By Alex Rake (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 18, 2015
Prof Talk is The Cascade’s oral history series, featuring the people best qualified to talk about what UFV has been like over the course of its first few decades: its professors. Each week we’ll interview a professor from a different department, asking them what UFV was like before it was UFV, and how they expect things will continue to change here.
Molly Ungar is an associate history professor at UFV who teaches courses on Canadian history, the history of Quebec, and Canadian cultural history. She has taught at UFV for 10 years.
What first brought you to UFV?
University of the Fraser Valley — at that time, University College of the Fraser Valley — offered me a position. And that’s why I came here. I had worked in the field for many years before that. I started working basically in the Stone Age, which is 1998.
How do the courses you teach now differ from the courses you taught at first?
You re-design a course practically every year. Not completely, but to a great extent as a result of interaction with students.
I ask every single one of my students at the end of every course, face to face, what worked, what didn’t work, what would you change, what would you add, what would you subtract. And based on what the students say — so long as it doesn’t eliminate tests and writing — then the next year those students benefit from what the former students said.
The course I taught 10 years ago can still be called “History 101,” but it looks and runs radically differently from 10 years ago.
Would you say that your teaching style has changed at all?
Yes, I adjust my teaching style to what I notice works best. What works best is what produces student success, so you change your teaching style. I would be delighted to walk into a classroom, lecture for three hours straight, and walk out — but I have a feeling that I might have to change that.
[pullquote]“As we became a university, the culture of the university changed so that we are now much more structured.”[/pullquote]
Are there any trends you noticed about what works now as opposed to what worked then?
The way my classroom has changed now is that students sit in groups at tables; they used to sit all in rows. They do a lot more group presentations where the students organize the whole thing all themselves without my intervention. And lecturing has been reduced. Some courses I teach without lecturing at all. That’s called a flipped course. So yeah, it changes all the time.
Have you noticed any changes about the culture at UFV?
There are many things that are different. Institutionally, what has occurred is that we are much more organized, process-oriented, and structured. This used to be a very casual university or institution. It had a very casual culture, so if you wanted to do something you could wander over to someone’s office and say, “Hey, I want to do this,” and they’d say, “Okay, go for it.”
As we became a university, the culture of the university changed so that we are now much more structured. Everything is becoming articulated in processes. So there is a process for everything. You can’t wander over to someone’s office and say, “Hey, I want to teach this” — you need to fill out a form. You need to have an application. It needs to go through some offices.
The other thing is that student expectations have changed. More and more students expect that everything they will need to know will be in the classroom. They will be presented with everything they need to know, like in a box, in the classroom. They expect to do very little outside the classroom, and that’s because many students work.
The other way that students have changed is that students cannot resist consulting their iPhones and other media conductors during class, during lectures, during film presentations, during presentations by their colleagues. They are unable to resist and this is a choice that students make. If you choose to scroll through your pictures and emails and constantly check — [your] attention is removed from the activity for which you have paid $400. [laughs] But it’s a choice. Students make that choice.
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I supervise dozens of work-study students; they have done really well.
One project that a student worked on is called “The Poppy Project,” that he created a website for the Chilliwack Museum where you can see — it’s interactive — where you can see all the guys from Chilliwack who died in World War I. You can see it on a map and you can click on it, and then you can see the person’s picture and where they lived. So you can go and see the house where they actually lived. I think I have supervised over 20 work-study students, and they have all done really nice projects, and they’ve all benefitted. Some students have actually gone on to have jobs that pay because of the experience of the work-study.
I prepare papers for conferences. So I go to conferences every year and I present papers. I published a chapter in a book this year or two ago.
And then I had an interesting project from two high-school kids from upstate Washington, and they were doing a project on a Canadian explorer because in the United States they have something called “National History Day.” It’d be great to have that in Canada. And so they were doing a project on a Canadian explorer, and they wanted me to do an online interview on YouTube, so I sat at my kitchen table and I recorded my answers to their questions, just like I’m doing right now. And so that was nice. I uploaded it to YouTube, as a matter of fact.
I do loads of community talks. Like this Saturday [February 21], I’m going to present a talk at Surrey Museum on Queen Elizabeth II. And I do all kinds of talks in the community on all kinds of subjects. And that’s all, by the way, volunteer.
So yes, I do all kinds of projects. Lots and lots.
What have you gotten out of your time at UFV?
The opportunity to teach in the field that I have always wanted to teach in. It took me a long time to get my doctorate, and an even longer time to get my undergraduate degree and my masters.
So for me, UFV was what I always called the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow, because they were willing to hire me. I thought that was great.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
