February 2012

As a Senior, I consider myself a seasoned veteran when it comes to professors.  I did my best while in college to take all sorts of courses and challenge myself with new things. Sometimes, this wasn’t my best decision (like challenging myself this semester with a brutal 300 level Poetry course). Other times though, I have taken new courses and been pleasantly surprised not just by the content, but by the professors who taught them. Here are three professors that I would deem as some of the best BSU has to offer.

Jonathan White- Sociology:

I am one of those people who tried to get all my “required” courses done as soon as I could. This left me needing a bunch of credits and not knowing at all what to take. I signed up to Intro to Sociology as simply a “filler” course, one I thought I could skate by in.  I had Jonathan White as my professor and I can honestly say his course changed me and affected me more than any other course I took in college.

I truly respect anyone who is passionate about what they are teaching, and he certainly is. He genuinely cares about not only his students but what he is teaching, and I found it very admirable. In the course we learned about a multitude of social issues and he always tried to engage us and get us involved during his lectures. The course itself isn’t filled with busy work or learning “things that don’t matter”.  Everything he assigns is for a purpose and you will take sometthing away from it far beyond a letter grade.  If you have the opportunity to sign up for any course he teaches do so, you won’t regret it.

Bruce Machart- Fiction Writing

Even if you aren’t an English major but have the slightest interest in writing, I recommend taking a writing course with Bruce Machart. As an author himself, he has a vast amount of knowledge on narrative craft and writing in general. I took fiction writing last semester and nearly the entire class took him again this semester for the advanced writing class. We just loved the course and him as a professor that much.

He sets the stage for the course with a perfect mix of humor and seriousness. We all come into the class happy and leave happy and in college you know that is hard to come by. Machart cares about his students and their progress as writers and sparks an interest in the material that lasts much longer than the semester.

Kirsten Whitten-Introduction to Public Relations:

Kirsten Whitten is one of the best professors because she makes sure you are applying what you are learning to REAL LIFE things. I have taken her for a couple courses and in both she had us working with actual companies and organizations.  In her introduction class, we were responsible for creating an entire public relations plan for a woman starting up her own business. We were put in charge of everything from the companies logo to events she should take part in, to her website design.

So many professors have you do things just for the sake of doing them. In Professor Whitten’s class you are doing things that not only will benefit you, but benefit others in the community as well. She has knowledge as a professor but knowledge also from working in the field as well and it was clearly evident in the courses I took with her.

Who are YOUR favorite professors at BSU?

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