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University Daily Kansan
Mondav. October 25,1976
McNish seeks newest knowledge
Bv COURTNEY THOMPSON
A name like J. Hammond McNish conjures up visions of propriety and formality—certainly more so than, say, Bill Jones.
J. Hammond McNish
And there's the theory that cautions against deviation from the revered principle that says it's advisable to avoid professors with long names and mandatory to avoid those using a first initial and middle name.
The combination of these two considerations suggests that a business law course taught by McNish would be worthy of careful circumvention.
Not so. McNish is a person who puts you to ease as you first walk in his office—even if you admit to knowing almost nothing about business, and definitely nothing about business law.
The "visits" are five-minute discussions at the beginning of class and cover any topics relevant to the class.
HE SAYS HE LIKES to put his students at ease, too, and likes to "visit with them before class to help break the ice before jumping into course material."
"I wouldn't take time to talk about frivolous stuff," McNish said recently, "but I think students should know about what's going on around them today." I don't think a time with trivia, but I continue to do it anyway because I think the things I mention are relevant."
TEACHING WAS the farthest thing from his mind, he says, when he got a letter in 1946 asking him to consider a position at the University of Kansas.
"I thought it was a joke," he said. "I was a research assistant at the University of Nebraska law school and teaching was the last thing I expected to do. I hadn't the
Vagues later taught at KU from 1946 to 1948. He McNish taught at KU from 1946 to 1948. He
says that during that time he "fell in love with" the student, and with the type of student at the University.
Because he wanted to experience the "real world of a lawyer," McNish returned to his native Nebraska to practice law as partner in a two-man firm. After 22 years in law practice, he says the routine became repetitions and his enthusiasm "guilt."
"NO LONGER was it a great thrill to
stand there, and feel that I had
yourself as an implementation of justice.
all," he said. "Instead we began to wish each client hadn't come in.
"This is hard to express properly because I enjoyed law practice, yet I became a prisoner to the commitments it entailed. I spent most of my time explaining why we weren't through with a particular case and knew that the legal process' could be short-cutted."
McNish says he realized he would like to return to teaching at KU if the opportunity were presented, so he made the suggestion
to the University in 1970 and they accepted his offer.
AS AN ADJUNCT professor (one who has had work experience in a specific field), he isn't required to do research or writing, and therefore is not required to present essential elements of teachings, however.
knowledge is a continually expanding process, he says, and the ability of a professor to inject new knowledge into this knowledge with reference to his experiences make college different from high school. He says students shouldn't be satisfied with the rehash-of the textbook method common to high school courses, but instead from an instructor's individual expertise.
McNish enjoys classical music and is a member of the Lawrence Chamber Music Society. But his avid avocation in connection with KU is intercollegiate athletics.
McNish says he finds teaching relaxing and doesn't find it tiresome or boring to teach the same course repeatedly. Student reaction is always different, he says, and the students themselves are interesting in their varity.
THE ONLY THING he dislikes about "academia", McNish says, is correcting papers. He says his tests are essay, and by the end of this semester he students are learning and what they're not.
He is KU's faculty representative to the Big Eight and NCAA and an ex-officio member of the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation board.
whether you as an individual are a sports enthusiast or not I think it's important to realize the tremendous morale boosting and cohesiveness factor that collegiate athletics carries with it. You may prefer reading a novel instead of watching sports, and I think it's a mistake to oppose anything that has such value to the University."
Teaching remains fresh for Pyfer
By BILL CALVERT
Staff Writer
Pyfer teaches adaptive physical education, which deals with the treatment of perception and movement problems of the handicapped.
A concern about the attitudes of students and a desire to be open and honest with them characterize the teaching of Jean Pfer. associate professor of education.
Because of the nature of the courses she teaches, Ppy find her classes rarely dull.
Jean Pyfer
THE FLOW OF fresh material in her classes and the emphasis on its application provide a firm base for Pyfer's teaching philosophy. She said she tried to encourage open-mindedness and originality toward her class' subject matter in her students.
"It would be difficult to keep the class interesting if you were deceived by her at first, but after year, but that's not the case," Pyter said recently. "The case is that we are always dealing with people who have been taught the wrong thing."
It's the students that keep it interesting because they come up with new ideas in terms of 'Okay, here's the stuff—what do you do with it?"
"You can either teach to open people's minds, or teach them to be followers who are dedicated to what a few people have said, and literally close them to knowledge," she said. "I think it's important that every teacher discipline they're in and an open attitude in using that information."
Pyfer has taught at the University of Kansas for the past seven years. During
that time she has been involved with the Perceptual-Motor Clinic in the department of health and physical education, in which perceptual and movement problems of handicapped children are diagnosed and treated.
PYFER SAID THAT when she arrived at KU, a professor in the department wanted to start a clinic and asked whether she had degrees in physical education, educational psychology and special education, she said, she felt qualified and accepted the position. Two years later, the KU leaf, leaving her in charge of the clinic.
