"You simply are not intelligent enough to understand higher-level mathematics." This was the statement with which I was confronted by one of my instructors during my senior year in high school. I was having particular difficulty with precalculus, so much so that I had hired an outside tutor, a teacher at another high school, to get me through the year-long course. I achieved perfect scores on all of the homework and take-home exams, but consistently failed in-class exercises and exams of the teacher's design. This was a defining moment for me, one in which I first realized that my success as a student was not only dependent on the amount of effort I expended on learning, but also on the manner in which I was taught. It sounds somewhat ludicrous but this realization, for me at least, was an absolute truth. I became an undergraduate coordinator for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) initiative at the University of Maryland - College Park during my junior year. My primary impetus was to, in some small way, redress the inequities and the ineffectiveness of a modern college education insofar as they related to my experience. I was the epitome of a nontraditional student, though by no means was I unique. I was a transfer student; a student returning to college after several years of full-time employment; I was significantly older than many of my classmates; and I had a family. After spending several years trying to find my voice represented in the college experience, I decided to represent it myself. I hoped that by doing so, I would be able to help those students who, like me, felt lost and confused in what is alleged to be the most liberating and informative time of one's life. My sojourn through higher education was an arduous, glorious, frustrating, and consumptive experience which encompassed more than a decade. I immediately matriculated at The George Washington University upon graduating high school, a decision which, in retrospect, was not the most wise decision. I had been a stellar student in a small, Catholic high school in which I was a fairly big fish in a relatively small pond; while I enjoyed the curriculum, my secondary education was neither challenging nor time-consuming, save for that precalculus course. I was able to achieve very high marks with remarkably little effort. I was fortunate enough to have some extremely caring and attentive teachers who made the process enjoyable. I was under the delusion that I would continue this pattern when I entered college. I was so very wrong. I found myself ejected onto the campus of a major metropolitan university and immediately felt lost and disoriented. This feeling of disconnect and separation from all that I had known was compounded by the lack of support from the administrative staff. I received no guidance from my assigned advisors: my primary advisor was the department chair of a study in which I had no interest and no involvement; my college advisor, when I was able to meet with him, continually mistook me for other students and offered no worthwhile advice. In an effort to find some direction, I frequently changed majors in a vain attempt to stumble across a faculty or staff member who might provide me some assistance. In two years I changed majors five times. The social climate of the university was unfamiliar and rather frightening. I was uninterested in attending the outrageous parties that sprang up nightly. The culture of drugs and alcohol, of which I was completely ignorant and undesirous of partaking, seemed to infiltrate every aspect of nonacademic life. I was struggling with carrying eighteen credits and working two part-time jobs; I had neither the time nor the inclination to search out fellow students with whom I might have common bonds. I became very isolated and despondent as I trekked between classes, work, and the dormitory. After my first semester, I decided to remove myself from the one area of difficulty over which I had some control. I removed myself from the dorm and returned home, becoming a commuter student. This action, which served to further distance myself from my peers, contributed to my overall sense of alienation. Outside influences compelled me to temporarily put my plans for a degree on hold, and I left the university after two and half years of study. I was more than twenty thousand dollars in debt, had a host of disparate credits which did little to further my academic career, and no idea of what I wanted to do, let alone who I wanted to become. I began working full-time and taking night courses at my local community college. I specifically chose courses which I knew would fill basic requirements at any university to which I might later transfer. Finally, I felt as if I had found a place in which I belonged. The other students were in a similar situation: they were older, had day jobs, and had families. I was also enraptured by my instructors. I was fortunate enough to have several teachers who taught for the sake of it; they were not trying to get published, or in search of tenure, or forced to play the political games in which many of their colleagues at larger institutions find themselves in order to advance their careers. These instructors challenged me not only with the course material but to understand how I assimilated it. I became fascinated by the dynamic of the student-teacher relationship. During my time at the community college, again and again I encountered instructors who treated all of their students with dignity and respect. They looked beyond the designated status of "student" at to who those students were. They tailored their lesson plans and assignments so that all students were able to actualize their potential with regard to the course material. This fostered an atmosphere among the students in which we were not competing with each other for grades, but were supporting one another in a quest for knowledge. We looked beyond the end of the semester to how this material impacted not only our education and career goals, but our lives. I decided to return to school full-time in the spring semester of 2003, leaving a successful full-time job and again signing my life away in student loans. I had spent eight years chasing an elusive undergraduate degree without success; I wasted time and money taking courses I would never use and had no interest in, all for the sake of one day holding a piece of paper in my hand which