When Rick Gordon stands in front of a homeland security class at Macomb’s Public Service Institute, he strives to inspire each student to follow in his footsteps.

Gordon has patrolled the Mexican border, went undercover for a year with the federal Drug Trafficking Task Force, headed up regional U.S. Border Patrol recruitment efforts in Washington after 911, was deployed as a reservist to Southeast Asia and served in the Office of the Chief Master Sergeant for the Air Force at the Pentagon.  He’s also earned two associate degrees from the Community College of the Air Force and bachelor and master degrees from Central Michigan University, and is a distinguished graduate of the Non-Commissioned Officer Academy at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base in Tennessee.

“Every day I just do the best that I can do in any given situation,” says Gordon, special operations supervisor for the U.S. Border Patrol’s Detroit Office, and chief master sergeant with the Air National Guard and command chief of its 110^th Attack Wing.  “That has worked best for me throughout my career.”

Like his students, Gordon started out at Macomb, enrolling in its Fire Science program in 1987 after graduating from Bishop Gallagher High School.

“It was an integral part of my education. I never dreamed I would be back as faculty,” says Gordon. “I derive as much satisfaction from teaching as I do from my service in the Guard and Border Patrol.  I have many veterans in my classes and to help them and other students aspire to a career in law enforcement is very fulfilling.”

Gordon joined the U.S. Air Force Reserves in 1991. He spent three years assigned to Selfridge Air National Guard Base as a firefighter to the 927^th Civil Engineering Squadron, before being hired by the U.S. Border Patrol and deployed to New Mexico for six years. Reassignment to the northern U.S. border brought him back home, where he signed up with the 127^th Wing of the Michigan Air National Guard.

“I am the son of a military veteran and I’ve always had a desire to serve,” says Gordon. “I tell my students that the reserve is a fantastic way to serve your country.”

The 110^th Attack Wing, of which he was appointed command chief last October, is headquartered at the Battle Creek Air National Guard Base. Gordon commutes between Battle Creek and his home in Macomb County, which he shares with wife, Laura, and their three children. The mission of the 110^th includes remote piloting of the MQ-9 drones, agile combat support, and cyber defense. Gordon is responsible for advising the base commander on all matters related to the health, morale and welfare of the base’s enlisted personnel, which number about 700, and their families.

“Although we are smaller than Selfridge, we have a unique mission to the Air Force,” says Gordon. “To have the opportunity to serve at this level is an honor and a privilege.”

If you are juggling work, classes and home life, Linda Bajdo knows your pain.  If you want a campus experience that’s welcoming and inclusive, she’s got your back.  And if you are conflicted about the meaning of “success,” she has some insight she will gladly share.

“Just because you are successful in what you are doing,” says the Macomb psychology professor, “doesn’t mean you are doing what you should be doing.”

Shortly after earning a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Michigan State University, Bajdo was hired by Manpower Detroit, a staffing corporation, and began working her way through increasing levels of responsibility and stress.  To ensure her career’s continued momentum following a divorce, she took night classes at Northwood University, earning an MBA while working full time and caring for her young son.  She was vice president/area manager, responsible for operations at 10 offices when she decided to call it quits.

“I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but there weren’t many teaching jobs when I started college. I was encouraged to pursue something more practical,” says Bajdo. “After 10 years at Manpower, I knew I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do.  My professors at Northwood told me I should get my Ph.D. and teach. And, at first, I thought, ‘me, a Ph.D?’”

Remarried by then, and with the support of her husband, Michael, Bajdo made the leap from business executive to graduate student at Wayne State University.  She chose a field that appealed to her, industrial and organizational psychology, which allowed her to put all that business experience to further use. Even before completing her Ph.D., Bajdo started working part time in Macomb’s Institutional Research Department and learning her away around campus.

“I fell in love with the College and with its students,” says Bajdo. “I had finally found someplace that matched my own personal values: Anyone can come here. Anyone can succeed.”

Her research work progressed to a full-time position, which was followed by an appointment to associate dean.  Again, Bajdo found herself on a successful fast track, but it still wasn’t leading to where she wanted to go. When a full-time faculty position opened up in psychology in 2006, she didn’t need GPS to tell her she had arrived at her destination.  Since then, Bajdo has been a champion of inclusion on the College’s campuses. She is a founding member of the Macomb Multicultural International Initiatives, the faculty advisor for the student LGBT Alliance and the coordinator of the SAFE @ Macomb program.

