April 2014 Penn State Beaver Roar
Features
17
Professors do more than teach Kayla Wagner Staff Writer
krw5239@psu.edu
College professor by day, published writer by night. Robert Szymczak is consistently busy. Whether he is teaching one of the many history classes offered each semester or he is doing research for scholastic articles, Szymczak, associate professor of history, is always focusing on his career. Most recently, he’s been finishing up revisions on his first book about the American Slav Congress, which has taken several years to write. Szymczak is like most faculty members, balancing coursework with the demands of research and service. Students may not realize it, but faculty members do a lot more than just teach. “It is not often easy. You have to go to archives a lot of times to find documents that haven’t been used
before. It can take weeks to a few months to write an article and it often requires travel,” he said. Szymczak has advice for those seeking a career in higher education: find an area that interests you and be prepared to put in the work. Many of the faculty members at Penn State Beaver spend hours each day on research and other obligations that tie into their coursework. Most college students are unaware of the amount of time their professors put in outside of the classroom. Associate professor of Spanish Robin Bower is another of the multitasking professors on campus. While she is known for teaching Spanish and other liberal arts courses, she plays other roles in the University. Besides teaching and research, Bower also advises for Global Education. “Any student wanting any kind of international experience can come and talk to me,” she says. She also
has taken students to Spain in the past as part of a class. Another important role Bower fills is as a faculty senator representing the Beaver campus faculty on the university-wide Faculty Senate. Faculty Senate is the governing body for faculty across the entire university. She attends senate meetings and serves on senate committees that oversee policy that affects the entire university. While most don’t even know of Bower’s senate service, the work she performs as part of the senate impacts students at Beaver and across the university. Coming all the way from South Africa in 2008, Cassandra Butterworth has a very interesting career as assistant professor of biology. Outside of the classroom, Butterworth spends her time doing conservational genetics DNA research. She focuses on deer, bobcats and birds.
“It can be a challenge. Genetic research is time consuming. I can’t do it from home,” she says. The majority of her research is done in the summer, when she has more free time. However, during the school year she has a lab assistant to help her and allow for more time to be dedicated to her research. She also has become a published writer. She writes articles and presents her research to conference panels. Most recently, she was published in the Journal of Heredity for an article she wrote conducting her research on the genetics of brown bats in Pennsylvania. Another member of the Penn State Beaver faculty who is extremely busy is John Chapin, professor of communications. He teaches, advises and works with students on research, but on the side he does much more. Chapin studies violence prevention education. He works with wom-
en’s centers, helping them evaluate their programs by focusing on outcome measures and improving their curriculum. Much like the other faculty members, Chapin is a published writer. His work can be found in the Journal of School Violence and the Journal of Family Violence. Some of his articles focus on health communications issues and looking at domestic violence and sexual assault as public issues. Growing up in a violent home before centers existed for women like his mother, Chapin finds this research extremely important. It is important on a personal level for him to help when he is able. He works with two centers primarily, Crisis Center North and The Women’s Center of Beaver County, but has also worked on a large project involving 13 centers across Pennsylvania.