If a hobby is what gives one their greatest sense of joy, Carol Plisner’s is making a difference in her students’ lives. She is a professor/faculty coordinator in Macomb’s Physical Therapy Assistant (PTA) program and continues to work with patients for a community health organization, ensuring that her classroom instruction is infused with real-life versus textbook scenarios.

“I’ll come into class after working over the weekend and ask, ‘Who can help me with this case?’” says Plisner. “Some students come up with really great ideas. It makes teaching easier.”

Clinical experience, Plisner believes, is what sets Macomb’s PTA faculty apart from those at other colleges and universities. All were practicing physical therapists before they became instructors or professors, with most still working in the field.

“We are one of the only schools that can say that,” says Plisner.

Plisner grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City. But “vibrant” Boston is where she was drawn after graduating from high school. It offered the promise of tens of thousands of likeminded college students attending one of the city’s 50+ colleges and universities, the most in any U.S. urban area. Plisner decided quickly upon Boston College, but choosing a major took a little more time.

“No one guided me, and women were still being encouraged to go into what they called the ‘helping professions,’” relates Plisner. “I didn’t want to be a nurse or (at the time) a teacher, but physical therapy appealed to me, even though I had no idea what to expect.”

She earned her bachelor’s degree and began working immediately at a large medical center in the New York area, discovering she had found a profession that meshed with her values and interests.

“I learned early on about the struggles of the elderly and the disadvantaged,” says Plisner, who went on to earn a master’s degree in adult education from Central Michigan University. “Community health has been a passion of mine ever since.”

Plisner and her husband, Bruce, retired military who now manages a medical practice, were brought to Michigan in 1983 by his work. The couple’s children, Amanda and Evan, are University of Michigan graduates with careers in Los Angeles. Amanda is an attorney with the California Department of Justice and Evan is associated with a private equity firm.

Taking just a year off when her oldest child was born, Plisner has continued to work in community health for more than 25 years. But because of her colleagues, her students and the “high bar” the college sets for its programs, Plisner considers her faculty position at Macomb to be “the best job in America.”

“In (career and technical education), we have tangible evidence of the difference we make in the lives of our students. There are a number of them who never had anyone believe in them. When they get that degree and pass that exam, you have given them a sense of independence,” relates Plisner. “I have a former student of mine, a single mom, who was hired as a PTA after graduating. She called to thank me recently because she could finally afford to get her 12-year-old braces.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While attending Macomb’s faculty academy several years ago, Betsy Jenaway made an important discovery about herself. She was a “visual” learner, which helped explain the twisting path that took her from a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Michigan to a master’s degree in Information Systems from Lawrence Technological University and a teaching position at Macomb.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do starting out,” says Jenaway. “But mom and dad said, ‘You are going to college.’”

Jenaway took business classes first, but was more interested in history. After earning her degree, jobs were scarce and she worked in a bank, as a credit counselor, in a sales department and for the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, before deciding to return to the classroom. Deciding to try something new, she took programming and coding classes and finally found her passion.  Which, she now understands, was attributable to her learning style. She relates best to charts, maps and graphs, as many of her current students do.

“I love the problem solving that is involved in IT,” offers Jenaway. “When I’m coding, I lose all track of time. My family has to remind me when it’s time for dinner.”

Jenaway joined Macomb’s IT faculty in 2006 and teaches programming and database design classes. During her summer vacation, she develops her class assignments for the next school year. This year, however, she finds herself a visual learner once again.

“I do teach some classes online, and that helped when we had to adapt all our classes to online,” says Jenaway, referencing the last part of the winter semester after COVID-19 shut down the campuses. “Now, I’m trying to be the best Zoom teacher that I can be so I can keep my students engaged.”

Jenaway prefers to work at a community college versus a university because, she says, “I am a teacher, not a researcher.” She also appreciates how much she learns from her students, many of whom started out like she did, not sure of what career they wanted to pursue.

“This is incredibly rewarding work,” says Jenaway. “I love it when I hear from prior students and they let me know where they are now.”

Jenaway grew up in Detroit and dated her husband, Len, an aerospace engineer, when they were attending Regina and Notre Dame high schools, respectively. But the couple went their separate ways and didn’t meet again until both were U of M students in Ann Arbor. An avid hiker (shown here at Yosemite), Jenaway has lately been sheltering in place with her husband and their daughter, Julia, 21, a civil engineering student at Michigan Technological University.

“Each of us have our own zones in the house,” says Jenaway. “And all three of us take turns making dinner.”

Jenaway is excited about the start of the fall semester, regardless of what format classes will be offered in. One thing that will never change, however, is the reward she gets from her work.

