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The Faculty Chronicles (TFC) podcast, sponsored by the Touro Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), is about building community, connection, and conversation. It will bring to life the stories behind the great works of Touro faculty, across disciplines in all our schools, focusing on classroom innovation in teaching and learning, science, business, medicine, education, wellness and more.
00:00:00:09 - 00:00:29:11
Elizabeth
Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Faculty Chronicles. I'm Elizabeth Rooney, the co-host of this podcast chair and associate professor with the College of Pharmacy in New York. Our guest for the day is Naomi Campbell. Naomi is a faculty member with the College for Women and the deputy chair of the Department of Psychology. She's also a licensed mental health counselor for the Landon College Counseling Center.
00:00:29:16 - 00:00:56:12
Elizabeth
In addition to teaching them, is also a licensed clinical therapist and maintains a private practice in Manhattan. She's a recipient of 70 teaching awards, including the student nominated Teacher of the Year award at Lander College and the prestigious Americans for Teaching Salon. She recently won the presidential award for teaching. And we are happy to have now, maybe just today for the show.
00:00:57:02 - 00:01:00:03
Elizabeth
NAMI, welcome to the Focus. Thank you.
00:01:00:11 - 00:01:01:14
Naomi
It's nice to be here.
00:01:02:07 - 00:01:10:07
Elizabeth
Tell us a little bit about your teaching journey. When did you start teaching and where are you now with your teaching journey?
00:01:10:23 - 00:01:33:15
Naomi
I began not as a teacher. I actually began working in the industry as an industrial and organizational psychologist. It didn't have the impact or the meaning that I thought it would have. And you trained to be able to help people prevent burnout and find work satisfaction. And then when you go into the actual industry, it's nothing like that at all.
00:01:33:21 - 00:02:00:05
Naomi
So I went back and I trained for a clinical degree. And in 1986 I began to teach first as an adjunct to WIU and Stern and Touro and eventually 1989, full time at Tarot. Even though my degree was in clinical work, I had gone back and retrained. Teaching really became an absolute love from the get go. But you really have impact, not just educationally, but on a personal level.
00:02:00:20 - 00:02:26:18
Naomi
I it became really my fulltime focus in 1989 and then in 2001 when I took over as chair, that also had impact on a macro level. The department is four times as large now as when I took it over in 2001. Both the majors and an actual courses they offer the number of students who majored in psychology. It's the largest major in the school now.
00:02:26:18 - 00:02:56:18
Naomi
And also just the the focus of starting an internship program so that the students would have real life clinical internships, experiences, research experiences. We have 100% success rate in graduate programs. So I really feel like they go on in their lives and you have intro on that macro level, but also on the micro level and individuals. I have students who, when they defend their dissertation five years later, call me up and they thank me for putting them on this path.
00:02:57:00 - 00:03:20:11
Naomi
I mean, I think they're thanking me. They're calling me up and remembering me. It's very hard to defend a dissertation, so maybe it's a mixed feeling, but they remember I put them on that path and they talk about this journey and you see them at conferences and you see them professionally and I help them network with our alum, our students who are currently here and our alumni for opportunities.
00:03:20:11 - 00:03:27:18
Naomi
And you just feel like you're having a broad stroke impact. And also on an individual level.
00:03:29:04 - 00:03:49:20
Elizabeth
That's really beautiful. The macro and micro level that you're putting to that you want the Toro presidential Award for teaching and you have been a faculty for over three decades. Tell us what you enjoyed the most. Has an academician or what makes is to want to be a faculty?
00:03:51:04 - 00:04:24:12
Naomi
It's a great question. So of course, I was very honored to get the presidential award for teaching, but actually my most cherished award is also the student nominated and the student elected awards. The Presidential teaching award was from my peers, which was very touching. But the students have senior dinners and they award faculty. When I received a few awards from those student dinners, the award that I didn't win that is really the most coveted award is the teacher most likely to be mistaken for a student, which is a mouthful award.
00:04:24:20 - 00:04:58:20
Naomi
So I just want to tell you, Elizabeth, I did not get that award. But but there is award, you know, most teacher with most impact Teacher of the Year award. So those are teaching words that are very cherished because really, if you're if you're doing this, you're really doing this to to have impact on the students. I really love that I teach women and I feel that we are creating Atlanta College for Women, a community of women who are role models for the women that we are teaching.
