Daniel laurie, now an adjunct professor of English, came to Fredonia as a student in 1998.
Photo courtesy of Melissa Rechin / Photo Editor
CARL LAM
Senior Staff Writer
Daniel Laurie is an adjunct professor in the Department of English and is in his twelfth semester of teaching. He came here back in 1998 as a student with no idea of what to study.
“I became a psych major and I ended up taking an English class with Dr. Bruce Simon,” he said. “Then, I picked up a second major and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and English.”
Like many graduates, Laurie wasn’t sure what he wanted to do and decided graduate school was a viable option at the time. He received his master’s in English from here also.
After a stint with selling insurance, he got a phone call that would lead him back to SUNY Fredonia, a place he’s called home for many years.
“I got called by the chair of the department offering me a class and I’ve been here ever since — slowly building up more and more classes. Then I realized that I should probably be a teacher,” Laurie said.
He never expected or intended on being a teacher until he actually started teaching. That propelled Laurie to come back for more schooling.
“I came back and I got my second baccalaureate in Adolescent English Education a few years ago, right about when the economy tanked,” he said. “There were no teaching jobs whatsoever and I had grand aspirations of being a high school teacher forever. Now I think I’d rather just teach college.”
Laurie has taught mostly English Composition classes and enjoys seeing the improvement of his students.
“I like working with college age students. It’s fun to interact with them and treat them like adults,” he said. “Most of my freshman students can write really well but they don’t believe that they can write really well. It’s a lot more confidence building than anything else and when that clicks, it’s a cool thing.”
He said that the students that show the most improvement are the students that came in initially claiming they didn’t like to write.
Laurie’s course load has also seen some changes this semester as well. He’s currently teaching Epic and Romance, a course that is based on the epics of oral and written tradition and the romances of several different traditions.
“I had forgotten how much I like those books. We’re reading The Odyssey right now and it’s really good, but I totally forgot I liked it,” Laurie said.
Coming up in the Fall, Laurie will be teaching Novels and Tales and has incorporated an interesting theme into the course.
“I’m doing travel [as the theme]. All of our books have something to do with travel and the protagonist leaving home and meeting new people,” he said. “We’re going to read The Hobbit,
which will be awesome to teach.”
When asked if creating a course from scratch is difficult, Laurie answered with the exact opposite.
“That’s really one of my favorite parts,” he said. “There’s the basic idea of what the course is supposed to be and there’s how you want to approach it.”
Laurie has also spent time outside the classroom working on a project that’s part of new initiatives that are being implemented by SUNY.
“I wrote a textbook for the Open SUNY Textbook program and I am hoping my manuscript can be published within the year. The book is meant for English Composition and similar courses,” Laurie said. “Each chapter looks at a step of the writing process and offers strategies and techniques for each step.”
He shared some insight into what the book strives to do for students who may or may not feel confident about their writing abilities.
“My book attempts to offer some of those tips, tricks and strategies. Part of my teaching philosophy, at least for writing, is that the biggest difference between ‘good writers’ and ‘bad writers’ is that the good ones have the strategies to work through their problems and issues that arise when writing. The not-so-good writers simply don’t know those tricks yet,” he said.
Dr. Kimmarie Cole, associate professor of English and composition coordinator, knew
Laurie when he came back for his second baccalaureate degree.
“He came back as an adjunct and he’s taught a lot of sections of composition for us. If you look at the kinds of assignments he gives, he really gives his students a chance to engage with critical thinking and switching perspectives,” Cole said.
She recalls an assignment in particular where Laurie gives students the ability to see both sides of an issue.
“He does this assignment where he allows them to rant about something they don’t like. After a while he makes them stop ranting and then write it from the perspective as if they were a really big supporter,” she said. “He immediately makes people engage with things in these really creative and innovative ways that I think are very valuable.”
Cole said that Laurie’s always thinking about new and innovative ways to improve a course required for most students.
“We’ve had conversations where he’s asking about how to make his classes better and reach students more,” Cole said. “At the programmatic level, that’s the kind of thing you absolutely want to see.”