“Few people can say that they have a direct impact on another person’s life,” relates Jenaway, “but that’s what we do.”

There are no firefighters in Joel Higuchi’s family and when he enrolled at Macomb right after high school, he thought he would become an electrical engineer. A grateful community is benefitting today because he decided otherwise.

“I was good in math and science, but the thought of sitting in a cubicle all day wasn’t appealing,” says Higuchi, who has been with the Roseville Fire Department since 2002. “In revaluating what I wanted to do with my life, I realized that what you do every day as a paramedic/firefighter has an immediate impact.”

A Chippewa Valley High School graduate, Higuchi followed up his Associate of Applied Science Degree in EMT: Paramedic/Firefighter from Macomb with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Paramedic Technologies from Sienna Heights University. He now teaches part-time in Macomb’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Technology program and is taking the necessary training to teach online, another aspect of his life that has been challenged by COVID-19.

“The EMS dynamic has changed drastically,” relates Higuchi. “Prior to the pandemic, our Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) was a set of gloves. Now, it takes several minutes to get on an isolation gown, booties, respirator, goggles, head cover and two pairs of gloves prior to leaving the station for an emergency call. We are getting quicker at it though.”

The Roseville Fire Department consists of two stations, which (pre-pandemic) respond to over 8,000 EMS and fire calls annually. Higuchi, like most paramedic/firefighters, works a 24-hour shift with five days on/four days off. Everyone on duty, he notes, “learns how to fall asleep and wake up very quickly.” COVID-19, however, has impacted how this normally close-knit crew interrelates in their close living quarters.

“It is not uncommon to see firefighters wearing masks around the station,” says Higuchi, “and not sitting together as a family.”

Regarding his instructors at Macomb as “extremely influential role models,” Higuchi hopes to follow in their footsteps by “helping students realize their dreams.” Teaching at Macomb since 2003, he finds himself working with more and more of those he has taught.

“I look out at each new class and know I may be looking at a future partner,” says Higuchi. “The perseverance they have shown completing their classes online this year tells me they are ready for the job.”

In the beginning of the pandemic, Roseville’s fire chief and other administrative personnel, says Higuchi, made sure first responders had the PPE they needed to reduce their risk in the field or, worse yet, of bringing the virus home to their families. For Higuchi, that family includes wife Karen and sons Scott, 12, and Matthew, 10. With a template provided by L’Anse Creuse Schools, the couple have homeschooled their sons during the stay-at-home order with mom, a pre-school teacher, taking on English and social science courses, while Dad handles the math and science.

“They are great kids and handling the change well. Of course, they are bummed they can’t see their friends or go anywhere, but they understand,” says Higuchi. “We normally live such a busy life that, in an odd way, it has been nice to spend so much time together.”

Julie Lambert’s first intimation that she might be destined for a career in art was noticing how her kindergarten classmates weren’t coloring within the lines like she did. Despite that young nod to convention, Lambert’s art actually digs deep down past any surface aesthetic.

“A lot of my work has to do with aspects of feminist ideals. After all, I am a woman and a mother,” says Lambert. “But my work also identifies with the human condition. We are all flawed. We are all broken.”

Her recent series of paintings is a case in point.  A runner with several marathons to her credit, Lambert trains on a regular route that is often lined by road kill. It struck her one day that there was a connection between the risks taken by these ill-fated animals who dare to cross the road and hers as a woman who dares to be out running alone. She started photographing the remains before rendering the images in oil on canvas. The painting that she is currently working on (shown behind her in the photo) is titled “Turtle: We Were Warned.”

“Encountering road kill on the pavement versus in a car is totally different, the image stays with you much longer,” says Lambert, who might have become a social worker if not an artist and teacher. “I make decisions about my safety that male runners, like my husband, don’t have to make. The dead animals act as a warning that running as a female is ‘dangerous,’ while serving as a larger metaphor for life as a female in academia, parenthood and all stations of life.”

Lambert, a native of Cleveland, joined Macomb’s art faculty in 2018 after teaching at several other institutions, including Henry Ford College, College for Creative Studies, and University of Michigan- both Dearborn and Ann Arbor. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Toledo and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she met her husband, David Lambert. A native of Kentucky, David is the media manager in the art department at Oakland University, where he also teaches new media and digital photography.

“One of the Cranbrook mergers,” muses Lambert, indicating how common marriage is between students who meet in the tightknit artists’ community. At Cranbrook, which she likened to a “monastery,” Lambert majored in print media and minored in ceramics, but is equally comfortable with other mediums, including oil painting. Her and David’s oldest son, however, prefers to draw.

