Transcript of

What Makes CSUF Faculty Special?

Nancy Snow, Associate Professor of Communications:
So many of these tier-one research institutions are really emphasizing publications by the academics, by the faculty. They don’t emphasize – in many cases, perhaps not all – the teaching, how important it is to have a good instructor, and to have students really learn and focus on learning outcomes amongst the students. I’m really proud to be at a teaching institution because I think it’s almost a true privilege to be a teacher, so I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else other than a teaching institution.

Nancy Segal, Professor of Psychology:
There are so many wonderful things that I’ve been able to do while I’ve been here. I’ve been able to travel, I’ve been able to research millions of topics, I’ve been able to write a couple of books while I’ve been here, and all along the way, it’s been tremendously supportive by colleagues, by faculty from other departments, and by the administration. It’s just a very supportive, very rich environment in which to get work done. It’s been a very, very gratifying experience and I think that to get things done here and to have the kind of student body that we have here that really appreciates what faculty do is a real plus.

David Pagni, Professor of Mathematics:
When I was on the committee to select the outstanding professor and I looked at candidates across the campus, I realized how talented people were in other departments. What a great collection of faculty members that we have. The kind of work that we’re doing really makes Cal State Fullerton stand out.

Halie Yopp Slowik, Professor of Elementary and Bilingual Education:
We draw from a diverse student population and that is very exciting as students bring their own interests, their own backgrounds, and their own strengths to this campus. It brings life and a tremendous amount of energy here. I feel it every time that I step foot onto the campus. Another one of our strengths here, I think, is that we are a large enough campus that we can provide many options for students. There are vast opportunities for students to get involved in a variety of programs as well as activities on this campus, and yet the campus has a very personal touch, in my opinion. We get to know our students well, we don’t have excessively large class sizes. So, there’s the personal touch in addition to the largeness of a campus that can provide a lot of opportunities for students. I think the other issue is that we are truly here to serve our communities. We have tremendous partnerships and we collaborate a great deal with our communities and beyond, and that’s very exciting. We’re not in isolation here, but rather we’re part of a much larger, grander vision of what it means to educate a population.

William W. Haddad, Professor of History:
The greatest experience that I have had with the university, interestingly enough, came outside of the classroom. In the last eight years, when I have been the chair of the history department, we’ve hired seventeen new faculty. To see their enthusiasm and the enthusiasm of the students to meet this new generation of teachers and to see one little department grow and hire lots of exciting faculty from the best universities in the world has been really a wonderful experience.