Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Teaching and learning constitute the central and defining activities of Point Loma Nazarene University. Although both disciplines depend on the entire PLNU community—faculty, students, staff, and administration—Point Loma professors recognize themselves as principally responsible for student learning. We understand that effective teaching involves three key emphases:
- maintaining a vital relationship with one’s disciplines
- establishing a positive connection to students
- building a bridge between students and the academic material
Faculty members understand that teaching is a multi-faceted art—always in process, never truly perfected.
Professors are committed to keeping current in their discipline by creating and taking advantage of opportunities for research, publication, presentation, conference attendance, and travel. A professor’s personal pursuit of life-long learning is a valuable model for students and is crucial in providing them with updated knowledge in a particular field.
Point Loma professors also recognize that effective teaching depends in part on the relationship between the professor and his/her students. Every professor in every class forms a relationship with students, whether he or she does so consciously or not. The nature of this relationship powerfully communicates values and beliefs. It influences the students’ motivation and even what and how a professor teaches.
Faculty who establish a solid connection—who make an effort to understand the students’ world, how they think and what they need—can more easily relate course material to what students know and care about. Perhaps most importantly, professors who understand students can more accurately assess what the students actually need to learn and what they can realistically learn in the time allotted.
Furthermore, if asking too much of students communicates a belief that only perfection is acceptable, asking too little implies a lack of faith in the students’ ability to face challenges and overcome obstacles. Accepting each student where they are academically is a starting point; refusing to accept it as an end point teaches that learning is a complex process. It demands time—the slow development of skill, the ability to delay gratification. If a professor understands a student’s struggles and frustrations but doesn’t allow the student to use those frustrations as an excuse to stop learning, the professor teaches perseverance, patience, and empathy. Although students are ultimately responsible for their own study habits and classroom performance, having a professor who differentiates between support and rescue—between enabling and excusing—can help them learn how to function more effectively as students.
In the context of Point Loma’s strong commitment to the liberal arts, professors may identify skills that a student needs to develop and nurture skills that a student has developed in another arena that could be applied to academics. The faculty strive to provide students with tools for living a thoughtful life. Professors teach the vital connection between good thinking and good living when they instruct students to:
- think in an orderly manner
- ask intelligent questions
- reason carefully
- perceive with sensitivity
- organize and apply information
- develop a repertoire of techniques by which to search for answers
A professor’s mission also includes the effort to connect students to a discipline whose relevance students might not initially recognize. Each professor works to build a bridge between the students and the material studied. Although an understanding of the student’s world and interests provides an important starting point of connection for professors, it rarely represents the end point to which such professors aim. Point Loma professors realize that bridging the gap between students and material requires them to discover and develop their own “teaching style,” to comprehend and empower the students’ “learning styles” and respond to the teaching and learning styles that best fit with the material in question. We remain open to trying new techniques and technologies, while recognizing that neither offer an easy, foolproof alternative to deep thought and hard work.
We also recognize that the pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning must involve the pursuit of excellence, both academic and spiritual, in the students we teach. As we shape minds we are also shaping the future leaders of the church. Teaching with excellence thus also means helping a student recognize and develop his or her own potential as leader, as thinker, as creative agent, even when our culture might have us believe that the student’s gender or ethnicity means an absence of talent. Point Loma Nazarene University affirms the importance of preparing all our students--both women and men, of whatever ethnicity--for positions of leadership in the church, in the surrounding community, in professions, and in the ethnically diverse world to which we are called.
Finally, we know that the pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning is a collaborative effort encompassing the entire Point Loma Nazarene University community. Various parts of that community are connected in this endeavor by the shared beliefs that:
- Christians are indeed called to grow in all knowledge and discernment.
- The creation of thinking Christians is a service to the Church and world beyond it.
- Learning more about the world we live in can ultimately deepen and enrich our faith.