would deem me acceptable in the world. When I transferred to the University of Maryland, my outlook on my education had changed. I decided to pursue a field of study in which I had an interest. I no longer looked at my undergraduate experience as a stepping stone to professional education or as a promise of a more lucrative job; I viewed this as an opportunity to pursue knowledge for the sake of it. This was an epiphany for me. I had finally realized that education is not only a necessity and a right, but a privilege. I had gotten lost in the process and forgotten the goal. I enrolled in the Classical Languages and Literatures program. My decision to do so was based on the other disciplines I had previously studied: psychology, sociology, and literature. All of these fields have their roots in the Classical tradition. A Classical education afforded me the opportunity to study the foundations of Western art and architecture, literature, language, history, political science, gender ideology, and philosophy. My department is relatively small, and I was able to establish relationships with all of the faculty, as well as the undergraduate and graduate students in the discipline. I was returned to the intimate and collaborative atmosphere I had enjoyed in high school. I excelled in my studies and was able to complete the entire program in under two years. In my first year, I was inducted into the national Classics honor society, Eta Sigma Phi. I became the president of our campus chapter during my senior year. I found a mentor in Dr. Lillian Doherty, whose constant encouragement and belief in my ability intellectually challenged me in ways I had never conceived. Along the way, I discovered that many faculty members are as aggrieved and disillusioned as I with the culture of higher education. I wanted to share and promote my success with others. When I joined SoTL, my research goals were to examine the collaborative relationship between students and faculty and determine strategies to encourage such interaction. These two groups are often believed to travel along parallel tracks, never intersecting. I argue that this is a fallacy; while, in appearance, these sects appear disparate, in reality it their union which produces some of the most intriguing and rewarding experiences in academia. I approached my research as impartially as possible. I well remembered my previous feeling of being nothing but a cog in the wheel at an institution which didn't value me as an individual. I had often felt disenfranchised as a student but, until my years at UMD, I had never considered that faculty members felt similarly. I witnessed firsthand how professors were caught in a vicious cycle of research and publishing in order to establish the most rudimentary job security; how those who excelled in such endeavors were rewarded, while those who focused on teaching were penalized; how the administration was willing to offer up their students as sacrificial lambs on the altars of prestige and reputation. I delved into the literature pertaining to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, keeping my experiences in the back of my mind. I am unabashedly and unashamedly pro-student; I had often been confronted with professors who cared nothing if I learned the material they were teaching. I had professors who couldn't be bothered to learn my name or show up for their own scheduled office hours. I had professors whose disinterest in, and even abhorrence of, teaching was apparent and trickled down to their students, rendering them confused and sullen. I am also an unwavering supporter of faculty, however. Perhaps this is because I was so much older than my fellow students. I witnessed how many of my classmates would come late to lecture, disrupting the entire climate of the room; I saw students who were truly uncaring as to whether they did well in a course, so long as they passed; I encountered others who blamed their spectacular failures on the professor, when it was the student who never bothered to engage themselves in the material or expend any effort in excelling. I saw the frustration and consternation such students inspired in their teachers, and understandably so. There is a fundamental disconnect between students and faculty raging across this country. While I am loath to adopt the concept of consumerism as applied to the undergraduate experience, I do believe such a comparison has merit. I argue that when one enters college as a freshman, one also enters into a contract with the institution. The student has the obligation to attend classes at their scheduled times and to engage themselves via assignments and examinations. Students also have the obligation to bring to the professor's attention matters which are confounding or troubling. Likewise, professors have the obligation to effectively impart the material to students as well as addressing students' concerns and answer their questions when they arise. Outside factors such as extracurricular activities, athletics, employment, socialization, and familial obligations are absolutely compelling situations which have to be take into consideration for today’s students. However, students must also realize that their instructors have lives outside of the classroom; faculty, too, have obligations which extend beyond the campus boundaries. It is only by recognizing each other as people that students and faculty will find mutual success. Unfortunately, too often neither students nor faculty receive the support from their institution’s administration. At its core, the fundamental relationship of the undergraduate experience is that of student and teacher; it is the promotion and absorption of knowledge which should be the ultimate goal. My experience with SoTL has taught me that all across this country there are grassroots efforts among faculty and students to perpetuate the ideal that learning is its own reward, and that students and faculty can and should learn from each other. My literature review of SoTL research and conversations with my cluster members has led me to the conclusion that faculty and their students are hungry for such interaction. Students as collaborators rather than just passive recorders not only enriched their own educational experiences but can also inform the manner in which a faculty member views their own field and style of teaching.

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