00:04:59:07 - 00:05:27:15
Naomi
We are professional women, all of us. I've worked full time since my marriage in 1983. I also have a family of children. I have grandchildren, and I've had a long career, very long. We will count the years, hopefully, that no math majors listening to the podcast, but being a role model to them and developing a real support for them in college and even beyond college, where alumni will reach out to me.
00:05:27:22 - 00:05:53:15
Naomi
I received an email today of an alum who is looking for a position. It's been trying to role model to them what a professional woman means. Also someone from their community who understands the unique challenges and nuances of their community, of someone who doesn't feel like they have to choose, that they can create a work life balance with very meaningful and involved work.
00:05:53:23 - 00:06:15:05
Naomi
And also to have a family that is very enriched in your family life. I mentioned previously that I go to these career fairs that we have every year at Toro, and I speak to the people who are at the career fair and I say, What do our students need? What skills are they missing? What soft skills are they missing?
00:06:16:09 - 00:06:41:15
Naomi
And I try and find the gaps that the students are missing that makes them successful in the world beyond the classroom, academics, beyond just psychology and their required courses and their electives and their exposure to the field, but just the skills they need for life. How are they coming across to these interviewers and these these corporate leaders who are coming in to meet with our students?
00:06:41:15 - 00:07:16:22
Naomi
And then I developed these, I call them Brown Bag luncheon discussions, and I teach these soft skills. The luncheon discussions, by the way, I think that students also request so before midterms and before finals, students ask for specific things like, you know, improving memory skills or at the end of every year I run up preparing for life after college, but also from those career fairs, things that they say the students don't know how to have a maybe a soft start up when they're building rapport, when they meet a recruiter.
00:07:17:06 - 00:07:47:12
Naomi
So we talk about interviewing skills and establishing rapport or just things that they need for life in the Brown Bag luncheon discussions. I also have an opportunity to discuss issues that go beyond the classroom but are psychologically relevant. So, for example, psychological aspects of dating and relationship is something that we present. Some of our students are married, so I've done workshops on marriage and making marriage work in the 21st century.
00:07:47:19 - 00:07:58:01
Naomi
Insomnia is a very curing insomnia, so very well. It's been did workshop suggestions that the students feel they need in their life beyond the classroom as well.
00:07:58:21 - 00:08:25:14
Elizabeth
Wow. That's so beautiful. Because I think at times we faculty get so cornered into the academy, particularly the academy, and I can see how you are making your doing all around the experience for the students, which is so important. Tell me, what is the best part of classroom teaching and what is still a challenge for you in the classroom teaching?
00:08:27:02 - 00:08:53:08
Naomi
Great question, because when you do something for many decades, you are constantly renewing and refreshing and sort of bringing it up to date. I think that because I teach psychology, it's very important to apply it to the real world. They learn these, you know, theories. ERIKSON Developmental psychology, how we're developing from the minute we're born to the moment we die.
00:08:53:18 - 00:09:16:23
Naomi
But what does that mean in the trenches of clinical work? What does that mean in life? I'm always grateful that I have this clinical experience, and then I bring that clinical experience into the classroom with a composite of case studies of things that they're going to come across, maybe as clinicians, if they go into therapy, what's it going to cross it come across even in their life.
00:09:17:09 - 00:09:50:01
Naomi
Today we were working, we were talking about personality disorders in my abnormal psychology class to explain what that will look like. Even if you come in to someone who has some part of this disorder, who you're working with as a colleague or in your personal life, what that would seem like and to make it come alive. So I think that is the best part of teaching, that challenge of not just teaching them theory, but in psychology, you can actually put it into a real life practice.
00:09:50:11 - 00:10:26:01
Naomi
Most of the students want to go into the field of psychology, so applying that information that they're learning is so important. And then the second part of your question was actually the challenge of the students of teaching and understanding that every single student that you're teaching is an individual, and they walk in with their own package and they walk in with their own life experience, as many of them painfully experience it because and you don't know that walking in, you don't do an intake on every student the way you would do in a clinical practice.
00:10:26:11 - 00:11:02:14
Naomi
So you're teaching very sensitive information about depression, suicidality, about eating disorders. But we really don't know what their own traumas are. Are they in the middle themselves of getting a divorce or they're struggling with OCD? Sometimes students want to share things in class that they think will help break a stereotype, but perhaps it's oversharing and how to help them navigate that, that they feel like it's wrong at the moment to share something that maybe later they might regret sharing or things that go on in their extended family.