The clinic is an important educational tool for students in observed tried and true treatments of perceptual-motor disorders, Pyter said. She said it supplemented her three-pronged classroom approach: using current theoretical positions, and critiquing the information to find better ways to apply it.
"I COULDN'T have planned it better even if I had known what I would be doing today," Pyler said of her present position. "I just don't want to see them than they have ever learned, from me."
Pyfer said she first became motivated to teach after she graduated from high school when she saw the attitudes of high school graduates who applied for jobs at the office where she worked. The people she worked with there and the job seekers were often more concerned with job benefits than with job demands, she said.
"Quite frankly, I didn't like the quality of
Gilbert desires informality
Staff Writer
If high quality teaching were measured by the desire to teach, Edwyna Gilbert, associate professor of curriculum and education, said she wants students to hear. She says she wants to teach "forever."
"I don't think just anyone can be a
woman who she said recently." You have to
want to do.
By BETH SPRINGGATE
"I think teaching is caring. It's not enough to know statistics and facts. I think you have to be able to say, 'Hey, that means something to me.'"
If a teacher tells his students to read a book and learn the facts, he won't be as successful as a teacher who adds to the reading by relating the facts to life, she
Life outside the University of Karsas isn't the limit to experience, Gilbert said. The world within the University can be just as challenging. she said.
"I TRY TO make my classes informal," she said. "We try to have a lot of discussion. I try to relate things that we discuss in class to things in life."
GLIBERT SAID teaching at KU could be frustrating at times.
"I hope that my students, after they've been in that real world, will take the opportunities."
She said, "I don't like German chocolate
that's not come to your house, I make
an attempt to it."
Edwyna Gilbert
She said she wanted her students to try University teaching to find out whether they
She said that last year, when she was nominated for the HOPE award but didn't win it, she felt as if she had gone unrewarded for her efforts.
interested in the school and the community.
Those teachers who take advantage of research grants and leave Lawrence to study aren't doing justice to their students. They're teachers who remain in Lawrence and work within the school who deserve praise, she said.
"I THINK ALL teachers can be more effective," she said. "Even if you teach the same course semester after semester, you never teach it the same way."
"There just aren't enough awards to recognize all of the people here," she said. "I think teaching should be more important because there is more attention should be paid to teachers."
A teacher must teach the same course semester after semester, Gilbert said. She said it was her responsibility to keep her classes refreshing for her students.
"If you're a teacher, it's a 24-hour thing," she said. "It's always on your mind, I'm ready to go."
She added that most teachers at KU were good, conscientious teachers who were
When she meets a new group of students in that class at the start of each semester, she said, "It's like going to a party for the teachers and the children; who they are and what they want."
better?' I ask it every semester and every day."
With each new group she faces two challenges. She said she wanted to teach her students how to be successful teachers and to introduce them to existing problems so they could be aware of them and correct them if the opportunity arose.
Each semester she pursues that philosophy, especially in a class she teaches called, "Teaching Language Arts in the Classroom," a methods class for student teachers.
youngsters I saw coming out of high school," she said. "Their questions were usually 'What's my salary?', How much sick leave do I get?, When my vacancy start?'. There was no attention paid to know. There was no attention paid to questions like 'What do I do in my job?'
AT KU SIEH earned her doctorate and met her husband, William Gilbert, professor of history, who she said had had a great influence on her teaching philosophy.
She said she attempted to meet the challenge of teaching her students by criticizing their work and understanding their problems.
SHE SAID, "You're preparing them for something immediate and for something long-range. But I don't think you ever know their goals, and that what's knew you going."
Gilbert may have found a solution to the students' problem of finding enough time to study.
She said, "The idea in teaching would be to sit in your office from 4 to 8 and all around you. You'd need a floor."
"Better yet, the ideal in teaching would be you could teach like Socrates and go around teaching."
The ideas she presents to her classes are the ideas she has incorporated into her classwork.
AFTER WORKING six years as a clerk-typist and a private secretary, Pyter went back to school and graduated from Indiana with a doctorate in physical education.
Gilbert was born in Maryville, Mo. but has lived in Lawrence since 1862 when she came here with a friend, Oscar Howe, a former HOPE award winner.
The system of giving grades to percentages of students sets up a competitive situation in which the students work against each other instead of cooperating, she said. This stiff creativity, she said, and the students' active skills, which she considers important.
"If they all end up with perfect scores, it's fine with me," she said. "When they have a say-so as to what these things are going to count, they have made a personal commitment." She is going to make. I don't think teachers should run ground clubbing to do their things.
Political love affair absorbing to Cigler
It's ironic that Allan Cigler, a finalist for the highest award that University of Kansas students give an instructor, readily admits that he has no teaching philosophy.
wan Cugier, assistant professor of politics who does have is a love for the beaches he teaches.
By JERRY SEIB
Staff Writer
Both teaching and research are vital in most academic departments, he said. To do research, some sacrifices must be made in order to teach, he said, priorities must be set.
RESEARCH STILL take up much of Cigler's time. He said teaching in his field would be nearly impossible without research outside the classroom.
"Very frankly, I'm fascinated with American politics," Cigler said recently. "The University community is the one community where I can pursue that."
