As fall semester is in the final stages, ECC professors are looking forward to preparing to teach for the spring semester.
Math Professor Kristen Campbell discusses how she is preparing for her classes in the spring semester.
She explains how her classes are doing so far this semester.
“Well, I’m way behind in what I should have gotten done. It’s been a very weird semester with all of the ICE activity and everything going on. It’s been very disruptive and hard to find my pattern of when to grade and when to prep and when to take care of business because of running around trying to make sure everything’s okay outside.”
Campbell stated what plans she has for the upcoming spring semester.
“I am teaching Gen Ed, Stats, Gen Ed Math and Calculus Two next semester,” she said.
Campbell said she is gathering resources to make sure she is in compliance with a recent law about digital accessibility.
“Trying to go through all of my prior prep work and seeing what meets those legal requirements and what I have to adjust,” she said.
The ECC math professor explained the difference between preps and classes.
“I have three preps, but five classes. Two sections of Gen Ed Stats, two sections of Gen Ed Math, and one section of Calculus two,” Campbell said.
She mentioned that for the upcoming spring semester, she’s teaching only face to face classes.
“I don’t do a good job teaching online,” Campbell said. “It doesn’t suit my teaching style. It doesn’t suit my personality, so I don’t like it. I won’t do it unless I have to.”
Sociology Professor Bilal Hussain plans to teach both face to face and online classes in the spring semester.
“I’m teaching six classes in the spring,” he said. “I’m teaching two face to face classes on Tuesday and Thursday, and then I’m teaching four classes online.”
Hussain explained how professors’ classes are scheduled.
“Every department has an instructional coordinator,” he said. “They’re also an instructor or a professor; and they are, I guess you can say, in charge of the scheduling matters. For our department, it’s Christa, who is the instructional coordinator, and she figures out the schedules regarding the classes, which classes to offer, not to offer, and at what times.”
The sociology professor commented on how he prepares for his classes weeks before a new semester starts.
“After we wrap up here for the fall semester and grades are put in, I’m going to take a couple days off during December. A few days or a week later, I’m going to start drafting ideas” Hussain said.
He goes into detail on how he brainstorms ideas for the classes that he is teaching.
“I take a notepad, like a yellow legal pad,” he said. “And I start drawing and writing down ideas of what I want to do this semester.”
Instructional Coordinator/Professor Christa Hitzeroth explains she coordinates schedules for each professor in the sociology department.
“I have a big chart that tells me the classes that have been offered and whether they’re doing well or not. As far as attendance goes, we must also schedule certain classes tied to the course schedule.” she said.
She commented on a question regarding if she discusses each professor individually about their new schedules for the new semester.
“I do a dry run to see if it’s going to work with my schedule and what changes they may like,” Hitzeroth said. “Yes, we have a department meeting once a semester, and I usually have the next schedule ready to go so I get feedback there before I have to submit it to the dean.”
Hitzeroth keeps track of schedules for each sociology professor with an Excel spreadsheet.
“I know where everybody is and what they’re doing,” she said. “It would really be the dean’s office making sure that everything that I’ve done is okay and I’ve met all those requirements.”
The instructional coordinator mentions the preparation process sociology professors do to prepare for their classes weeks in advance.
“I think that depends on what your courses are,” Hitzeroth said.
If a professor is teaching a class in the fall, and she is teaching two sections of the same class in the spring: “the only thing I really need to prepare or do very much with is a new syllabus and new dates, because most of it will stay the same,” Hitzeroth said.