Dennison, nine, is a competitive swimmer with a knack for rendering the lake freighters he has seen on vacation with his mom and dad. His younger brother Waleis, six, is a budding scientist who loves to tinker with his hands. The family’s home is in Berkley, where Lambert “loves to cook.” Her art work, however, is never far from hand and is currently featured in two exhibits: Gilda Snowden Memorial Exhibition at the Scarab Club in Detroit and the Women’s Work international show at the Old Courthouse Art Center in Woodstock, Illinois. She also participated in the recent faculty exhibit in the reopened Art Gallery on Center Campus.

“As a whole, I have felt the most supported here at Macomb, which is directly attributable to working with Todd Mitchell (Macomb art professor),” says Lambert. “We share a similar vision for the department.”

That vision includes development of an Associate of Fine Arts Degree and securing accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Among Macomb’s art department’s points of pride, notes Lambert, is its foundry for bronze and aluminum casting, only one other community college in the country has one, and its large and well-equipped studios, where Lambert is thrilled to spend time with her students.

“Our art students are so capable, intelligent and hard-working,” says Lambert. “I love forming relationships with them and seeing them develop over time.”

Since he began exhibiting his work, gallery owners and curators have found it difficult to label Eric Mesko as any particular type of artist, which suits him and them just fine.

“From my earliest days, I was making things out of junk. We were assigned to trace a maple leaf in fifth grade and I drew it instead,” says Mesko, whose work includes collage, painting, video and sculpture.  “I’ve worked a lot in wood and assembled a whole art installation based on baseball.”

That installation, No Joy in Mudville (from the poem Casey at the Bat), was on exhibit at Oakland University’s Meadow Brook Art Gallery in the 2000s. The curator was Dick Goody, chair of the art department at Oakland and the gallery’s director.

“The art world in Detroit is too small and intimate to produce too many stars,” wrote Goody in the exhibit program, “nonetheless, this exhibition provides Mesko with ample opportunity to distill and project his considerable vision.”

No Joy in Mudville was, in part, a tribute to Mesko’s beloved grandfather, a catcher who played on a team with fellow coalminers and steelworkers, turning down a minor league offer in deference to his family responsibilities.  He gave Mesko a baseball mitt for his tenth birthday, starting a collection that Mesko has added to over the years and now provides the subject of a drawing assignment on value for his Color and Design classes at South Campus.

“We all need to have a purpose in life,” says Mesko, who taught art at private schools previous to joining Macomb’s faculty 17 years ago.  “Art and teaching are mine.”

Mesko’s own education was determined by which military base his father, a career Marine, was stationed.  Mesko remembers being an engaged student in Bermuda but responding to bigotry at a rural South Carolina high school by distancing himself from other students and faculty, with the exception of his art teacher.

“I never took an art class until my last semester in high school,” says Mesko, who moved to Virginia after graduating and remembers hitchhiking regularly to an art supply store in Georgetown. “I read and studied and wanted to be more than the beatniks. I admired their independence, but wanted to stop short of the brick wall many of them hit.”

After Virginia, Mesko joined the U.S. Marine Corp and was moved deeply by poverty in Ethiopia and the great ruins of Greece, both of which he saw during his service time.  Home then became Michigan, where his parents had moved.  He earned an associate degree from Macomb and bachelor and master degrees in arts as well as a Master of Fine Arts degree from Wayne State University. From Wayne State on, Mesko’s work has been politically charged and well received by the art community. In addition to Meadow Brook, it has been part of exhibitions at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Kresge Art Museum and Western Illinois University Art Gallery, as well as several private galleries.

“I’ve often included student art in my shows,” says Mesko, who collaborates with Found Sound and Library Books, independent record- and book-sellers in Ferndale, to regularly showcase Macomb students’ work in their storefront windows.  “This gives students a kick-start to their careers.”

Working out of a studio in Detroit for 25 years, Mesko regards that city as much his home as Ferndale where he lives.  He has involved students in Detroit’s Mural in the Market project and served as the “engineer” on the refurbishing of the Eastern Market mural that greets as many as 40,000 visitors a day during the market’s peak season.

“Dave Barr (one of Mesko’s art professors at Macomb) told me that if you touch just one person with your art,” reflects Mesko, “you’ve made a difference.”

At least once a year, a student will ask Keith Nabozny why he didn’t remain in the corporate sector, where salaries are high and his career was as secure as the networks he was responsible for safeguarding.