“There is nothing better than that feeling that you are doing what you are meant to be doing,” says Bajdo. “And when a former student calls me up to share some good news, it’s like receiving a huge bouquet of flowers. And when they ask if I remember them, I say: ‘Of course I do, you were unique and unforgettable.’”

You’ve probably heard this one before: French professor who used to run bodybuilding competitions.

Wait, what?

“I just liked it,” Macomb adjunct faculty member Glykeria Zguris said of bodybuilding. “I had a passion for it.”

It’s the same thing she says about her love of the French language. She was born in Greece and has earned degrees in both French and educational leadership from four different schools, including a doctorate from Roosevelt University in Chicago, which she commuted to by plane even with three children at home in Michigan.

“I have little sympathy when students can’t get to class,” she says with a smile. “If you want it bad enough, you’ll get it.”

Along the way, Zguris picked up that interesting side job of organizing high-end fitness pageants, and she says the bodybuilding principle of “show your strengths, hide your weaknesses” also comes in handy studying a language, which alternately requires speaking, reading and writing.

“Are most of my students going to become French scholars? No. But I at least want them to be able to sit in an airport in France and speak to someone,” she said. “I got one of my biggest compliments from a student who said, ‘Wow, this is easier than Spanish!’ I almost fainted, but it was because I made it feel easy for him.”

Zguris has also paraglided off a cliff in the French Alps, which she said “cured” her bucket list wish to jump from something high. It’s discovering those kind of surprising features of people she enjoys most about getting to know her students.

“The book is the book and grammar is grammar,” she said. “But I get to meet so many different people in class, and that’s what I like.”

While humanities professors are known to visit European cathedrals to better share their architectural and acoustical wonders with students, few have likely witnessed the performance of  a piece of music they have composed in one.  Macomb Professor Stuart Scott, however, is an exception.

“It was an honor,” says Scott, whose Requiem Brevis was performed by the Belfast Philharmonic Choir on Friday, Nov. 3, in St. Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, Ireland, with Scott and his wife Cindy in the audience.

Scott’s Requiem, a musical composition that expresses the sadness of death, was commissioned in 2014 by the choral group Vanguard Voices.  The invitation to have it performed at St. Anne’s by the Belfast Philharmonic came from the choir’s director, Stephen Doughty, shown here with Scott (right) in the Belfast Cathedral. Doughty had heard the piece, composed for an eight-faced sanctuary, on a choral directors’ networking site.

“St. Anne’s is a beautiful space, perfect for the eight-choir piece,” says Scott. “The acoustics allowed the piece to really resonate from place to place within the cathedral.”

A professor at Macomb for 30 years, Scott holds a bachelor’s degree in voice, a master’s in music performance and a doctorate of arts, all from Ball State University.  One of the first professors at Macomb to embrace online learning, he appreciates the deeper dimension it can bring to art and architecture.

“I am always interested in discovering ways to bridge the gaps that exist between subject matter, knowledge acquisition and application. I think we all learn best by improving on our mistakes,” says Scott.  “In my courses, students are encouraged to do this through a variety of strategically planned activities.”

Not surprisingly, Scott didn’t miss a lecture when he was in Ireland, providing his students with a literal distance learning experience as he toured that country and Germany as well. In addition to teaching humanities, Scott directs and performs with the College’s alumni ensemble. He has also directed Macomb’s other choral groups in the past, stepping down this year to make way for a newly created full-time choral activities director, a position for which he had lobbied.  A successful freelance composer, Scott’s musical career forms a bridge of a different sort, between his perspective as a working artist and his students’ pursuit of their own creative self.

“Humanities is a broad-based subject that allows for creativity and the appreciation of creativity,” says Scott.  “Through the analysis of creative works, the student is able to gain a better understanding of themselves in the wider context of various cultures.”

 

Psychology Professor

Macomb Professor Karen Wickline’s path to teaching is a textbook case of self-actualization.  And the fact that she now spends much of her free time in prisons, should inspire her forensic psychology students not alarm them.

