Teaching steelworkers from Indiana's hardy Calumet Region about gender issues and cross-cultural communication was an eye-opener on both sides of the lectern.
"You might assume they wouldn't be very receptive to these issues, but they were willing to consider them," said IU Northwest's Dorothy Ige, chair of the Department of Communications. "They hadn't thought about these type of ideas before. We got into some difficult questions about race, gender and sexual orientation, and there were heated debates."
By the end of the course, the tone of the discussions had taken on a different tone, one more informed and empathetic. "These adults reached the conclusion that although classifications of people emphasize differences, they actually have many more things in common. It was a different dimension of thinking and feeling for them."
As head of the department, Ige spends considerable time on administrative matters. But her favorite moments remain those she spends in the classroom‹like watching how male students tackle an assignment to study someone in history whose lives or work changed the way gender issues are viewed.
"They read the speeches or papers of people like Sojourner Truth and it's quite a revelation," Ige said. "One young white male student chose Shirley Chisholm. After that, his classwork showed he had learned a great deal about her and the gender issues her life represented."
Opening students' eyes to new ways of thinking is one of the greatest rewards of being a college teacher, and for Ige the pleasure is working with non-traditional, older adult, largely blue-collar students.
"Take our SwingShift College, for example, which schedules classes all day and night," she said. "Many of these people are very bright and wanted to go to college but couldn't. And they still couldn't without the Swing Shift program.
"I see their enthusiasm, coming in after they've just finished their shift, and it's like being a new teacher all over again. I wish we had this program all over America."
Many of the communications majors Ige knows were undecided "until they took that first course and got hooked." Others choose the courses and major for practical reasons. "They're quite political about their work; they know they can use communications knowledge at their offices, in meetings and on the factory floor. And gender studies makes them more understanding of the differences in methods and styles of communicating, and how different experiences shape our expectations."
Steelworkers, workers displaced from the mills, women who are or have raised families‹it's always a diverse group that comes through Ige's and others' classrooms.
"Many of my students are the first in their families to go to college. You know how much their education means when at graduation they bring grandma up on her walking stick and proudly introduce you as their professor. You just don't take the privileges of university life for granted when that happens."
Teaching gender studies and cross-cultural communication to older, working adults requires an understanding that they bring a lifetime of established ways of thinking to the classroom. But expanding their awareness and opening them to new possibilities are all the more satisfying for that reason, Ige said.
"This is a second chance for them, an opportunity to do something different with their lives. As part of Indiana University, we help them widen their thinking and thus change their lives. I've enjoyed teaching at other universities, but this is the most rewarding work I've ever done."
Return to Table of Contents