|
Volume CXXXIII, Number 5 |
 |
BSG's "Professor of the Semester" moving back home
ADAM BABER
ORIENT STAFF
 |
| Education professor Penny Martin sits with Sarah Fick '04 as a student practices teaching during a recent class. Martin won the spring "Professor of the Semester" award from BSG. (Nancy Van Dyke, Bowdoin Orient) |
Then again, Penny Martin isn't your typical professor. Last semester Bowdoin Student Government awarded Penny its "Professor of the Semester" award "in recognition of tremendous dedication to both the art and craft of teaching and an unending sense of devotion to students." Martin received the award following a campus-wide selection process in which students submitted stories of outstanding professional and personal experiences that they have had with their professors.
One could say Martin had it coming. She has overseen the expansion of the Education Department for the past sixteen years. When she started she was the only professor in the department.
"I was absolutely naïve," she remembers. "Professor Wells Johnson came up and asked me if I knew what it meant to be a department of one. I just thought it meant the department would run really smoothly."
As she took over Bowdoin's increasingly popular teacher certification program as well as courses about issues in education, Martin found out that being the only member really meant doing, well, everything.
But Martin arrived at Bowdoin having already done quite a bit. After graduating from Middlebury and earning a Master of Arts in Teaching at Harvard, Penny headed west to Pomona, California, where she taught high school English. After deciding she was an "East Coast" person, she returned to New England, spending a few years teaching on Cape Cod. She later returned to Harvard to receive her Ed.D.
At Bowdoin, Professor Martin took over a forty-year-old department, albeit one that had the same one professor since its inception The College had been graduating certified teachers since the 70s, but when the state of Maine began to hint that the small size of the department was barely enough to allow the College to certify teachers, Bowdoin hired another professor, Nancy Jennings.
Since then, the Education Department has seen a steady rise in the number of students interested in teaching. Martin attributes more recent increases to a reaction to the Wall Street get-rich-quick mentality of the 90s, as well as a greater sense of community service among students. "Students want to live lives that mean something beyond one's self," Martin says.
The expanded offerings of the Education Department have appealed to students who, while not necessarily interested in a teaching career, want to learn more about educational issues. Martin describes the popular Education 101, broadly titled "Contemporary American Education," as "liberal-artsy" in that it relates to all of our lives. She dismisses the idea that the Education Department is set apart from the other academic departments at Bowdoin because it trains students for a particular career, pointing to the lack of an "education" major and the requirement that students seeking certification major in another academic field.
Students make the difference in Penny's life, and her wall features photographs of past classes she has gotten to know well. "I love the chance to work with talented, eager, bright students who will one day make a difference," she says. She relishes the exchange of learning that goes on in her classes; she sees the roles of "teacher" and "student" as interchangeable in the classroom.
This leads to a lot of memorable tales, but one of Penny's favorite stories-she has many to share-comes not from Bowdoin but Cape Cod. It deals with that girl in the photograph, her great niece Madeline. One Thanksgiving, Madeline was restless, unsatisfied with her usual assortment of books and videos. So Penny decided to introduce her to Noel.
At this point, Professor Martin begins to reenact her story, heading over to the shelves on her office wall and returning with hands cupped as if holding a small animal. But it's no animal. It's Noel, the invisible little person who has come to visit Madeline to free her from the clutches of boredom. The niece's eyes fill wide with wonder, and Penny Martin's magical creation comes to life, earning it a place at the dinner table and special attention from all.
"It took over our lives," Penny remembers with little hint of exaggeration. But one gets the feeling that whatever headaches Noel caused-he hung around for awhile-they were worth it. For proof, just look at the 3x5" photo on Penny's desk, which shows Madeline, face full of excitement, holding Noel in the palm of her hand. One of Professor Martin's many gifts seems to be an uncanny ability to find joy and wonder in the most delicate of life's many layers and to open others' eyes to her discoveries. Looking at that photo, it's hard to deny that, despite being invisible, there was something very real about Noel.
Soon Penny will move that photo, along with the rest of her office, to a new space in Kanbar Hall. Kanbar, slated to open in Fall 2004, will house the education and psychology departments as well as a classroom and laboratory space.
"I am delighted to be heading back to campus," says Penny, who for years lamented Ashby House's location across busy Maine Street and away from students. Her first office at Bowdoin was in Sills, and students would stop by to chat on a regular basis, something her third-floor office in Ashby doesn't allow. "The subject matter of teaching is students," she says. "I need students."
The move will be a win-win; students need Penny Martin too.
|
FastCounter by bCentral |