There is Method to their
MADNESS
They are instructors who use humor to enlighten and entertain.
Jeff Lang turns from the chalkboard; a puzzled look is on his face. Deep in mock concentration, he takes a drag on his piece of chalk and blows an imaginary puff of smoke.
Different KU professors use a variety of methods and personality styles in their efforts to be more effective instructors. Lang, associate professor of mathematics, routinely uses comic relief in his Math 115 calculus class of about 170 students. On Monday he held a review for a test in his class today.
"Should I go over these problems?"
Lang asks the class. "Say 'Yeah!' All right, this is like a revival."
Lang admits to using the spontaneous routines to keep his students interested and learning. Lang said that unless they were math majors, most students had a fear of the subject.
"About 90 percent of what I do is motivation," Lang said. "They have to want to learn, so I make a few jokes and be a cheerleader for them."
Lang contends that 80 or 90 percent of his students can make an A or B and that once he gets them interested and believing in themselves, he is in business.
"His sections always do above average, especially for such a large class," said William Fleissner, professor of math. "I've coordinated several Math 115 sections with Jeff. Whatever he does, it works."
Lang is demonstrating a problem in class and begins to draw a line curving between several points on the chalkboard.
As he continues drawing the line, Lang's chalking goes off the board onto the wall below — all the way to the floor. The other end he draws up above the board as far as he can reach.
"You know, it's like my dad always said," Lang said. "Sometimes in your life, you just gotta draw the line."
"He makes calculus actually fun to learn," said Jessica Brungardt. McPherson freshman. "He doesn't just stand up there and teach."
Quinn Harper, Neodesha sophomore, said she thought Lang was the best professor she'd had so far.
Harper said. "He makes the material fun to learn and seem so easy."
"Sometimes he acts like he's JFK."
Jo Lynn Snyder, Leavenworth freshman, said Lang's impersonations, of characters such as Kramer from the TV show Seinfeld, made the class worth attending.
"I honestly haven't missed a class. I really want to hear his lectures," she said.
Lang said he had been teaching for 21 years, counting his five years as a teaching assistant. He said his comedic teaching style had just developed through the years.
"Once you get angry at them for reading a newspaper or tell them to leave if they don't want to be there, you've lost them."
"I just want to be relaxed. If you're tense, they'll be tense," Lang said.
Lang said that only seven or eight students had dropped the class this semester out of an enrollment of about 185.
"On the first day of class, he came in and sat down at the front at first, like he wasn't the teacher," said Aaron Haught, Lawrence freshman. "The other day he acted like he was having an ulcer attack, and one time he acted like this old prof that he had when he was in school."
Lang often talks about his family in
Dennis Dailey, professor of social welfare, uses real-life examples in his class. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes tragic.
the course of his lectures. His daughter Sara is the subject of many of his stories.
"Sara said she didn't want to go because she said Grandma's house stinks," Lang said. "I said, 'Sara, that's not true.' But it is."
Lang was also wondering how his daughter could be developing a Texas-style twang in her voice while living in Kansas.
Of course, Lang doesn't hold the monopoly on interesting class conduct. Other professors around campus use humor and storytelling techniques in their classrooms.
"Does the line bend uuupp or daaown?" Lang said, demonstrating his daughter's drawl.
Dennis Dailey, professor of social welfare, said his classroom style drew on real-life situations, whether the situation was humorous or tragic.
"I like to use narratives from life situations," Dalley said. "If you ask my students what they remember about my class, I think they will remember something that made them cry, as well as something that made them laugh."
Dailey said his philosophy of education was that the classroom experience should have direct relevance in the students' lives and that the use of both humor and tragedy from life helped put his lessons in context of living in the real world.
Burdett Loomis, professor of political science, said he has never been at a loss for humorous situations. However, he sometimes fears offending some of the students.
"Once I told a dentist joke in a large class, and a 'dentist' kid came up and let me know I'd made a mistake." Loomis said. "It seems like some people have an underdeveloped sense of irony."
Loomis and political science professor Allan Cigler have co-edited seven books and are working on two more. Their long-standing working relationship allows them to trade barbs about the various books.
"We're always dumping on each other," Loomis said, laughing. "Neither of us takes any of it seriously."
Hilltopics
Weird Topics
In February, the British Columbia Supreme Court acquitted a 26-year-old man with a sleeping disorder of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl because the assault occurred while he was allegedly asleep. In 1995, a man in California was acquitted of sexual assault using the same defense. And in 1987, an Ontario man stabbed his mother-in-law to death after having driven 20 kilometers on a busy highway to get
April 10,1996
her house, also proved he had a sleeping disorder and was acquitted on the same ground.
A Houston Chronicle investigation published in February revealed that only rarely does a complaint to the state Board of Examiners of Psychologists result in suspension or revocation of a license. One Temple, Texas, psychologist admitted pointing a gun to his head in a suicide threat, shooting a gun inside his home, seducing a patient and carving a pentagram into his arm
with a knife, he's still practicing. While the Board is not quick to pull licenses, it often requires that troubled psychologists get psychological counseling.
The Washington Post reported in March that the Department of Agriculture required Iowa's Oink-Oink Inc last year to begin dyeing green its best selling dog treat, Pork Tenderloin, which is made from the penises of hogs. Oink-Oink Inc. thought the green dye would make the product unappealing and took a $100, 000 loss by killing
the product and enraging dog owners who loved the treat. The department's only reason for requiring the dye was so the treats would be more obviously identified as not for human consumption.
In October, Penn. Rep. Alan Butkovitz introduced legislation to end disparity in state law. Under the unsatisfactory law, a drunk driver who causes an accident and fails his blood-alcohol test is subject to a felony charge. But one who manages to flee the scene before the
cops get there, sober up and turn him self in later is subject only to a misdemeanor.
Recent highway truck spills: two dozen coin bags from an armored truck, and keys and bottles from a beer truck, in Washington, D.C., in November; a halfton of cat litter, in Stratford County, Va., in March; dozens of boxes of socks in Decatur, Ala., in January; and animal blood, which dripped out of a tanker and stained a highway for 20 miles near Syracuse, N.Y., in February.
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