SDSU speech teacher honored

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BROOKINGS – While she might be known more for her TedX talks or her research, South Dakota State University Associate Professor Jenn Anderson will now be known as this year’s Outstanding Young Speech Teacher from the Speech Communication Association of South Dakota. This award recognizes young speech communication professionals who distinguish themselves during the first five years of their careers as communication educators.

Anderson joins colleagues Andrea Carlile, who won the award in 2014, and Rebecca Kuehl, who received it in 2016.

“It’s great to get an award for teaching because it’s something I put a lot of time into; it’s something I’m really, really passionate about,” said Anderson, who did not know she was nominated for the award. “Because I do a lot of research as well, people think that’s what I do and teaching takes a back seat. But for me, it’s not that at all as I put a ton of effort into teaching and it’s really nice to be recognized for it.”

Anderson was named the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences’ outstanding research, scholar, performer and artist at the university’s 2018 Celebration of Faculty Excellence. She also delivered the David Fee Memorial Lecture and shared the Excellence in Outreach and Engagement Award with Kuehl at the 2017 event.

Her course load includes undergraduate and graduate research methods courses and classes in health communication.

“The research methods courses are required and feel really different, when compared to our normal classes in the curriculum,” Anderson said. “Research methods ask you to think in a different way and students aren’t really excited about taking these classes. However, they end up being really, really valuable.

“I just got an email from a student who took the class last year and the email was a thank you for teaching that class,” she continued. “The student wrote ‘I didn’t enjoy it at the time, but now I understand how valuable it was.’ He’s currently in a graduate program and said he feels much more prepared than his peers. I’ve received texts and emails from other students saying the same thing. I also hope I’m doing something right teaching-wise even though at the moment they might not feel it in class. It’s nice to have that recognition that my teaching does have an impact.”

Regardless of her receiving an award, Anderson is incorporating new ideas. A recent research methods course featured first-hand experiences such as conducting interviews or leading focus groups. 

“I think it was much better received. I’m trying this semester to focus on the process of learning more so than specific outcomes of learning,” Anderson said. “Recognizing that most students are not going to need that level of depth and specificity, I’m focusing on how we are learning, how are we asking critical questions and how we can be responsible consumers of research. When you’re on a job and your boss asks, ‘can you put together a survey or hold a focus group because we need to know what our clients are thinking?,’ the students will understand how to do that, how to do that ethically, know how to ask the right questions and put the right solutions together instead of just having a baseline knowledge of vocabulary that one remembers.”

She is also incorporating a few things from teaching an online class.

“I was dreading teaching online because I hadn’t done that before. It shook up my idea of how to teach. A lot of the traditional thoughts were thrown out the window,” she said. “I was able to focus on learning and not just what to cover in 50 or 75 minutes.

“There were different things the students could do, such as provide a hyperlink or image to support a thought or challenge what a classmate had to say. I’ve brought online days to my in-person classes this semester. There are things I really loved about the online class, like getting to know everyone’s insights. It was a great experience.”

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