Some professors give A’s, some give homework, some give their students grief. Linda Pertusati from the Ethnic Studies Department gives her students a new light to brighten the world in which they live, and provides them with the tools necessary to change it.
Pertusati said she sees herself as a caretaker of students, and that this position involves two things.
“First, my job is to facilitate intellectual capacity then critical thinking and transformative education,” she said. “The second is that I need to facilitate a sense of social responsibility, to discover the developmental path I laid out for them, where they take knowledge from class and apply it to the real world.”
Applying lessons to the real world is the assignment Pertusati gives to all of her students. Many of her classes in the past have done food and clothing drives. Other students have gone to Native American organizations in Detroit and Toledo and worked with them and the Native communities. Pertusati’s students have also gone to the Cleveland Indians’ Jacob’s Field and protested on opening day. Her students have also worked with the Leonard Peletier Defense Committee on behalf of him and other Native political prisoners.
This year is Pertusati’s 15th year teaching at BGSU, and her Social Movements class made her proud by organizing a student rights movement and hosting a fair in Olscamp Hall.
“I am ecstatic to say that at least one of my students every semester usually expand what they learn in class and continue working at it after the end of the semester,” Pertusati said, “and that is part of social responsibility.”
Social responsibility plays a huge role in Pertusati’s life. As an undergraduate, she got her sociology major from State University of Stonybrook in New York. After she graduated, she furthered her education at the University of Michigan by getting both her masters and Ph.D. in both sociology and social work.
Although this extensive education allows Pertusati to call herself a doctor, she feels uncomfortable by the title and prefers to be called Linda, especially by her students.
Pertusati’s relationship with her students goes beyond the classroom. She has worked on many outside projects, such as setting up programs on reservations and trying to change the curriculum that has been introduced in public schools.
Brad Wagner, junior, makes it a point to be in Pertusati’s classes while scheduling. This semester’s Ethnicity in Social Movements course is his fifth class with her as an instructor.
“I enjoy her classes because it’s not just your typical memorizing vocab and studying, it’s more thinking outside the box,” Wagner said.
William Young, junior, also appreciates Pertusati’s unique style of teaching.
“Usually, I just go to class, take notes and take an exam and I don’t learn anything,” Young said. Young leaves this year’s Social Movements class with a broader range of cultural awareness and acknowledges other movements discussed in class, such as the Chicano Movement, Native American Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. All of these discussions were led by Pertusati, but she let her students express their own thoughts and argue their own opinions on the topics.
Michael Martin, professor and chair of the Ethnic Studies Department, considers Pertusati one of the best teachers in the department.
“She develops a teaching pedagogy that is at once intellectually rigorous and progressive,” Martin said.
Pertusati’s teaching style is what BGSU now refers to as “scholarship of engagement.”
In a newsletter by University President Sidney Ribeau, he said, “At no time in our history has the need been greater for connecting the work of the academy with the economic, social and cultural challenges beyond the campus.”
The main focus of scholarship of engagement is to apply the lessons learned in the classroom to an external audience. For instance, a Spanish professor may take students to a local hospital to serve as translators.
This idea concerns other faculty who are uneasy with scholarship of engagement and do not understand its entire purpose. Professors who teach classes such as math and science hesitate to replace written assignments and exams with hands-on activities.
Bianca Hutchinson, junior, believes that scholarship of engagement could work in any class.
“Every class we take here is supposed to prepare us for real life experiences. Scholarship of engagement is applying our skills in the real world so it would be beneficial in any class,” Hutchinson said.
Bill Armoline, director of the Center for Innovative and Transformative Education, agrees that anything being taught in a classroom should apply to real life.
Armoline and several other staff members are currently promoting and teaching scholarship of engagement to BGSU and two public schools in Toledo. Armoline said the biggest challenge of implementing engagement in other schools is the resistance of some teachers.
“Many teachers do not like being told how they should teach their classes,” Armoline said.
In response to the faculty who hesitate to apply scholarship of engagement, Ribeau assures that “We will only recognize and reward engagement scholarship that is able to stand up to the most rigorous standards of scholarly work, and that it will be our task to develop guidelines and policies that define the scholarship of engagement.” Ribeau continues to confirm that these guidelines are appropriate for the documentation, measurement, evaluation and dissemination of the scholarship of engagement on our campus.
Pertusati takes advantage of scholarship of engagement and uses teaching as her tool to change the way of thinking and to effect social change.
“My job is more than just helping them get a degree and get them a job,” Pertusati said. “Education is useless unless students do something with it.”
