I have been teaching at Salt Lake Community College for over twenty-five years. My journey started as an adjunct instructor and after eleven years I moved into a full-time faculty.  I am now in my sixteenth year as a full-time Associate Professor. Officially my faculty position at SLCC started many years ago but it was the history behind it that brought me to where I am. 

 

In 1981, I graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in education. Moving from Buffalo, NY was an eye opener. After graduating, I received my first teaching position, in what I referred to as a "one-room school house". There was one first grade, one second grade, etc.   The school was located ten miles up a canyon and it severd coalminers and their families.  The nearest town was Wheeling, West Virginia. 

 

The teachers would meet at the bottom of the canyon each day and commute up the winding road. I cannot begin to describe the experience.  I was a New York gal working with extremely improvised and uneducated people.   The diversity of  the Appalachian population taught me about the needs of groups and communities.  I changed as a person.  It gave me a mission to want to assist all types of people in anyway I had never been taught in my higher education experiences.  I began to feel I could make a difference in establishing opportunities to equal the playing field with education.  This didn't mean I stereotyped folks; it took me in the opposite direction. Education is the door to opportunity.

 

From there I went to a rural "redneck" town in Florida.  The population was under fifty-thousand.  I worked with children from disadvantaged backgrounds where many of their parents were uneducated.  It was these experiences which lead me to work in the area of developmental education.  It became my mission.  I don't have enough space to say how I ended up in Utah, but thirty-three years ago, it was much different place.

 

After a few miscellaneous jobs, I landed a job at Westminster College as the Assistant Director of Career Services.  It was there where I had the privilege of working with Student Service personnel, Deans, Counselors, Chaplin, and Academics. It was within this job, I started teaching College Success and Career Developement courses.  The rest is history.  I have loved the field of teaching students personal success, reading skills, and actually for seventeen years developmental math.

 

 It has been a fun and exciting path with many curves along the way.  It is the curves where we need to navigate our paths more closely. Over the past twenty-five years no term has been the same.  Each course takes on a dimension and community of its own.  I have learned more from my students about life than my daily duties as an educator.

 

I hope as you evaluate this ePortfolio you can see the big picture of the years I have worked and devoted myself to Salt Lake Community College. It has been my home.  Many of my adventures through all these years classify me as an exceptional faculty member.  Though out my tenure, each academic year brought new and exciting possibilities I believe this ePortfolio will give you a glimpse of the commitment to excellence I have tried to demonstrate.  I strive each day to be the best I can be.