Students may neglect to think about what their professors did before coming to Portland State or what they do outside of teaching, but given the scholastic diversity of PSU’s faculty, there’s no doubt many professors have interesting stories and rich experiences they can pass on to their students.
“How big of a problem do you think student debt is in the U.S.?”
Jack Straton, an associate professor of physics and University Studies, teaches the course “General Astronomy,” which is split into two sections. Winter term focuses mainly on the history of astronomy, talking about the planets and the possibility of life on some of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn.
“What are you going to do over spring break?”
Pornography is a word that everyone knows. In our society, the word “porn” has a taboo following it around, and the subject rarely comes up in everyday discussion. Yet almost every day each of us partakes of something that would not be here were it not for the existence of pornography.
Imagine popping into class for an early evening comedy film every few days. That’s exactly what students in Victoria Belco’s “Laughing at History” course get to do.
“How do you feel about your job prospects after graduation?”
“Where do you work and do you enjoy it?”
In a supposedly secular nation that still operates under an array of religious ideologies, atheism is always a hot topic. Peter Boghossian, an adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy, is bringing the discussion to the classroom with his new class, titled “New Atheism.”
Adulthood means paying for the electricity in your home and the gas in your vehicle, but few people actually understand the economics behind it all.
Currently, conflict resolution is only offered as a graduate program at Portland State, but soon undergraduates will also be able to choose from a major and a minor.