle class, which is giant.
was inspired by the efforts of student activist group Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk last semester. However, while he said the Invisible Hawk movement was likely inspired by student movements at the University of Missouri, the two movements had different motivations.
Roediger also focused extensive research on social movements and said he
"I was inspired here, the question is how do you take that moment of passion and translate it into institutional changes?" he said. "I
wouldn't draw too sharp of a line between the Missouri experience and the Kansas experience. One of the reasons that Invisible Hawk was so successful in the fall is that they were resisting this story that Kansas is different, and Missouri has always been backwards."
Natalia Ramos-Thaw, a freshman from Newton, took Roediger's American Studies 110 course last semester, and said his availability and passion for what
he teaches sets him apart.
"I really enjoyed having Roediger as my American Studies professor," she said. "He always made himself available to help for students who needed it. He is definitely one of the nicest professors I've had so far, and you can really tell that he actually cares and is passionate about what he is teaching his students."
-Edited by Ryan Wright
Alex Robinson/KANSAN
Jammie Johnson, graudate advisor in the School of Journalism, speaks to a student at the School of Journalism's Diversity Town Hall meeting on Tuesday night in Stauffer-Flint.
Journalism school Town Hall focuses on minority inclusivity
- LARA KORTE
@lara_korte
About 10 sheets of paper with tactics for handling diversity and inclusion were pinned to the walls of the Clarkson Gallery in Stauffer-Flint Hall for the School of Journalism's Diversity Town Hall meeting Tuesday evening. Roughly 20 students milled around the gallery writing down suggestions or comments.
The Town Hall meeting was held to get student and faculty feedback on diversity and inclusion issues within the School of Journalism. Ann Brill, the dean of the school, said as the school approaches re-accreditation in the fall of 2016, it's looking at plans for the future.
"So we're looking at all of our plans, our strategic plan, our diversity plan, our assessment plan and as we looked at our diversity plan and we looked at the other things happening around campus, we appointed a committee to look at it and the committee decided this would be a really great way to get feedback." Brill said.
The papers posted around the room listed three goals the School of Journalism has for diversity and inclusion and some tactics to achieve them. The goals included developing an academic environment fostering cultural competence and social justice, developing a culture based on intellectual curiosity and inclusiveness and developing a structure to hold the school accountable.
Jordan Winter, a freshman from Overland Park, took careful time to read all the tactics. Below one suggestion, Winter commented that she thinks the school should worry more about maintaining diverse faculty rather than recruiting them.
Shelby Bettles, a junior from Wichita, commented below a tactic that suggested showcasing the diverse work of graduate students. Bettles said she wasn't sure how effective advertising a showcase would be in a school full of media students.
"I just thought that we should be focusing more on educating the current staff and talk about just like maintaining the good environment for them rather than attracting new people," Winter said.
"A lot of the big things that we put up here in the
J-School don't get enough traffic to impact the way that students look at the things that we're presenting, and I think that's a great idea that we should be promoting — that students want to learn more and teach other people about diversity," Bettles said. "I'm just more not sure if another poster or if another showcase is the best way to do that, just because we're all so attacked by so much media all the time, and so many posters everywhere, that I don't know exactly what the way is to teach students that it's good to understand diversity and to become culturally competent."
Bettles suggested instead of posters promoting diverse work, students should get invited to events where diverse topics and research might be presented and discussed, or better yet, give those same speeches or presentations in class.
"To actually promote that learning through their teaching instead of kind of hoping that students do this kind of learning on their own merit," Bettles said. "I think people should be handed this information."
SEE TOWN HALL
PAGE 2
KU debate teams continue 49-year winning streak
▶ COURTNEY BIERMAN
@courtbierman
The trophy cases on the first floor in Bailey Hall are full. Silver and gold testaments to the University debate team's success are crowded behind the glass, along with silk banners lining the walls. Since forming in 1885, the University debate team has become one of the most prestigious in the country, program director Scott Harris said.
Next month six debaters, made up of three teams of two, will represent the University at the National Debate Tournament (NDT) at Binghamton University in New York April 1-6. Competing teams are selected through a combination of evaluating the team's success over the course of the season and meetings of a national debate committee
This is the 49th consecutive year the University has competed in the NDT, one of the biggest competitions of the season. Only
one school, the University of Southern California, has a longer streak.
Harris attributes the debate program's success to his "incredibly hard-working, incredibly bright" students. He draws an analogy between University debate and the University basketball team.
"What is it that makes KU's basketball program so successful that it wins 12 consecutive Big 12 titles? It's that tradition of bringing quality students to the program, quality coaching, hard work," Harris said.
Harris said this year's topic is "Resolved: The United States should significantly reduce its military presence in one or more of the following: the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, the Greater Horn of Africa, Northeast Asia."
Teams are required to prepare two arguments, one affirmative and one negative. The tournament begins with eight preliminary rounds. Each team
debates the affirmative side for half of the rounds and negative for the other half. Only 32 teams of the original 78 advance to the single-elimination rounds, which narrow the roster down to 16, then the final four. Harris said.
Chris Birzer, a junior from Overland Park, and Mac Cook, a sophomore from Shawnee, make up one the University's three teams competing in the NDT. While this will be Cook's first NDT experience, it is Birzer's second year in the tournament after he broke into the top 32 teams as a freshman.
Even though he's been there before, Birzer recognizes qualifying for the NDT is a big deal for a collegiate debater.
"To be able to qualify is prestigious, both because it's hard to be one of the top three teams from KU and also because it's difficult to be one of the top 72 [teams] in the country," Birzer said.
SEE DEBATE PAGE 2
Illustration by Jake Kaufmann/KANSAN