“Because I love this job,” he muses after the fact. “I love being able to share my cybersecurity experience with students and the autonomy that allows me to continually refine my teaching to make it better.”
Nabozny’s previous career spanned 25 years, but it wasn’t his first choice. With a bachelor’s degree in finance from Oakland University, he thought he would follow a path to international banking. His first job at the former National Bank of Detroit (NBD), however, pointed him in a different direction.

“I found that I had this interest in IT. NBD’s network administrator told me ‘You’re really good at it, you should go into it,’” relates Nabozny. “He encouraged me to get certified in Novell. I studied on my own and paid for my own certification exam.”

From there, Nabozny continued to seek out IT training, primarily from New Horizons Computer Learning Centers. He eventually became NBD’s local area network administrator for the capital markets divisions. It took a job offer from Electronic Data Systems (EDS) to convince him to leave banking altogether. He was assigned to the General Motors account, and worked out of an office located at its Technical Center in Warren. He stayed with EDS through its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard and has also worked in the IT departments of a few other companies, including Dow Chemical. He started teaching at Macomb part-time in 2010, accepting a full-time position in 2011 after being encouraged to apply for it by both the associate dean and his wife Carol Lynn.

“I saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” relates Nabozny. “I knew I had something to contribute.”

Because of his extensive background in the field, Nabozny took the lead on Macomb’s Network Security Professional (cybersecurity) program. He developed and taught the courses, always keeping his finger on the pulse of the IT industry. Along the way, he also earned a master’s degree in education from Wayne State University because, he says, “I wanted to be a better teacher.” At a cybersecurity summit about six years ago, Nabozny heard about a designation awarded jointly by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to colleges and universities with outstanding cybersecurity programs.

“That’s when I realized,” he says, “that I needed to step up my game.”

Receiving input from an advisor from the NSA/DHS program, Nabozny developed a strategy to qualify Macomb for a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Education Associate Level designation. Courses were updated, a Cybersecurity Club for students with Nabozny as advisor was formed and a virtual and on campus Cybersecurity Center providing a variety of cybersecurity resources was established. Nabozny received word on Sept. 9 that all his efforts had paid off and now the NSA/DHS designation will appear on the transcripts of all students completing the program through 2024.

“I got the email right before the first Cybersecurity Club meeting of the semester, so I shared the news with club members first,” says Nabozny. “This designation tells employers that our students are receiving a strong education in cybersecurity at Macomb and they will be prepared to put their skills to work when they graduate.”

When students in Maria Ramos’ Spanish language classes have difficulty conjugating a verb or distinguishing between two Spanish homonyms, she responds with empathy born of experience.

Born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, Ramos’ parents, an engineer and school principal, believed it was important to expose their children to different cultures. At 12, Ramos spent the summer with a host family in Fargo, North Dakota.

“It was a rough emersion. They didn’t speak Spanish and I didn’t speak English,” relates Ramos. “But it’s what set me on the road to learning English.”

Ramos’ students have had it a bit easier when they travel to Guadalajara on the study abroad trip she happily inherited when she joined Macomb’s faculty 10 years ago. The students have already taken Spanish language classes and their professor meets with them every day to provide support and encouragement. And, best of all, they have classmates to share the experience with.

“I have students who call a year or two after a trip and thank me for introducing them to their best friend, as well as another culture,” relates Ramos. “It’s an exhausting couple of weeks when I’m there, but how can I not do this? I’m so happy the college supports this, because it’s such a life changer for many of the students.”

Next year, Ramos is changing up the itinerary and taking Spanish students to Oaxaca, in southwestern Mexico, known for its Pre-Columbian ruins and Zapotec art.

“It’s one of the most culturally rich places in Mexico, and it’s smaller than Guadalajara,” says Ramos, who also takes the lead on Macomb’s Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) commemoration in late October each year. “I will be a little more at ease with those students who are so adventurous.”

Ramos earned her bachelor’s degree in Mexico and studied Spanish language and literature at Florida Barry University, in Miami, before moving to Michigan. She completed her master’s degree and Ph.D. at Wayne State University.

In a nod to her own upbringing, Ramos and her husband, Kevin Link, are raising their son, Andrés, to be bilingual and multicultural. Ramos takes him to Guadalajara at least twice a year to visit his grandparents and the family has traveled to Europe, Latin America and, this year, Iceland.

“I love running, reading, teaching and traveling,” says Ramos. “Northern Spain is a favorite. I love the food and the culture. But Mexico is home.”

And the same holds true for Macomb.

“I like our students so much. They are so diverse, and some of them don’t have easy lives, but they still come to school every day. Sometimes, I don’t know how they do it,” says Ramos.  “They all bring a great perspective to the classroom. I wouldn’t want to teach anywhere else.”