By Michael Scoular (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 20, 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.
Virginia Cooke is a retiring English professor with a Ph.D. in English from Queen’s University. Her focus is on drama and poetry. Cooke was on the hiring committee for the UFV theatre department and was instrumental in its inception. She directed a theatre performance before the theatre department existed that starred Alan Davis, who is now the president of Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU). Cooke has won various awards, having developed curriculum for faculty and students alike.
What brought you to UFV?
I was teaching for a short time at Queen’s and the University of Toronto and they were replacement positions — they weren’t full-time jobs — and I had a new baby, and my family were on the West Coast. So I started looking around at what kinds of permanent jobs there were on the West Coast. There were two or three, all within colleges, and so I applied and got a phone interview and then came out. This appealed to me more than the other jobs, but I think I thought it would be a short stay. And that was 37 years ago.
Was it the place that kept you here?
Partly it was because I had a family to start worrying about. It was so intense back then — back then we had to teach eight courses, very heavy. We had to do a lot of writing, so I did some research and became an expert in writing because my primary field was in literature.
There were a lot of things that were appealing: it was a young, growing place, there were lots of vibrant people. The students were sometimes needy, but sometimes in the earlier days there were a lot of older students who never had the chance to take university courses because of where they lived. The college was relatively new; I certainly wasn’t there in the beginning, but in the first five or six years. There were these amazing older students who were full of ideas who wanted to try out education. They were obviously so smart; they would have just sailed through university in their younger days if they had had a chance to do it. There was always a fair amount interesting going on.
Still, I had my own research to do and there wasn’t time for that. There were summers I remember trying to write a book. But there was also a lot of room for projects. There was one point at which I spent a semester writing and making recommendations to our department, and revamped how we did that. They just let me do that because you need time during the semester to do that. There would be other tasks that would come up, so my job was continually changing depending on what I was interested in.
The courses you’re teaching now, do they differ from the courses you started out teaching?
I’m most passionate about teaching drama, although I really like teaching poetry. I’m less skilled at teaching the novel. I didn’t dislike teaching reading. I’m not a specialist in rhetorical theory, although I have taught a course in rhetorical theory that was twinned with a practicum in the Writing Centre, and that feeding from rhetorical theory. I would supervise working there in the Writing Centre. I’ve developed a huge number of Arts courses that have since died down, but in the early days — not that there weren’t people here already doing that, but I think both Canadian Drama and various special topics. I just taught a course entitled “Inventing Ireland,” and of course that included drama and poetry and novels. So there’s a lot of stuff I like.
Has students’ perception of drama or poetry changed over time? Or has it stayed the same?
It’s different. But unlike some people who whine and cry, I don’t think it’s worse. It’s different. They probably don’t read as much, the first-year students.
By the way, one of my favourite courses is English 103. I love introducing students to the field of dramatic writing. I’ve found that many of the students haven’t seen the “why” of theatre. I used to arrange for buses to take them, but it’s gotten too expensive. They now have to take themselves to write a live performance review. It’s like opening up a whole world to people, and I meet people 10 or 15 years later who say, “I still go to plays,” or, “I still remember that assignment you gave us.” So I think they are still as receptive, but they probably read less.
Have you had to adapt your teaching method or style to adapt to that?
I’ve changed my teaching style. Like most people who came out of the background with a Queen’s doctorate, I started out doing a lot of lecturing. Some of my classes are far more interactive now. I do use media, but not cleverly.
I’ve developed a teaching philosophy statement, and one of the things I’ve learned over the course of many years of teaching is to try and become invisible because I don’t want to be standing between the students. My aim is to skillfully project their attention to the material and to facilitate understanding. The other thing is, I’m a little less intentionally witty and fast on the draw, because I want the students to feel safe. I don’t want them to feel like I can get them with a quick retort. I never meant to aim anything at them anyway, but I want them to feel safe.
Are there and colleagues or students who have been influential in terms of how you teach, how you think, that sort of thing?
This would be easier if I weren’t looking at 37 years.
Maybe in the last 10 years?
I’ve just been engaged in a teaching excellence project where I’ve been interviewing the last 14 years’ worth of teaching excellence awards. How I wish I had interviewed them 20 years ago and learned from them. They all tend to say the same things.
I’ve learned from students, it’s hard to identify particular ones although I have had some very good ones. I’ve learned from students never to underestimate how hard they’re working. It’s very easy to write on a student’s paper, “Well, you obviously didn’t put any effort into this. I’ve spent more time on this than you have.” It may not be true at all; many students would spend hours on it. I’ve learned from struggling students, and then there have been a couple when I’ve directed — Kim Morden was one of the students I directed. I learned from her — so bright — how to keep students from going down rabbit holes. Not suggesting too many things, if it’s a really bright student they’ll take off with it.
You mentioned you did some time as a dean. I guess that means no teaching, then?
Well, I did try to teach. The first year I thought I would try to teach one course, but it was too hard to juggle. After that, no teaching. I was in administration for six years, and then when it came time to renew the term I felt it just wasn’t quite right for me.
Did you see a completely different side of the university, then?
I already knew that side. I had been doing all kinds of administrative work. Part of what was very gratifying was to help students who had problems solve them, other than from a faculty point of view.
What about UFV’s place within the broader geography, Fraser Valley, or community, as it’s gone from UCFV to UFV?
The minute that they brought in the third and fourth year, people were able to complete their degrees. We had a really good reputation as a college. Our transfer students did very well, but when you have a full four years, you have different faculty. It’s a more interesting job. There’s a great satisfaction watching students develop, seeing how far they’ve come at the end of four years.
A lot of students came with the idea that they would do one or two years and then transfer, but our transfer rates were actually very low. That meant people were completing their degrees here and then moving on. I think changing the university college designation meant that students felt less conflicted about staying. Just that change of name gave it a more accurate reputation within the Valley.
As a professor, did that change the way you interacted within the university community at all?
I think size does that. We used to be a very close-knit group of, when I came here, 40 or 50 faculty. It’s more layered, it’s more bureaucratic, but I don’t know how else you would run such a large institution. It doesn’t feel as cozy — it doesn’t feel as friendly. On the other hand, there are nice colleagues. I still get a pretty good feeling from students.
With files from Megan Lambert.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Two transcription errors have been corrected from the print version of this article. The student identified is Kim Morden, not Warden, and Cooke spoke of being less, not most skilled at teaching the novel.
