The Online Reflector

Besides being President of the University of Indianapolis for four years, this semester, Beverley Pitts took on a new role—instructor of a 400-level Honors College seminar called Honors TS: University Leadership.

This one credit hour seminar meets on Wednesdays from 8:00 to 8:50 p.m. each week and currently has eight Honors College students enrolled. Those students are from different majors including physical therapy, history, biography and others.

“This is the first time I’ve taught a class since I’ve been at UIndy. It has been great to get to know them [the students],” Pitts said. “I enjoy very much being able to spend time with students in the classroom setting. We can talk about some of the issues in an intelligent and informal way. It has been a very good experience.”

Pitts said that the class emphasized both topics in higher education, such as the structure of colleges and universities, and on current domestic and international issues that were prevalent in higher education, such as the global economy’s effect on higher education.

“The subject matter is higher education and the class is really designed for two purposes,” she said. “One is to give the students an introduction into the way the whole system of higher education works. The other purpose of the class is to help them understand and prepare for the way they apply to graduate schools and make good judgments about graduate schools and graduate education.”

According to Ceciley Starkey, an Honors College student in the class, Pitts conducted the class almost entirely by class discussion.

“She [Pitts] is just so knowledgeable and we have really good discussions there,” Starkey said. “Since she has been in several different schools, big and small schools, she knows a lot about the workings of schools as an administrator and as a professor. She’s really good at bringing a broad range of information to us, so that we can analyze from lots of different viewpoints.”

Besides the class discussions, Starkey said she also liked the fact that students in the class had different backgrounds of study.

“Everyone in our class is from different grades and different majors. I didn’t have as much interaction with students from other majors until I took this class. And now I do feel like I have these connections,” she said.

She also mentioned that, although the class wasn’t the same as what she anticipated, since she thought it would focus more on leadership skills. She liked the class much more than what she anticipated, and she learned a lot from it.

“Hopefully when they finish the class, they’ll have a really good idea about the whole system of higher education all over the world. How it works, at least a glimpse of that, and then how they can fit into the system,” Pitts said.

When talking about the connection between Pitts and students, Starkey said the class had a good interaction with Pitts.

“We have a really informal atmosphere where we don’t really raise our hands or anything. We just sit around and talk about the topic for the day. I like being able to ask all the questions that I want and Dr. Pitts totally goes along with it,” Starkey said. “She is really approachable and interested in personally knowing every student on a personal level. She really does care about students.”

Due to the responsibility of being the president, Pitts said her busy schedule sometimes conflicted, but meeting the class once a week helped solve her problem. Throughout the semester, she was able to come to every class except one.

“I want to be sure that I can be in every class, but because a lot of the work of a president takes place away from campus, sometimes it’s hard to schedule and that’s one of the reasons why a one hour class works very well,” she said. “It would’ve been hard to be there three times a week all semester. I would’ve missed some classes, which I don’t like to do. So this [the one hour class] is a good comprise and it worked very well.”

According to Starkey, Pitts’ busyness had little effect on the class.

“Even though she was gone, we still didn’t cancel class. We still have class every single week. She had the provost come in and conduct the class,” Starkey said.

When talking about whether she would continue teaching in the future, Pitts said she was not sure, but it would be a possibility.

By Fangfang Li | Editorial Assistant