need teaching experience

[Lawrence T. Gurley]

dlb17 at PSU.EDU (Dianna L. Bourke) wrote:

>Getting teaching experience is absolutely vital for getting a teaching job
>at a small school. 

[snip]

>I don't really know a lot about Pharmacology, being one of the few courses
>I didn't have to take in my Ph.D. curricula, but I know teaching at a
>community college during the last year of my studies was one of the best
>things I ever did. I am not sure how applicable Pharmacology is to a
>community college situation. Is it taught to nursing students? Can you
>teach other courses? 

Pharmacology is part of the required curriculum for both RN and LVN
(CA and TX ---Practical Nurses elswhere) in community colleges, at
least in CA.
>Anyway, teaching in a community college prepared me
>much better to teach at my small school than all my TAing did at the Med
>School. Of course the med school curricula prepared me for the dicipline
>specific stuff, Anatomy in my case. 

Anatomy and Physiology are also taught in CCs, to Nursing students and
to those planning to transfer to premed...
>However, the community college
>experience prepared me for 1. teaching a WHOLE course by myself which is a
>tremendous amount of work if you have never done it before. 2. prepared me
>for teaching undergraduates both traditional age and non-traditional age (a
>distinctly different experience) and 3. prepared me for a wide range of
>intelligence and work habits (unlike the med students who were all gunners
>of one type or another.) I highly recommend teaching something somewhere,
>because it is entirely different from graduate seminars, oral defenses,
>etc.

>Dianna L. Bourke
>Penn State Hazleton


Lawrence T. Gurley
Mathematics and Computer Information Systems
Merritt College
Oakland, CA 94619
lgurley at ix.netcom.com
(510) 531-4911
(510) 436-2531 (direct)