Tenured professors can enrich learning without fear

Only something extreme in a newspaper moves me enough to write a letter to the editor, but the letter by State College of Florida trustee Craig Trigueiro did so. His letter was quite self-serving and the comments on it by Herbert Frith were well taken.

People's interactions are not always objective or well considered. For teachers of social science topics, an untenured faculty may be fraught with peril. I taught mathematics and that didn't make me immune to everything of that nature.

When business calculus was first taught on our community college, I had experience teaching it before taking a position on my current campus, so I was assigned to two sections.

The business calculus was an application course, so I often put in little examples not in the textbook to give students ideas of where the thinking might go. One time I talked about the slump angle of sand used by a concrete manufacturer.

After a weekend, one of my students told me her husband had just gotten a job as chief financial officer with a concrete manufacturer. The two of them were given a tour of the company, and my student had quite a conversation about slump angle with the tour guide. That impromptu topic gave her husband good rapport for a new job, and my student was pleased she could do that.

I did similar but appropriate things in my regular calculus courses. If my college was in the untenured position advocated by the SCF board, I might have had problems with what I gave students to add richness.

By the board's feeling they can "whip them into line" without respect for the United States Constitution or the Florida Constitution they have become union organizers. A free people will not lie down and roll over.

Walter Gannott

Bradenton

This story was originally published February 19, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Tenured professors can enrich learning without fear ."