Keyword: fitow

Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Heather Campbell-Enns

Monday, March 27, 2023 @ 11:36 AM

Dr. Heather Campbell-Enns is Associate Professor of Psychology. She has taught at CMU since 2019.

What are you teaching right now that you're most excited about?

"Identity and Intersectionality." That class has been just a pleasure. We're asking questions of identity, looking at concepts and theories of identity. Students are really wrestling with, "Who am I?" Questions around how stable is my identity and how much am I changing and who am I becoming? It's such a beautiful experience, with these students who come into this course at the end of their degree, thinking about: who have I become in this program at CMU? They come into the class with a lot of curiosity, and I see them go through this uncomfortable time of being faced with these questions. I've taught it a few times, and by the end of the course they're grounded into knowing something about themselves and accepting that they are becoming someone and that it's a lifelong journey. That has been really beautiful—including students talking about who am I in relation to the church and the God I've always known and who I am still knowing. It's been impactful for me to witness that with students because it's a journey we're all still on and to have them share that with me is pretty remarkable.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Jonathan Sears

Thursday, January 26, 2023 @ 12:45 PM

Dr. Jonathan Sears is Associate Professor of International Development Studies, Affiliate Faculty of Political Studies, and Associate Dean of Menno Simons College (MSC), a program centre of CMU. He has taught at CMU since 2008, primarily from the MSC campus.

What are you researching and writing?

I'm coauthoring a book chapter with Jodi Dueck-Read, Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution Studies and Director of Practicum at MSC. It's about the successes and challenges of decolonizing our pedagogy, of anti-oppression pedagogy, particularly as it relates to our fields in global development and peacebuilding studies. An edited collection by Indiana University Bloomington, it's research and writing about our teaching practice. For me, to write about that is new, but that's part of what we do as teachers; we teach and reflect on our practice, what works, what doesn't, when, with whom. To take a step back and do a bit of analytical work and connect it to some of the literature about anti-oppression pedagogy, how to teach in a way that decentres straight, white, male views or decentres settler views or decentres majority views.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Jonathan Dueck

Thursday, December 15, 2022 @ 9:10 AM

Dr. Jonathan Dueck, Vice-President Academic, Academic Dean, Associate Professor of Social Science (Ethnomusicology), and of Writing, has taught at CMU since 2017.

What do you love about your work here?

I like the sense of play that we have as an institution. We invite people to do things they care about, things they're passionate about, and to try them out. As students, as faculty members, and even as an institution, we're willing to try new things in a way that is about what we love.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Sunder John Boopalan

Thursday, November 17, 2022 @ 4:33 PM

Dr. Sunder John Boopalan, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, has taught at CMU since 2020.

Where or how do students give you hope?

I got into this business precisely because of that. Every day, students give me hope. Sometimes stuff happens in the classroom—I call it a change in plot. You walk in and you think, I know how the story is going to play out...and what I think we sometimes take for granted is that actually a person's place in the story can change the plot of the story. I think that's the place where students give me the most hope, because each of those persons sitting there with me in the classroom can change the outcome of the conversation. That open-ended plot of any interpersonal encounter gives me the greatest hope, and students do that all the time.

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Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Christine Kampen Robinson

Tuesday, March 23, 2021 @ 9:00 AM

Dr. Christine Kampen Robinson has worked at CMU part-time since 2018 and full-time since 2020. She is Director of the Centre for Career and Vocation, Director of Practicum, and Teaching Assistant Professor of Practicum and Social Science.

What do you love about your work here?

One of the things I love most is the opportunity I have to listen to students' stories. Not just in order to find a placement that is a good fit for them, but really to give them the space to talk about who they are and what they care about, what kinds of connections they see between their academics and other work they're doing and problems they want to solve in the world, and working with them to find those connections.

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