00:11:02:14 - 00:11:27:24
Naomi
Just they'll come afterwards after class and they'll say, You talked about bipolar there and how it has a genetic component, but my parent has bipolar. And what does that mean for me? What does it mean for my siblings and my children one day? So to really navigate in psychology, how to treat them with the sensitivity of individuals, and it doesn't just have to be in the field of psychology.
00:11:27:24 - 00:11:53:21
Naomi
Every teacher is navigating students and they're so focused very often on the academics, but students who are working in swimming upstream in this stage of life where they're trying to establish their adult identity, establish their careers, establish love relationships, you know, get a sense of who they are. It's a very complicated time to be an 18, 19, 20 year old in our society.
00:11:54:10 - 00:12:16:03
Naomi
It's a fearful time for a lot of students about the future. It's a time that they struggle to be optimistic. Many of them, and I think they're trying to help support them and not just throw information at them. Why not just teach them how to think, but also support them in a journey is really an important mandate for teachers.
00:12:16:03 - 00:12:41:19
Elizabeth
Well, let me put it down so beautifully as to the significance of the importance as to why we should be capturing the student, not just from the Academy point of view, but SC As a person, as a holistic person in psychology or in health care, we always say, look at your patient holistically. And I think it's the same with the students too, looking at them holistically and treating them like that.
00:12:42:01 - 00:13:11:13
Naomi
Yes, I love that. And I think medicine is much better, by the way, nowadays looking holistically because we have so much more focus on the mind body connection and how a lot of mental health issues can either cause or exacerbate illnesses, but illnesses can also trigger things. Whenever I have a patient and they come in and this may be interesting to you on a personal level given your background in pharmacy.
00:13:12:06 - 00:13:36:14
Naomi
So when I have a patient come in and they have a symptom and they've never had that symptom before, depression, hallucinations, the first thing I do is get them to get a metabolic workup, to get them to go to their intern and make sure that they're healthy because they could have temporal lobe seizures, God forbid, or certain kinds of cancer, like pancreatic cancers that could be causing this depression, a cancer.
00:13:36:14 - 00:13:50:19
Naomi
Very often the first symptom is depression. It's so the mind body connection has really become a focus of both psychology and medicine and that understanding how they are, you know, that door swings both ways. They are we're all holding hands together.
00:13:51:22 - 00:13:52:14
Elizabeth
So to.
00:13:53:22 - 00:13:54:04
Naomi
To.
00:13:54:09 - 00:14:14:13
Elizabeth
Tomorrow actually puts out a lot of resources for the faculty. We have to we put a lot of effort into making our faculty some of the best faculty out there. So tell us about some of the total resources that you have use personally to become a better teacher.
00:14:15:11 - 00:14:46:15
Naomi
Okay, great. Well, I really do appreciate that through UP does run through all the faculty development sessions. In my opinion, there underused resources because the always get really top people in the field and I encourage my faculty to attend and they're wonderful especially now that we have the option to attend on Zoom and in person they have research days was faculty who present their research and we hear, you know, it's just so inspiring to hear about the work of others.
00:14:46:15 - 00:15:20:14
Naomi
But it also it's like brainstorming. When someone presents something, it sparks our imagination as well. I think one of our best resources that people may not even realize is our own alumni. But I am in touch with many, many of our alumni and that our alumni provide valuable, meaningful internship opportunities and career opportunities. I even have an alumni that I just hired to come back and who finished her doctorate about five years ago and is working in the field.
00:15:20:21 - 00:15:54:13
Naomi
And she's going to come back now as full time faculty, which is a wonderful role model for our students. She graduated our division and when I go to conferences, I very often just stand outside and run into alumni in the hall and connect them, connect them with research opportunities. We have three students who from those just a love connection to conferences, were able to get internships that did not just research, but were able to present posters at those same conferences of their research.
00:15:55:07 - 00:16:26:00
Naomi
And, you know, one of them was about trauma and the support that that when you go through trauma, having support and the impact on outcomes and surgery. And I brought over one of the world renowned trauma specialists to look at the poster that was been presented by our student. I still was a little intimidated to present to this expert, but still touched on the expertise, stood and listened to her presentation and asked the questions.
00:16:26:10 - 00:16:50:03
Naomi
But all of that was made possible by our alum, by me going and standing there and connecting with them and finding out what they're up to in getting their phone number. And, you know, our alumni also have gone to all these wonderful graduate programs. So when our students are thinking and deciding and about to go for their interviews to a doctoral program, they can contact the alumni who went to that program.