"Over time, the teaching part of my role has taken more and more of my time, and I've gotten more and more of my rewards there," he said.
CIGLER TEACHES undergraduate classes in American and English political behavior, and the electoral process. One of
"The semester after an election is tough, both for them, for me," he said. "I don't think the students can do it."
Cigler said that, in this election year, the general interest in politics had heightened student interest in his classes. That will be different this spring.
HOPE voting set
Seniors may vote for one of the five HOPE award finalists Wednesday and Thursday. The winner will be announced during the game of the KU-Iowa State football game Nov. 6.
his favorites is his class on American political parties.
"I'm teaching stuff that's intrinsically interesting," he said. "All I have to do is not interest it."
G caller said he didn't grow up hoping to be a degradaeer and graduate degrees at Thel College in Greenville, Pa., and the university in Maryville, Va. This is his interest in political research.
Seated in his Blake Hall office, Clergius looks as much like a graduate student as a professor. His light brown hair is slightly longer, just above his glasses. He speaks in quick, sharp words.
(p4) Teaching is a very personal kind of
service profession with strong personal reward
with stront personal reward.
Cigler's office. They are the accumulation of years of teaching and research, and the books' titles reflect the diverse interests of the man at the desk nearby.
"One really satisfying thing is working with upperclassmen doing research projects," he said. "It's just sort of exciting and stimulating intellectually turn on for the first time."
"My major aim in class is to give people a set of tools to make sense of what seems so confusing."
CIGLER HAS published articles on public opinion changes, government popularity in Britain, political ineffectiveness, aftermath of the citizenship and politics in the Philippines.
Books and journals line the walls of
American politics is his speciality, however. He has taught courses at virtually all levels, but he prefers teaching courses at the junior and senior levels. He doesn't enjoy teaching graduate students, who, he increasingly have slipped into coproduction.
CIGLER HAS been on college campuses long enough to remember the student unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those days, when there was little involvement on today's campuses.
Allan Cigler
The political climate of the past few years hasn't helped the situation, he said.
"People got burned. People are reluctant to get burned again. It's sort of a love like that."
Peter Turk
Turk shuns selling for teaching
Bv CAROL LUMAN
Staff Writer
Peter Turk, acting assistant professor of journalism, says he's a retread.
"This is my second career," he said recently. "I started out in advertising and spent 10 years in advertising work agency work." He added that it was time for a change, so I am a retread.
The impetus for that change came on a Sunday morning during a church sermon. The preacher asked the congregation what it was doing for the country, Turk rememberes, and he said he thought the question was directed at him.
"I taker low and lower in my pew," Turk says with a grin. "I kept thinking, Well, I'm ready."
DECIDING HE had more than selling soup to contribute to the country, Turk
Now, he teaches others how to sell soap. Turk teaches advertising courses and a course in law of communications in the School of Journalism.
When he left advertising, Turk went to the University of Illinois where he earned his masters degree. From there he went to Pennsylvania State University for a year and to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before coming to KU in 1974.
He's now completing work on his Ph.D.
and is scheduled to finish in June. That's
what he was thinking.
The change from working in advertising
to teaching it was the right one for him, Turk said. So he said his experience in India, and was invaluable.
"I HEAR THIS often from my students, " that what they enjoy most is the way I make a point and then follow it up with an illustration." he said.
that's a hard thing to do without practical experience. You can do it, but you have to learn it.
"I don't know whether I could teach if I hadn't had the working experience before I
"Now it's different in law. I had a mad passion for law, but it's so tangible you can grab hold of it. You don't need to fall back and rule it, there's all there in cases and rules' rulers."
Practical experience is a valuable tool for teachers also because they can teach students about the material.
'One is the fact that I like to see how
"AND I DON'T think it'beltimg for a teacher. You can show the students the error, the consequences of that error and how to recover from it."
Although Turk said he wasn't "conscious of practicing a philosophy," he said he could see certain characteristics that ran through his teaching practices.
"Students are so fearful of making errors," he said. "In fact, they're so concerned about it that I sometimes think they fail to see the perspective of learning from their mistakes."
A lot of students have questions and comments that wouldn't come up without a question.
students feel about things," he said. "It is probably patent foolishness to have a discussion in a class of 150 people, but I do it."
Through that interchange of ideas, Turk said, he can help prepare his students for their careers in a way that no book, outline or job description can.
"ITS VERY TOUGH to leave school," he says, "and I feel need to help prepare my students emotionally. I know there are a lot of seniors who have very funny feelings in the pits of their stomachs when they think about their futures."
01
Part of that is because students lack confidence in their professional ability, he
"I feel like Id like to reach out to them, but there's not a whole lot I can do," he said. "I wish we could work more on that, to convince students that they will be prepared—well prepared—when they leave this school."
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"I just wish to hell they'd believe me," he added.
"I enjoy what I'm doing and occasionally it just sort of bubbles over. But I think that's good, I think that it's all right to show my enthusiasm.
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"We take ourselves so very seriously as it is that sometimes it impresses our perspective."
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