Know Your Profs is an ongoing series of profiles on the instructors at Camosun College. Every issue we ask a different instructor at Camosun the same 10 questions in an attempt to get to know them a little better.
If you have an instructor you’d like to see interviewed in the paper, but perhaps you’re too busy, or too shy, to ask them yourself, email editor@nexusnewspaper.com and we’ll add them to our list of teachers to talk to.
This issue, we caught up with Biology prof and chair Larry Anthony to talk about keeping in touch with students, investing in students’ learning, and woodworking.
1. What do you teach and how long have you been at Camosun?
Second-year Biology; 10 years.
2. What do you personally get out of teaching?
I really love building relationships with my learners, making their experience fun and interesting, and helping reveal to them the amazing complexity and beauty of life.
3. What’s one thing you wish your students knew about you?
I wish my students knew how much I want them to succeed, in my classes and in their academic futures after Camosun and in their lives.
4. What’s one thing you wish they didn’t know about you?
I’m a terrible procrastinator in marking and I think I’m a little prone to rambling a little—or a lot—in lectures.
5. What’s the best thing that’s happened to you as a teacher here?
When my students last year prepared an unsolicited skit to show me what they learned and, I think, also to tease me a little. They signed a huge thank-you card. I was touched by their effort and sense of fun, which highlighted the wonderful connection we had built with each other the whole year of classes together. We still find time to go to the pub together, which is so amazing and humbling.
6. What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you as a teacher here?
Hmmm… that’s a hard one, because, overall, my experience has been so positive. I guess my worst experiences are marking exams when students do poorly.
7. What do you see in the future of post-secondary education?
I am both optimistic and concerned. I still see post-secondary education as a gateway to a great future, giving conscientious learners the critical thinking skills needed to help them distinguish truth from falsehood in local, national, and world affairs, and to make the sound, evidence-based decisions needed for the next generations. As a proud and unapologetic biology geek I also see it as a wonderful way to open learners’ hearts and minds to the beauty, complexity, and truth of the natural world. However, I’m concerned with the incredible cost of post-secondary education today. Together with the unaffordability of housing, many learners feel the need to work long hours at jobs, often late at night, when they should be studying or, just as important, sleeping, to consolidate their learning. I am distressed at the short-sighted lack of public support for post-secondary education, especially in comparison with the public support I received as a college and university student. Our learners today are our future scientists, artists, novelists, poets, environmentalists, health professionals, and policy makers, and we need to invest in them if our society is to have the brightest future.
8. What do you do to relax on the weekends?
My wife and I love to cook great meals and entertain dinner guests. I also am an amateur woodworker and like to build furniture. I also enjoy watching the Montreal Canadiens hockey games, especially when they’re winning.
9. What is your favourite meal?
I do love a good burger and fries, but I think my favourite meal is a chicken curry my wife and I learned to make at a course we took at the London Chef here in town.
10. What’s your biggest pet peeve?
I can’t stand it when policy makers (at any level) make decisions inconsistent with the good evidence available. It drives me totally nuts.