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Class in the Spotlight
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Lough feels ‘write’ at home at SCAD
 Photo by Dane Sponberg SCAD liberal arts professor James Lough encourages his students to have a broad perspective. By Beth E. Concepción Published: Friday, December 1, 2006 It is 8 a.m. on a bright Wednesday morning. Savannah College of Art and Design first-year students are assembled in a classroom on the third floor of Crites Hall. Sleepy-eyed and bed-headed, they present their research papers one by one for their composition class. It is a tough crowd for liberal arts professor James E. Lough, Ph.D. He is tasked with teaching composition to art and design students, many of whom might not see the value of writing skills for their anticipated career paths. Even more of a challenge is the early hour of the class. Lough admits he has to do more of a “song and dance” to get the students involved. He advises them to come to class “heavily caffeinated,” and spends the first few minutes of each class just chatting with his students about what is going on in their lives. On this particular day, Lough’s first official task is to go over answers on a grammar post-test. The pre-test was administered at the beginning of the quarter to assess their knowledge going into the class. “How well you did on the post-test reflects how well I’ve taught you,” he said. Grades on the post-test are not the only ways Lough assesses his success as a teacher. “Assessment is all the rage now, and that’s probably a good thing, since we Americans seem to be fueling our international stereotype being arrogant know-nothings,” he said. “One form of success is when a student who has been painfully quiet all quarter suddenly feels comfortable enough to express something, to speak out, for the first time. Beyond that, I feel successful if I’ve encouraged students to view something beyond their own noses, to see that there are other viewpoints out there that are just as valid as their own cherished values. This, to me, is the first baby step in beginning to reason.” Even in a composition class, Lough finds ways to bring in that larger viewpoint — utilizing his clearly vast knowledge of history and politics during a discussion of something as simple as topic sentences. In this way, Lough encourages his students to look at the big picture and answer thoughtfully, instead of throwing out canned answers. It is all part of Lough’s self-described Socratic approach. “Question and answer, constantly,” he said. “This invites — or forces — students to think about not only topics like race relations or aesthetics, but also why they think that way. Where did they get their thoughts, their values and opinions? How much of their worldview have they inherited from other people, and how much have they really considered deeply for themselves? Of course, in order for them to think things through, they have to have the tools of reasoning and something to reason about: information. So I focus both on providing information and teaching them how to think for themselves about, I hope, most any topic. Sometimes, to give them a role model for this process, I just think aloud, back and forth. And a little humor once in a while doesn’t hurt.” True to his plan, he asks students many open-ended questions regarding the post-test and resulting discussion about Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of conventional, pre-conventional and post-conventional behavior (an impressive topic in a composition course). It is clear from the immediate responses that Lough receives to his open-ended questions that the students are used to contributing in class, and even seem to enjoy it. In turn, Lough said he enjoys the students at SCAD. “At the engineering school where I used to teach, the students were bright and hard-working, but they were most comfortable thinking ‘inside the box,’ as engineers can be. Ambiguity and complexity made them uneasy,” he said. “I’ve found that SCAD students are just the opposite. They’re wide open to uncertainty and the creativity that comes from the state of suspension, rather than certainty. SCAD students, as a whole, relish taking risks, which is a very refreshing change from the engineering students, who are trained to minimize risk.” The engineering school at which he taught before coming to SCAD was the Colorado School of Mines, located in Golden, Colo. Lough is a relative newcomer to the teaching field. “I came to teaching indirectly. I remember sitting in my office where I worked as a publications coordinator for a medical nonprofit organization. On paper, the job looked good, but it just didn’t satisfy something inside me. I remember sitting at the window of my office in Berkeley, Calif., gazing idly at a church steeple a long way away and thinking, ‘It’s time to decide.’ So I went back to school and got my Ph.D. in what I really loved, literature and creative writing. From there, teaching seemed a natural thing to do, plus I seemed to be suited for it.” Lough earned a Ph.D. at the University of Denver, an M.A. at San Francisco State University and a B.A. at the University of Colorado. At SCAD, he teaches primarily writing courses, including Basic Composition and Advanced Nonfiction Writing. “I also teach a basic literature course, which is fun at SCAD because I have no trouble convincing students here about how valid or important literature is to life,” he said. “Engineers are more skeptical about art’s practical value in living life.” He also said he enjoys teaching Writing About Place, in which students are encouraged to focus on setting, or location, in both fiction and nonfiction. “Where something happens is so crucial to what actually happens, and writing about place tends to get students out of their own heads and into the larger world,” he said. “A challenge in teaching this course is to get students to realize that the place they’re from is interesting. It may be hard for students to think of a suburban housing development in Peoria as interesting, but it’s all in how you approach it.” In addition to teaching, Lough’s interests include writing and editing fiction, scripts, journalism and writing for both nonprofit and for-profit entities. In fact, he is finishing up two books. “One is a collection of scholarly essays, and the other is much more interesting,” he said. “[It is] about the bohemian, artistic lives lived inside the walls of New York’s Chelsea Hotel, where a million artists, writers, musicians and other eccentrics have thrived, suffered and created.” Lough said he also plans to develop new courses for the contemporary writing major, including perhaps a course in literary journalism.  |
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