00:16:50:03 - 00:17:01:14
Naomi
And the alumni can talk a little bit about their experience with the graduate schools, really like from an insider's perspective. So I think that's one of our greatest resources on a skill set.
00:17:01:14 - 00:17:15:11
Elizabeth
I'm also tomorrow has several new faculty. If you have to give an advice to them based on your teaching journey, what will be their advice to our new faculty?
00:17:16:01 - 00:17:40:22
Naomi
Oh great. Well, I actually do mention of the faculty and there are some things that I'm very passionate about that I try and get faculty to do. I can't make them, but I definitely encourage them on. The first is that there are in our school older faculty who have been teaching here for decades, such as myself, but other really masterful teachers.
00:17:40:22 - 00:18:08:00
Naomi
And I really encourage new faculty to reach out and make a formal connection and ask them for mentorship, ask them for input. I even encourage them to sit in the senior faculty members classroom and just see a different approach, a different way of presenting that can make such a difference. But I find, Elizabeth is that young faculty are very good with technology.
00:18:08:00 - 00:18:35:10
Naomi
They don't blink. They want you on a PowerPoint they can have with all kinds of like bells and whistles. The next day, Zoom is like easier than swimming for them. It's not a problem, but there are certain, you know, engage in a student and understanding how to really teach critical thinking or really seeing why that student might be struggling on a personal level, picking up nuances of an undetected learning disability.
00:18:35:10 - 00:19:06:20
Naomi
These are things that people who have experience of decades in the trenches of teaching can do that younger faculty can't always do. So a younger faculty might show me something that they they're very frustrated that all their essays are really not getting the nuances of the class. And I'll say, well, maybe they have a reading comprehension issue, other auditory processing issue or dyspraxia where they can write, but they can't really express themselves in writing and maybe it's undetected.
00:19:06:20 - 00:19:40:23
Naomi
Even so, there are of nuances, even something as simple as I find that when I teach, I stand and I walk around the classroom and I make eye contact with the people in the back and the people over the computer and try and engage them and give them that energy. And a new faculty member might like sit in the front, in front of their notes or in the corner in the dark and just look at her PowerPoint and not realize that they're not really connecting to the students and really engaging and making them feel like their presence is felt and important.
00:19:41:16 - 00:20:06:21
Naomi
So I think that there's a lot to be learned from the senior faculty members and vice versa. I also encourage new faculty, and I know it's hard, but it has to be a no ego Miguel moment. I encourage you faculty to really look at student evaluations as an opportunity because we very often get triggered and defensive by student evaluations, this resistance.
00:20:07:08 - 00:20:29:21
Naomi
But if we look at it as a time to see ourselves to other people's eyes, how are we coming through in their eyes? It's really a wonderful opportunity. You think in your mind's eye that you're carrying, but is that coming through to the students in their comments? Are they saying, like, I see sometimes students write, She's very caring.
00:20:29:21 - 00:20:59:22
Naomi
She cares about the students individually. She's a kind teacher, very patient. Those are remarkable compliments to a teacher. You may feel that you care, but are you coming through as you care or are you coming to clearly do you articulate you think you're organized in your mind's eye, but the faculty evaluations say you're disorganized. Are you coming across as all over the place, as one student's comment might say to a faculty member?
00:21:00:07 - 00:21:29:01
Naomi
So instead of looking at student evaluations as something that to be defensive up, it's important to see them as opportunities for feedback. How are you coming through and taking our ego off the table and really seeing this as a wonderful opportunity to sharpen and polish our teaching skills? I think more so that's one of them. As I mentioned before, the students really walk in with a lot of their own challenges.
00:21:29:13 - 00:22:08:22
Naomi
Anxiety and depression are way up in college level students and undergraduate level students way up. You can even compare the numbers now pre-COVID and before COVID, it was really still much higher than ten years before that. And it's it's really on topic about why. So I'm not going to go into why, but I feel the faculty almost have to sit to say to themselves, it's time to take a Hippocratic oath, is that doctors take that oath of first do no harm, that when we walk into a classroom, we're not just here to make sure the information is taught.
00:22:09:12 - 00:22:32:13
Naomi
So if we don't think they're doing their work or we don't think we're teaching them, they're listening, then we need to fail them. I really think we need to see this as an oath to not harm the students and all their struggles and themselves as a person, and to try and understand the student behind the person behind that student, rather, And what's going on with them.
