Reading Strategies and College Success Skills

Her students may not know that Heather Mayernik provides a safe haven each summer to migrating monarchs, but they benefit as much from her experience and enthusiasm as the butterflies the reading professor nurtures on milkweed in her backyard.

“Macomb students are smart and hardworking, and I look out for them. They are like family to me,” says Mayernik, whose been known to invite passing students she has never met before into her office on South Campus for a chat about their classes. “I know what it means to have a professor mentor you, and I try to do the same for any student who needs it.”

Mayernik’s most valued mentor was the Oakland University professor who helped her navigate academic protocols after exiting the university several years before with enough credits for a master’s in Reading and Language Arts, but without the actual degree.

“Professor Cramer helped me apply for the degree, invited me to serve as his teacher’s assistant and encouraged me to start my Ph.D. program,” relates Mayernik, who is now writing her dissertation and, also, teaching part time at Oakland. “There is no question he changed my life.”

And that, ultimately, led her to Macomb five years ago to teach Reading Strategies and College Success Skills, following a career that began, she notes, as president of her high school’s future teachers club.

“I always knew I wanted to teach,” she says.

A single mom with three children, one a junior at Purdue University, Mayernik has taught at private schools in Grosse Pointe Woods and Detroit, and at Wayne County Community College. She has also structured a professional development program for teachers in Chicago, provided online learning to students displaced by Hurricane Katrina and served as a consultant for the nation’s leading instructional services provider.  Mayernik has received two national awards for her teaching, most recently this year from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, part of the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

But, the passionate teacher, gardener, kayaker and scuba diver believes that, unlike the migrating monarchs who summer in her backyard, she has landed for good.

“I love the College’s philosophy that anyone can come here and change their life,” says Mayernik.  “I’ll probably never leave Macomb.”

Social Work Professor

Rochelle Zaranek has earned bachelor and master degrees in social work and sociology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and two post-doctorates in research and teaching.  But it was a class assignment while a student at Macomb that would have the most profound of impacts.

Her sociology professor “challenged” Zaranek and her classmates to spend a Friday night at Detroit Receiving Hospital, where the majority of patients are admitted through the emergency room. “I left the trauma unit in the wee hours of a Saturday morning,” says Zaranek, “knowing I wanted to go into medical social work.”

At the time, teaching was not on Zaranek’s radar.  While earning her degrees at Wayne State University, she concentrated solely on social work, serving clients in Detroit’s inner city.

“The people there are remarkable,” says Zaranek.  “I learned some of life’s greatest lessons from older people in Detroit.”

It was as a teaching assistant in graduate school that she was first introduced to the front of the classroom and a good first impression turned into a lifelong commitment. She taught full time at Wayne State for 10 years and, in the evenings, at Henry Ford Community College because, she explains. “I love to teach.”

And that is why she decided to join Macomb’s faculty nearly 10 years ago, where she knew, at a community college, the emphasis would be on teaching not research.  But Zaranek’s efforts to reach students are anything but confined to the classroom.

Developing a new pre-social work curriculum, Zaranek purposefully included a service learning component in the same spirit as that life-changing classroom assignment at Detroit Receiving. That evolved into her role as Macomb’s service learning coordinator, assisting other faculty with service learning projects. She also organizes all of the volunteer opportunities offered to students and staff on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service each January and is advisor to the Social Work Student Organization.

Spring break is no different and in addition to arranging for students to volunteer at soup kitchens, homeless shelters and food banks during their week off, Zaranek has also taken several groups to Louisiana to assist in post-Katrina rebuilding. Last summer, she capped off a two-year distance service learning project with a visit to three orphanages in Kenya, an African country where more than half of the population live in poverty, for which her students had been collecting notebooks and backpacks.  That visit paved the way for a formalized study abroad opportunity, with Zaranek leading the first group of Macomb students to Kenya this past June.

For all of these efforts and more, Zaranek has received a 2017 Award for Teaching Excellence from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, an offshoot of the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas.  But for her, nothing eclipses working side-by-side with her students to make the world a better place.

“When you can take your textbook and bring it to life, it makes it real for the students,” says Zaranek.  “I can lecture to them about homelessness or poverty, but when we work together at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen or at an orphanage in Africa they begin to really understand.”

