An Experimental Education

By Carolyn A. Copenheaver

August 2009

As a young girl who entered kindergarten in 1976, my entire educational experience was a melding of experiments dreamed up by Baby Boomers who taught my classes and administered my school systems.  For two years I was placed in a combined first and second grade “classroom experiment” to test the effectiveness of peer education.  I don’t remember any student-to-student teaching, but I do remember participating in Universal Silent Sustained Reading every afternoon, an exercise shared by the entire elementary school to create a school-wide bond based on reading that earned the unfortunate cold war-laden abbreviation of “USSR” on Mrs.  Brace’s chalkboard.  From third grade on, we were assigned journal entries to improve our creative writing skills, and lest we be hampered by the technical aspects of writing, we were encouraged to disregard spelling and grammar and just let the ideas flow onto the page—an exercise that doubtless accounts for my current heavy reliance on the spell checker in my word processor. 

These educational experiments continued into middle and high school, where I earned a sufficient grade on a math test administered to all eight graders that I was allowed to enter geometry and skip ninth grade math.  The only question I remember from the eighth grade test was that we were asked to calculate the mean from a series of numbers.  I remember I chose 7 because I had always thought it was a particularly unkind number and fortunately guessed right even though I had no idea how to calculate a mean.

My entrance to college did not slow the rush of experimental teaching experiences for me, as I attended a small private school in central Pennsylvania, Juniata College, which rejected traditional “majors” in favor of Programs of Emphasis.  Programs of Emphasis allowed students more creativity in their curricular development; i.e., I could take any class I wanted as long as I was able to justify the selection with both of my academic advisors.  Both advisors?  But of course, Juniata College also had an experimental two-advisor system where students had one advisor from within their area of emphasis (mine was biology) and one from outside their area of emphasis.  Advisors from within the area of emphasis were assigned, but it was up to the student to identify a second advisor, typically one of the professors from the first semester of classes.

My first semester schedule included Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, English, and Ancient Judeo-Christian Heritage.  The last was taught by the extremely intimidating Dr.  Jose Nieto.  As someone who had never read the Bible (the joys of having agnostic parents), I was in completely over my head.  I did not even know how to locate our assigned readings.  Deuteronomy 28:1-64.  What does that mean?  What are those numbers?  Are they pages and chapters??  Dr.  Nieto had no tolerance for ignorance in class discussions, and he also had no tolerance for silence in class discussions.  These dueling intolerances made a deadly combination for someone as ill-prepared as I was for a class on biblical history.  I remember in particular Dr.  Nieto’s scathing remarks written in the margin of my paper on the role of women in the New Testament.  Mary was at the foot of the cross?  How was I supposed to know??  My ignorance must have been appalling to someone who had earned his doctorate in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.  But Dr.  Nieto was equally hard on all students.  He criticized me for my ignorance; another student for his literal belief in the Bible; and a third for his inane ideas about authorship of biblical texts.  As a student in his classroom, you could do no right.

Jose Nieto was the logical choice for my second advisor.  He was the antithesis of the fuzzy, tolerant educators that preceded my Nieto experience.  He was tough, demanding, unyielding, and patronizing towards his students, and there was nothing I wanted more than to earn the extremely rare praise he doled out for my ideas or judgment.  When I told other students Dr.  Nieto was my second advisor they were aghast—second advisors were supposed to be someone who would stroke your hair and say it was all right if you were failing Organic Chemistry because you could always switch to Peace and Conflict Studies. 

Instead, when I had advising sessions with Dr. Nieto he would challenge me on the choice of every single class: Why do you need to take Geology?  What will it teach you?  How will it make you a better scientist?  How could you possibly pass up an opportunity to take Oriental Religious Heritage when the class clearly contains material that would be essential to your future profession as a biologist? I took that class my senior year and was again woefully out of my element as Nieto dragged us through Taoism, Jainism, Buddhism, and all the Hindu gods and goddesses. 

Advising sessions lasted at least an hour and I would leave exhausted and battered.  In contrast, my biology advisor would sign any paper I handed him and have me out the door in five minutes flat.

Thus, it is ironic that it was my biology advisor who decided my career path into forestry.  When I quietly stated my goal to pursue graduate school in forestry, he pedantically declared, “Girls don’t study forestry.  You will have to study botany.  The University of Wisconsin has a very good botany program.”  And so, it might have been a need to rebel against my biology advisor that pushed me down the path towards forestry, but it was the four years of learning to argue and fight with Dr.  Nieto that gave me the strength and ability to ignore the advice of an intimidating professor. 

It turns out my biology advisor was right—there were very few women in forestry, and women are still in the minority two decades later.  I was the second female to obtain a doctorate in the School of Forest Resources at Penn State and the first female to be granted tenure in the Forestry Department at Virginia Tech.  There was a notable absence of nurturing women as teachers and advisors through my graduate school years and my early career.  I found ample opportunities to employ the ability to think for myself and employ the verbal fighting skills taught me by my mentor and advisor, Dr. Jose Nieto. 

Carolyn Copenheaver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech.  Her teaching responsibilities include Forest Ecology and Silvics and Advanced Forest Ecology.  Her research interests focus on dendroecology, forest stand dynamics, and land-use history.