'Overgrownstudent'teaches English,likes to cook

by Carly Juno staff writer

Alex Bove, a new English instructor at Cabrini, describes himself as an overgrown student. He enjoys teaching because he continually gets to learn. "It is a cliche to say that teachers learn as much from students as students learn from teachers, but it is certainly true that any meaningful learning process has to be two-sided," Bove said. ''We cannot simply receive knowledge. Leaming is an active process, just as teaching is."

Having always admired his teachers, Bove wanted to be a teacher since high school. English was the subject that he most enjoyed and he studied it through his undergraduate career. At Florida State University, where he received a bachelor's degree, he majored in English and creative writing.

After receiving a graduate degree in English, his career choice was obvious. "English is an amazingly diverse field these days; it covers cultural studies, traditional literary studies, composition and rhetoric and many other areas, so I have a lot of room to be flexible in the courses that I teach. I love that flexibility."

Bove has been a teacher for four years. Before teaching English 101 and English 214 at Cabrini, he taught at Temple and West Chester Universities. What he likes most about Cabrini is that its size makes it ''very friendly." "Cabrini works more like an interdependent community than a large, hierarchical institution, and I prefer our structure to that of larger schools," Bove said.

Outside of the obvious interests of reading and writing, Bove is also fond of chess, Vegan cooking and most recently, riding all sorts of roller coasters.

"Teaching isn't a nine-to-five job; it requires, above all, that you be a constant learner, that you challenge and create ideas rather than simply dole them out and that you continually strive to make your job new and interesting. But the fact that being a teacher means living your job is also its greatest blessing. Education is a vital pro-