Dr. Robert Rhodes, ACU Provost, said, “Ryan is one of the most dedicated faculty I have seen not only to his work but to his students as well. He’s very passionate about what he does and who he engages with.” <\/p>\n Dr. Ryan Jessup accepts the Teacher of the Year Award from Dr. Robert Rhodes, Provost<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n We asked Dr. Jessup a few questions about who and what inspires his teaching.<\/p>\n Who was your inspiration for teaching?<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n My mother was a wonderful, hardworking educator as a first grade teacher at a public school that served low income students.\u00a0 I think that I learned from her how hard it is teach and how hard it is to care about students.\u00a0 She did both and she did both extremely well.\u00a0 One thing I learned from observing and conversing with her was that when someone is poor and struggling to eke out an existence, education often takes a backseat to survival.\u00a0 I know that my mother labored long hours and she did it, not to receive recognition, but because it was the right thing to do.\u00a0 I thank God for my mom who set such a wonderful example in all facets of life, including her efforts to be an effective teacher even when it would be so much easier to take a shortcut.<\/p>\n What do you love most about teaching?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Undergraduates are special. They are bursting with potential, sort of like those little toy cars that you pull back to wind up \u2013 when you let go you never know where they\u2019ll end up. Just like those toy cars, undergrads need to be carefully \u201caimed\u201d so that they fulfill their potential while still maintaining integrity. It is our job to help aim the students, a responsibility I do not take lightly. It can be challenging and humbling because I make my share of mistakes, often causing me to ask \u201cwho am I to \u2018aim\u2019 these students when I am so filled with error?\u201d<\/p>\n What is your teaching philosophy and what do you hope students learn from your classes?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n It pleases me when an individual begins to understand and grasp concepts, and I dedicate myself to producing such attainment in my teaching.\u00a0 Similarly, I desire that attentive and hardworking students complete my courses with well-founded confidence in their course-related abilities as they apply them to the real world.<\/p>\n Substance\u00a0not hype<\/em><\/p>\n I recently had a conversation with a faculty member in my department in which we were discussing a corporation, and I stated\u00a0\u201cthey are all hype, and I don\u2019t like it.\u201d\u00a0 The faculty member replied \u201cwell, it is a good thing you do not teach marketing classes, then\u201d, using sarcasm to humorously\u00a0imply that marketing is mostly hype. \u00a0Initially befuddled\u00a0by his comment, I replied \u201cBut I do not teach marketing from that perspective \u2013 I want students to learn to sell and market their products with substance and honesty, not hype.\u201d\u00a0 Since coming to ACU to teach marketing this has been one of my touchstone principles: marketing can be based on substance\u00a0and is not merely an academic synonym for hype. \u00a0So, I have striven to teach students that they should not rely on hype as their preferred tool of persuasion.<\/p>\n Natural consequences of behavior meets meta-learning<\/em><\/p>\n I love sports.\u00a0 However, my first semester as an undergraduate at ACU, I (and my teammates) forfeited every intramural sport in which we competed: flag football, soccer, and ping pong.\u00a0 I never did it again, but why did I do it the first semester?\u00a0 In retrospect, I suspect\u00a0that it was because my parents always insured that I was at games, thus I had not yet learned personal responsibility for showing up on time.\u00a0 However, the natural consequences of my behavior \u2013 not planning sufficiently well and thereby forfeiting each competition \u2013 soon taught me to adapt.\u00a0 Similarly for today\u2019s college students in the classroom: many of them need to learn how to learn, whether by learning to not be distracted by devices or learning to show up to class.\u00a0 This meta-learning is essential for growing up.\u00a0 I want them to learn to learn.\u00a0 If someone always correctly decides for them during college then they will be forced to learn to decide correctly in the real-world where the safety net is far less secure.\u00a0 So, I often allow students to experience the natural consequences of their decisions in order to encourage this meta-learning.\u00a0 I tell them on the first day of class that (1) college is an opportunity to learn that they must seize and (2) it is a safe place to fail — but they should always try!\u00a0 If they fail or do poorly in my class, I don’t “fire” them; I\u2019ll even give them another chance to learn, even though it may take two or more semesters!<\/p>\n Emphasize connections with what they already know<\/em><\/p>\n Learning can be intimidating.\u00a0 When a student encounters a challenging course, led by a teacher with high expectations, it can even feel overwhelming.\u00a0 One component of my philosophy of teaching is to first remind students what they already know in order to induce\u00a0connections with\u00a0the new things they are learning. \u00a0The reasoning underlying this is the associative network model of memory (Wickelgren, 1981).\u00a0 According to this theory, our memories are stored using a distributed network of neurons and when one element is activated (e.g., McDonald\u2019s), closely connected nodes are activated as well (Big Mac, Hamburglar, fries, kids, fast food, etc.).\u00a0 I try to first connect into their existing associative network and then build onto it the new information and ways of thinking which I am trying to convey.<\/p>\n Allow research experience to enhance my teaching<\/em><\/p>\n Lastly, I have striven to allow my research experience to improve my teaching.\u00a0 I think that conducting research is a true asset to teaching because it provides real experiences in interpreting and critiquing information that are hard to obtain if one has never been out on the research frontier. \u00a0For example, I try to convey a healthy skepticism of data and research findings in every class I teach. \u00a0I often encourage students to contemplate\u00a0the potential flaws in the studies we examine. \u00a0I try to rarely\u00a0teach things\u00a0as fact, but, rather that these are research findings or this is a theory about human behavior.\u00a0 I think I am benefited in that I teach research classes, yet even the field of education (i.e., teaching) strives to train teachers to use research-based strategies, indicating a shared recognition of the\u00a0value that\u00a0research lends to teaching.<\/p>\n Congratulations to Dr. Ryan Jessup on being named ACU’s 2017 Teacher of the Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Each year, one ACU faculty member is honored as Teacher of the Year. This year\u2019s honoree is COBA’s own Dr. Ryan Jessup, assistant professor of marketing. Jessup is a highly respected faculty member who inspired the following comments from his students: “He is a great teacher who cares so much about his students and wants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[818,6633,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-coba-faculty","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3242"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3255,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242\/revisions\/3255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/files\/2017\/05\/Grad17Spring-335-300x200.jpg\")