“I can actually say I’ve been to Rikers Island (New York’s infamous jail complex),” says Wickline, who trains facilitators for Correctional Counseling, a national organization that provides moral development counseling to convicted sex offenders.  “I’ve been to every prison in Michigan and to those as far away as California.”

It’s a specialty that Wickline didn’t even knew existed when she majored in psychology at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where she grew up.  In fact, she had intended to pursue a degree in sports medicine until a male professor steered her away from the field, advising her it was better suited for men.  Although she still disagrees with his intent, she appreciates the door it opened to discover what it was that she really wanted to do.

“I had enjoyed my general psychology class and decided to get a job in the field,” relates Wickline. “I started working in direct psychiatric care with children and fell in love with the job.  I really loved working with the kids. After I moved to Michigan, I worked for a few years at Children’s Village (a detention/shelter facility for youths) in Oakland County.”

Previous to her move to Michigan, Wickline earned a master’s degree in clinical and counseling psychology from Chestnut Hill College in Pennsylvania and worked in an independent living program for young adults with mental health and substance abuse issues.  From there, she went to a hospital emergency room, where she did psychiatric evaluations on patients who had attempted suicide or overdosed.

“Working in that environment was eye-opening,” says Wickline, who recently collaborated with Nicole Castle Kelly, English faculty, on a suicide awareness campaign at South Campus during Suicide Prevention Week in September. “My uncle committed suicide, and I’ve had students telling me about friends who had committed suicide.  It’s something nobody wants to talk about, but it’s so important that we do.”

Wickline, however, may never have been here for those potentially life-saving discussions if she hadn’t been asked to sub for a psychology class at Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania.  That’s when she discovered her true calling and proceeded to earn a doctorate in education from Argosy University.

“I’ve been asked if I ever want to teach at a university and my answer is ‘no,’ I love teaching at a community college. You really get to know your students in this environment. I’ve had some who have taken every class I teach,” says Wickline, a licensed psychologist with her own forensics practice, as well as a contract to conduct psychological evaluations of juveniles sentenced to life in Michigan. “And I tell my students you can do what you think you want to do or you can end up being passionate about something else. Just be open to the possibilities.”

Music Instructor

Eldonna May took piano lessons at five, studied with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and toured Europe with the Ford Motor Youth Symphony.  But it would be on a different set of keys, and on a different continent, that she would engage in some of the most meaningful work of her career.

May holds a bachelor’s degree in music performance, a master’s degree in musicology and an MBA from Wayne State University, a Ph.D. in musicology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in online teaching from Florida State University.  Also on the music faculty at Wayne State, May teaches World Music and Introduction to the Arts at Macomb, online and on campus.

“What I appreciate so much about Macomb is the privilege of working in a department with outstanding administrators and faculty,” says May, who first taught online at the University of Michigan in the 1990s. “Stu (Scott) was one of the first in Michigan to develop an online, interdisciplinary humanities course and I very much wanted to be part of the process.”

But she may never have been if not for a lecture she heard as an undergrad on the history behind Richard Strauss’ musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, which convinced her to change her musical direction from performance-driven to scholarly study.  That, in turn, led to her discovery of kwaito, a music genre with ties to hip-hop and jazz, popular in Botswana, Africa.  May has just completed a year of research there on a Fulbright Fellowship – as prestigious and competitive in academia as the Oscar is in Hollywood.

“Ever since I was an undergrad, I’ve had a fascination with African history,” says May – shown center here at the U.S. Embassy in Gaborone, Botswana, with Gao Lemmenyane, director of the Centre for the Arts in Gaborone and Marang Mutuna, associate dean for Internationalization & Educational Outreach at Botho University. “In doing research on kwaito, I developed a marvelous relationship with Botho’s faculty, which led to the Fulbright.”

The Fulbright covered all of the travel and living expenses for what was May’s fifth trip to Africa.  At Botho, she developed a curriculum for the university’s new music business program and embarked upon a book project about kwaito with one of its faculty.

“Everything in Botswana is based on an oral tradition, few can read music,” says May. “But the students there so desperately want to learn.”

Back at Macomb, May is incorporating all that she learned about kwaito into her World Music class. “At the end of the day,” she says, “it’s all about helping our students grow intellectually.”