Philosophy Instructor

Like a lot of first-year college students, Bradley Wakefield wasn’t sure what he wanted to major in. He started out in business, but disliked how it constrained the curious nature his mother assured him he had been born with.

“I took a philosophy class and the instructor had one of the greatest minds that I had ever encountered,” says Wakefield. “Then I took another philosophy class and another. I just wanted more.  And it’s the same hunger I see in some of my students.”

The hungriest are members of The Argument Clinic, the philosophy club that Wakefield organized after joining Macomb’s faculty in 2013.  Last semester, he introduced a successful speakers’ series, which explores such thoughtful issues as conspiracy theories and gender inequality in philosophy, the latter of which has been a focus of Wakefield’s own studies

“Everybody knows John Stuart Mill,” offers Wakefield, who holds a master’s degree in philosophy from Wayne State University and has begun work on his Ph.D. “But the world didn’t know that (Harriet Taylor, his wife) improved upon everything he did.”

A longtime ambassador for the Michigan Opera Theatre, Wakefield offers his students discount tickets and extra credit to attend performances. He was also instrumental in bringing MOT artists to Macomb for a preview of Little Women and an opera primer, part of his effort to establish an opera club at Macomb.

“Students here want the academic life,” says Wakefield, who is often followed to his office after class by students who want to continue a discussion.

“I surprise my students when I tell them ‘I’m professional at being wrong,’” relates Wakefield, who likens philosophy to the search for a thorn-less path to truth.  “My job is to tell students when they are in thorny territory.”

Both the thorns and their enthusiasm remind Wakefield of his younger self.

“Some of my students will be better philosophers than I ever will,” says Wakefield. “When they come back and tell me years from now that they have published, that they are the chair of their philosophy department, I will love that.”

Certified Nurse Assistant Program

Deborah Brown cannot count the number of roses she has received from grateful graduates.  A registered nurse (RN) with a bachelor’s degree, the Macomb instructor believes her students appreciate that she offers them both candid kindness and mutual respect.

“I was a nursing assistant for seven years before becoming an RN,” says Brown, faculty/ coordinator of Macomb’s Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA) Program. “I am able to show my students how they can advance from a CNA to a registered nurse.”

During her nursing career, Brown worked at Harper, St. John, Oakland General and Providence hospitals. She was also director of nursing at an adult care facility and an educational coordinator for the American Red Cross.  Her experience includes cardiac care, emergency room, labor and delivery, psychiatrics and medical/surgical.  She came on board at Macomb in 2008 to develop its CNA curriculum.

“I love the health care field,” says Brown. “Its foundation is family, and that is what I bring into the classroom. I make every student feel like someone cares about them.”

That pay-it-forward approach takes center stage in the section Brown teaches on caring for elderly patients, one of the fastest growing segments in health care.  Adding geriatrics to the curriculum also had the intentional impact of extending Macomb’s CNA program a few weeks longer than most.

“Because of the extra clinical practice, hospitals hire Macomb’s grads without any experience,” says Brown, “With a 95 percent first-time pass rate on the certification exam, Macomb’s program is considered one of the best.”

Brown was recently recognized by the Macomb Career and Technical Education Administrators Association for the dual enrollment CNA program she coordinates at Armada High School.  But neither receiving awards nor roses compare to discovering she had been the attending nurse at a student’s birth.

“Her mom came up to me at graduation and told me I had been so great to her when she was in labor, such a positive affirmation of everything I teach,” relates Brown.  “Moments like that make me love teaching so much.”

Political Science

Growing up in West Virginia, three hours from Washington D.C., Brooke Allen’s parents took her to more marches on the National Mall than she can count.  No wonder she is a self-described “political junkie” and a recent recipient of an American Political Science Association (APSA) award.

“The project was inspired by The Daily Show, when a comedian noted that gerrymandered (organized to benefit one political party) districts resemble pieces of abstract art,” explains Allen of the work that earned her an APSA CQ Press Award for Teaching Innovation.  “I hosted a Gerrymandering Art Exhibit in the fall, based on my students’ group research projects.”

