David Balzer reflects on teaching, creativity, and finding your voice
David Balzer, Associate Professor of Communications and Media, encourages students to find their voice—both in the classroom and beyond.
David Balzer, Associate Professor of Communications and Media, has worked at CMU since 2009. He and Karen Ridd, Teaching Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies and Conflict Resolution Studies, are co-recipients of the 2022 Kay and Lorne Dick Teaching Excellence Award.
The award, established in 2022, is granted annually to two faculty members who best exemplify the commitment to excellent teaching at CMU.
How would you describe your teaching philosophy? How has it evolved over the years?
There's a comms consultant that I really enjoy, Valerie Geller, and she says there's always three questions that you ask, in her context in a communications or radio consulting role. The three questions are: Does it matter? Do you care? Do they care? So, coming out of radio production, those are the three questions I brought into all of my teaching. The first day I stepped into the classroom in a formal way, I imagined myself interacting with an audience because I'd been immersed in the radio audience mode. If it doesn't matter to them what I'm saying or doing, then there's really no point in being here—that's a radio way of thinking about it. So it always spawned in me this desire to figure out, why does it matter to that person and why does it matter in the world? That desire hasn't changed over the years; how I've tried to figure that out has taken lots of forms.
The other piece that drives my philosophy is what I call a theology of stewardship. That's the theological piece for me, this grand story of the project of creation in Genesis, where there's a story of God bringing the animals to the humans and saying whatever you name them, that's what we're going to go with. That has always been a very profound anchor for me theologically. Genesis is about the reference points between who is God and who is creation and how are we going to be in this world together, and the fact that that early in the text you have this invitation to name the world, to be part of what I call co-creating culture, by naming—to me that little vignette actually makes a huge theological point about creativity and how we've been created to be creative. It's a gift we've been given with pixels and WAV files and words, so now it's a matter of how am I going to steward that? That profoundly shapes my philosophy of teaching—we've been given a capacity, a gift, to mess with the world, and so what posture are you going to take as you do that?
What strategies do you use to engage and inspire your students?
I think about ebbs and flows and trying to really pay attention to what's happening. One thing that is classic about me is I'll lay out what we're going to cover in class that day and then successfully not even get close to that—but part of that is because I'm always more interested in those ebbs and flows. If something takes off, I'm going to choose to go with that conversation, knowing other content is getting shifted or falling off the table. At the end of the day, it's what people are doing with that material, so if I deem there's a flow happening, I'm going to roll with that.
How do you measure success in your classroom?
It's the conversation. It's when I see somebody all of a sudden kind of flinch and they start writing something down, and I think something just clicked for them. Those are the moments I feel like there's something working here. There's one question on course evaluations that I always read first and that is: was the instructor approachable to students' questions? If I score high on that question, I feel successful in the class. Because if people don't feel that there's that potential for interaction, I just feel that limits so much of the learning. If most of the students felt like, "I could have a conversation, I could ask questions, I could follow up on assignments," then I think I've done well in the classroom.
Is there a specific moment in your teaching career that stands out as especially rewarding?
When we're in Studio One, a 16 x 20 ft wonderful soundproof room, and we've got a couple lines of script that need to be recorded. When the student walks up to that microphone and I cue them in—"We're rolling, ready to record"—and they speak those lines, that, for me, is an incredibly memorable moment. People who have done that have told me they remember that as the moment when they found their voice both literally and metaphorically. Often people don't like hearing their recorded voice, so there's a lot of inner work that has to happen in order for someone to make themselves vulnerable to themselves and to the world. When somebody steps up to that mic and starts speaking that way, then comes to know themselves and to own that and figure out how to actually hone that, that's a really profound journey and process. That very first take, which for quite a few people actually is quite momentous, I get to help make that moment happen. It's really a remarkable thing.
What impact do you hope to leave on your students?
I hope students understand that I love people and that I love God and that their voice matters. Those things coming together for me is what I want to offer them. That as a communicator in whatever context they go into, no matter if it's two people or 10,000 people, that their life matters; it can make a difference. If they take those gifts and those skills they have honed and are offering those to the world for the sake of good in the world, that every attempt at giving your own voice a place or giving the voice of others a place really matters. Sometimes we think of this as big audiences, and I really think about that audience of one person, and your voice—if you work at that craft and you harness your creative gifts for the sake of others—you can't quantify the impact of that. Everyone matters, every single attempt matters, and that's what I hope they leave with.