Comments on Recent Trends in Teaching at CSULB

I have recently read with great interest several of the university's documents that stress a commitment to the quality of undergraduate education at CSULB. I believe these publications present an appealing case for a new paradigm for higher educational institutions like CSULB. I believe scholarship, through discovery, integration, application, and teaching, sets the necessary framework for effective student learning and professional growth for the academic. I have tried to integrate, in a diligent manner, similar objectives and goals of the new paradigm in the development of the department's archaeology program.

Under The Scholarship of Discovery, I have pursued my personal research through a variety of shared research experiences with most of the undergraduate and graduate students taking field and laboratory classes, directed research, and thesis projects under my supervision. This has been extremely rewarding for me and for the students that have gone on to advanced graduate training at other universities. I enjoyed the opportunity to present and co-author papers with my advanced graduate students and faculty in other CSULB departments. I have stressed interdisciplinary research and the Scholarship of Integration throughout my career, and I strongly advocate this approach to my students. Indeed, the strength of the CSULB archaeology program has been and will continue to be dependent upon an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies. The joint research projects with CSULB geology faculty and paleo-climatologists at other universities has presented our archaeology students with unique opportunities not available at most universities.

The research that I carry out is grounded in definitive review and empirically analyzed published data, and my students and I employ a wide variety of quantitative and statistical analyses in the process of making archaeological and paleoenvironmental data comprehensive. In my mind these two components are the foundation upon which the Scholarship of Teaching must be built. I diligently work to be "current in my field," and I attempt to stress the importance of substantive methodological and theoretical issues over simple field techniques and reviews of culture histories to students at all levels of instruction. To do otherwise would be a serious disservice to the students that leave this institution for graduate studies elsewhere. Lastly, I agree with many scholars that multimedia presentations in the classroom, integrated with computer exercises and simulations, are powerful educational tools, and I have and will continue to strive to incorporate new and innovative teaching techniques in the archaeology curriculum (see Program Development for 1992). I would stress, however, that computers and TV screens can never replace the quality that the classroom instructor brings to the educational process.