CQ Press publishes scholarly texts on American government and public policy and its annual award recognizes one political science professor who has developed a new way of engaging students in the political process. Past recipients have been professors from Northwestern and Indiana universities and the University of Michigan.

“I was not expecting it at all” says Allen, who holds a Ph.D. in political science from U of M, and has been teaching full time at Macomb for five years. “I presented a paper on my students’ Gerrymandering art exhibit at the association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia.  Someone in the audience nominated me for the award.”

That someone was Dr. Sherry Wallace, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana, who is developing a similar classroom project based on Allen’s success, which the Macomb professor attributes to her students.

“We have great students,” says Allen.  “They are aware of what’s going on in the world.”

Allen continues to look for innovative ways to “show how what we talk about in class relates to their own lives.” There was an interactive video discussion with students from the University of California, Berkeley on the outcome of the last presidential election, which inspired Allen to add a unit to her classes on the impact of social media on election campaigns.

“We will be looking at a lot of different news sources,” says Allen. “They need to know they have more choices than Facebook.”

Humanities

Renoir labored in a porcelain factory, Brancusi was a domestic servant and Haring worked as a janitor. Likewise, Francisco Lopez can tell his Introduction to Art students about waiting tables in New York.

“That was how I made my living,” says Lopez, who earned a master’s degree in art history from New York’s Hunter College. But, initially, the Edsel Ford High School graduate enrolled at Wayne State University to pursue a degree in engineering. That changed after his first survey course in art history. After he switched his major, he started considering both art history and teaching as callings.

“I enjoy research and sharing things with students that I know will expand their capacity for creativity,” says Lopez, whose travels have included Paris, Rome and Istanbul. “I know that when I was a student at Wayne, a professor changed my path in life.”

While at Hunter, Lopez worked in the art history department’s slide library, which helped feed his growing interest in art from the Byzantine and late antiquity periods. But, everything from impressionism to abstract expressionism also intrigues him and he gladly accepted a entry-level position in the visitor’s center at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, more for the experience than the supplemental income.

“Everyday there were thousands of people from every corner of the world walking through the galleries,” offers Lopez. “It was amazing.”

Lopez lived in New York for six years before being offered a job in the research library at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D. C., an affiliate of Harvard University. A big part of the allure is that Dumbarton is known for its Byzantine collection and dedication to international studies. Lopez spent three years there before returning to Michigan to serve as director of International Student Services at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. It was then that he began looking for teaching positions.

“I like the fact that Macomb students are so diverse,” says Lopez. “It’s an interesting atmosphere. It’s a challenge, but it’s exciting. I like to show them things they may never have encountered before.”

Media and Communication Arts

Students in Kristine Mellebrand’s classes not only benefit from her years of advertising experience, but also from the example she sets by her can-do spirit.

“When someone tells me I can’t do something,” offers the Macomb Media and Communication Arts professor, “it usually makes me more determined.”

Mellebrand has been discouraged, in chronological order, from majoring in advertising, becoming a teacher and riding a Harley Davidson. For the record, she has earned two Detroit American Advertising Awards (advertising’s answer to the Oscar), has been teaching at Macomb for nearly12 years and is the owner of a custom-painted yellow Fat Boy, 2003 anniversary edition, which she brings out every spring.

“I like to ride around country roads and to work some times,” says Mellebrand. “It’s just a great feeling.”

Like a Harley, Mellebrand’s career has been fast and intense. She earned a BFA in fabric design (her mom was a custom dressmaker) from the College for Creative Studies and a master’s degree in advertising from Michigan State University. She was the only woman among 65 artists “on the boards” at McNamara Associates, a preeminent design firm in Detroit, which was followed by jobs with a small ad agency, a production house and a public relations firm that counted Ford Motor Co. as one of its clients.

“That was a fun job,” says Mellebrand, whose father was an art director at Campbell Ewald. “We did all sorts of crazy things.”

But of all the jobs that Mellebrand has held, she says, it’s the one a former art teacher tried to talk her out of that she loves most.

“Teaching is pretty darn cool,” says Mellebrand, “I can teach these kids how to do what I have loved doing for the past 30 years.”