00:22:32:13 - 00:23:10:07
Naomi
On a personal level, that's a lot of students are dealing with their own challenges and both learning and personal, and they need to understand that the faculty member is there to try and also be supportive and not judgmental and to inspire and not to shred them. It's also very important we are all post-COVID and it's been an awakening for a lot of faculty members because before that they didn't always think that they had to be aware of what's going on in the world around them and how it might be impacting the student.
00:23:10:17 - 00:23:39:14
Naomi
But then we all almost overnight, to the credit of Dr. Kadish, that it was seamless switch to zoom like overnight and students were home alone, isolated, but fly home quickly. Those who were still in the dorm were very fearful. Some people couldn't get home. Parents had immuno compromised situations and they they had to stay locally. And it was a fearful time in the world.
00:23:39:14 - 00:24:05:06
Naomi
And so there was a lot of involvement from the church, made sure the faculty checked in with the students and asked how they were doing and were like sensitive to their challenges. But I'd love that experience to be what we call in the field post-traumatic growth. I'd love the faculty to hold on to that and to take that post-traumatic growth and say students are always going through things.
00:24:05:06 - 00:24:33:09
Naomi
It's not just during COVID when the whole world was kind of holding hands together through this unprecedented time when the world is upside down and we're all sheltering in place, I really want and at that time I did for accordance to the student body about mental health and about tips to maintain mental health. During that time. They'll be kind of on those faculty members who take the time to care and to stay when they see us.
00:24:33:11 - 00:24:58:06
Naomi
You seemed a little upset in class. Do you want to come to my office? During office hours, you seemed lost. I noticed you weren't here last week. Are you feeling all right? Not every faculty member even takes attendance. But if you don't take attendance, do you notice when the students are in there? And how does this feel? If they're out for two weeks and you didn't notice and you didn't ask them, you didn't email them or reach out to them.
00:24:58:06 - 00:25:27:15
Naomi
So I think that we've learned from COVID that we need to be sensitive to what's going on with students as individuals and as people. And honestly, if you reach out to the students on an individual level, you can have more impact as well because and you're really connecting to them as a person. On the last teaching advice I would give to the faculty is that, you know, when we teach men and we teach women to be successful in the world, they have different challenges, they have different needs.
00:25:27:15 - 00:25:49:02
Naomi
I am very lucky in that I teach women and I'm not sort of divided in my focus. I've taught them before Tully University, I've taught a Landau College for men and girl college for men. But we really can customize sometimes what the needs are the challenges of women going out in the world and men going out into the world.
00:25:49:02 - 00:26:28:24
Naomi
And they may need different things. I mentioned when I speak to the careers service, the career day, the career fair, and the people who come to the career fair about what our students are missing. And they will tell me, well, the women are missing these skills, and the men are missing these skills. They pick up on it. And and if we can then give that back to them and trying to customize what they made me, maybe some of the soft skills for some of the men about reestablishing the law, whereas women might need more in know how to be more assertive and how to in a group interrupt and, you know, lean in, as we
00:26:28:24 - 00:26:36:19
Naomi
call it, that's gotten a lot of focus. So those are things that faculty can keep in mind.
00:26:38:13 - 00:26:59:09
Elizabeth
I mean, that's beautiful. All those blue eyes for us and faculty out there who is still trying to figure out, you know, how to be the best and how to teach and everything is changing so fast. And COVID just accelerated the change, too. So feeling your own way and also helping the students to figure that all the way, it was beautiful.
00:26:59:09 - 00:27:23:02
Elizabeth
The advice that you have been giving to them after they sat there. Well, thank you so much for being our guest today and talking to us about your teaching journey, your experiences, what you like and what we should be doing to keep our students successful that make our student successful. Thank you so much.
00:27:23:10 - 00:27:47:15
Naomi
It was a pleasure speaking with you today. It was really an honor. I want to inspire future teachers because it's such an important role. It's such a pivotal time. There, so idealistic that they're idealistic. Right. And they're just starting their journey as people, not just as students, not just in their career. So it's a it's a very exciting time to be involved with their growth.
00:27:48:00 - 00:27:50:22
Naomi
So I hope that this was helpful to the faculty.
00:27:51:06 - 00:27:54:00
Elizabeth
100%. Thank you so much. Naomie.
00:27:54:06 - 00:27:55:23
Naomi
You're welcome. Elizabeth. Thank you.
00:27:56:08 - 00:28:01:23
Elizabeth
And thank you to our listeners for tuning in and listening to our podcast on the next hour.