If you’re going to take a seat in Dr. Martha Dow’s sociology class, you’d better be prepared to be an engaged and active participant in the course.
Dow, an Abbotsford resident who is winner of this year’s Teaching Excellence award at the University of the Fraser Valley, wants students’ minds to be stretched, shifted, and challenged, and for them to contribute to the collective learning of everyone present, including herself.
Her approach to teaching echoes UFV’s Changing Lives and Building Community slogan.
“I try to create a community of learners. I truly believe that we can change students’ lives and that they can then go change the lives of others, out in our communities.”
She is so determined to have an impact on her students’ lives, that she offers them a guarantee.
“I tell them ‘If your mind hasn’t shifted at all by the end of the course, I will pay for your course.’ Nobody has ever taken me up on it.”
Dow comes from a teaching family. Her mother and grandmother were teachers, as are two of her siblings.
“My mom and grandmother would be over the moon to know that I was receiving this award. My mom taught acting to professors, and always told me, ‘never turn out the lights.’ I am a real conversational-style lecturer. I take students on a journey through the material, drawing on current events for examples. I cover the core concepts, but tie them to what’s going on now.
“I want the students to keep an eye on local, provincial, national, and international current events. What we’re doing here is education for citizenship. Some of them tell me I’ve wrecked TV for them because they can never look at it without a critical eye again.”
Dow isn’t just active in the classroom. She’s also engaged in research, community participation, and service work, all of which feeds into her courses. In that way, she’s a role model for her students.
She was recently in the news for her work with the City of Surrey to create an “Elderbank” that will make elders available as community resources, but that’s just one example of the many presentations, publications, projects, conferences, and committees she’s been involved with since joining UFV in 1994.
She teaches several upper-level courses on topics such as deviance, death and dying, sexuality, and public policy analysis, but her favourite is the introductory course, Sociology 101.
At the upper level, Dow takes an innovative approach to learning. She asks students to work with her to design an individual learning contract, in which they outline how they will convey what they’ve learned. Projects have taken the form of traditional term papers, but also paintings, photography, scripts, and board games.
When it comes to final exam time, she also introduces a twist. Instead of sitting down to write a test, the students meet with Dow in groups of four or five for oral exams in which they articulate what they’ve learned. There is an option for a written exam, but few take it.
Dow feels honoured that some of her students took the time to nominate her for the Teaching Excellence award.
“What I do is a great responsibility and a wonderful privilege. I am growing as much as the students. It is an honour to be formally recognized by them for this.”
Student Robyn Mooney, who nominated Dow for the award, has high praise for Dow.
“Martha is the best teacher I ever had … She takes an interest in her students and makes efforts to customize coursework in a way that works best for each individual.”