#whyilovecsuf

“My college experience was great, but there wasn’t much interaction with professors and I felt I missed out on something. I want to engage my students so they have the best experience possible. During lecture, I always walk around the classroom and make sure my students understand the material. If they don’t, I am right there to help them succeed. If students don’t show up to class, I’ll ask them why. They’re always surprised that I noticed. I want my students to feel like they are not just a number; they are not just a student—they are a person, a person trying to learn something, and I want to teach them.”

“After my undergraduate work, it took me a few years to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I didn’t really find myself until I enrolled for my master’s degree. That’s why I always encourage my students to try out new things, such as joining clubs or meeting new people at school. These are things that can help you find yourself as a person—find your why in life. Why do you want to be here in college? Telling yourself you want to graduate with a 4.0 GPA, well, that’s just the end result. That’s just the what. If you can find the why, you’ll be laying a foundation for your personal and professional success.”

“Even though I have a background in industrial engineering and IT, I’ve always been interested in the human side of business. I was attracted to marketing because it’s about people. There’s this idea that marketing is all about sales and advertising. I had a student who defined marketing as ‘the art of convincing people to buy something they don’t need.’ But real marketing is different. It’s about problem solving and efficiency. It’s about understanding human behavior in the consumption context. We want to improve people’s lives by providing them with the right product at the right time and at the right price. We focus on building long-lasting relationships and creating a win-win proposition for everyone. That’s the kind of marketing I want my students to learn.”

“Most medicine today is like a cookbook: Do X and Y, and the outcome is Z. But what makes a difference in people’s lives is the human presence. You spend time with families and really listen to them. It takes a lot of courage to nurture this kind of empathy and compassion. Honestly, working as a pediatric nurse can be very stressful. I can still recall times driving home from the hospital crying over an emotionally draining shift. I try to prepare my students for that. Of course, the science is important. We cannot do anything without understanding what happens to the human body when one is ill. But what makes people heal or cope? What makes them continue the journey? The stories. It’s these stories that kindle a fire for what we do. It’s these stories that make us who we are.”

“I would describe myself as a Black sexuality scholar. One of the goals with my Black LGBT class is just to illustrate that we exist. A lot of people don’t realize that the activists on the frontlines of the Black Lives Matter movement are queer Black women. In the past, the face of our race-based movements has been very heteronormative male. Now we see queer Black people out in front—it’s fascinating to me. It signals a new movement. These are the kinds of things I get my students to think about in my classes, that these issues aren’t as separate as we think they are. I try to get people to see themselves within various struggles. How can you see yourself in me, and vice versa? Just because the issue may not be directly affecting you does not mean it has no impact on you at all. For example, LGBT issues affect straight Black people because their family structures are often not seen as the norm. How do we connect across difference?”

Siobhan King Brooks, Ph.D., assistant professor of African American studies, creator of the new fall 2016 class “The Black LGBT Experience.” Previously worked as a union organizer for an exotic dance club in San Francisco. Research interests include race relations, gender, sexuality, intersectionality, and identity formation. Her book, Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry, examines race relations between Black and Latina exotic dancers in Oakland and NYC.

“I love teaching. It’s been harder than I thought it would be. When I started, I was very naïve. I thought, well, if you care about your students and you want them to learn, that’s all you need. But over time I’ve seen that it’s all about the material you present and how you present it. And what does ‘caring’ even mean? It doesn’t just mean wanting students to learn the material, but also about understanding who they are, what they’re dealing with, and where you fit into their lives. I’m always thinking about how I can make changes to my classes and keep things exciting. My new thing is podcasts. Students find them a lot more accessible than reading a book, because reading a book means you have to buy the book and you have to have a dedicated space to read it. Whereas a podcast you can listen to on your walk over to meet with me. Now, whenever I listen to a podcast, a part of me is thinking, ‘Can I use this?’”

“After my master’s, I worked for a couple of years in schools in the south suburbs of Chicago as a speech language pathologist. I began to notice a lot of African American children being referred for speech therapy even though they didn’t have speech disorders—they just spoke differently. This pattern of referrals concerned me because of the profound impact that they potentially had on the future educational placement and success of the children. I eventually decided to go back for a Ph.D. to try to make a difference on this issue. The research I did at the University of Massachusetts on African American English served as the basis for one of the first tests in our field that takes dialect variation into account. Over time I’ve expanded my focus to similar issues with bilingual child populations. One of the reasons that I was hired at Cal State Fullerton was to develop courses that teach students how to accurately distinguish between normal language differences and true disorder. All of our practices in the Speech and Hearing Clinic are geared toward minimizing misdiagnoses so we’re actually placing kids where they’re supposed to be.”

“I tell my students that majors matter—and they don’t. It’s more important that you learn how to learn, how to think, how to write, how to express yourself—things that aren’t necessarily going to take you down one particular path but will open up lots of different paths for you. I have a colleague who was at an ivy league school before she came to Cal State Fullerton; she says a lot of the students we teach here are smarter than her former students. They think more critically. That’s why Fullerton students are so refreshing: they’re honestly thinking about things, not just trying to give you what you want to hear. They push me to innovate even more. Sometimes they come to me for advice, and I’m like, ‘You’re so far ahead of where I was at your age! Just keep going!’”