By Deborah Helt
As a student at Santa Monica College, I began to see a pattern. I consistently had instructors, even in introductory level General Education courses, that had PhDs, oftentimes from Ivy League universities. In my experience, few people in the community are aware of the incredible quality of the professors at SMC, and more controversially, the school’s increasing emphasis on core academic subjects as opposed to vocational programming.
As most students know, having a topnotch degree is not an assurance of being a good teacher per se, however, the instructors I had at SMC from Ivy League backgrounds lived up to their glittering credentials. The high ratio of instructors at SMC with PhDs is remarkable, given that teaching at the community college level usually just requires a Master’s degree. Over time, the school has built a reputation that has attracted ambitious students from all over LA and highly qualified academics that love teaching.
A couple of experiences stand out in particular for me. I took a beginner’s oil painting class in the art department, only to find that my professor had taught at USC prior to coming to SMC. My anthro professor had a PhD from UCLA and wrote part of a PBS series. My journalism instructor graduated from Cornell before spending 20 years as a reporter for the LA Times, and my Astronomy 101 professor has a PhD in chemical physics from UCLA, and worked under a Nobel Laureate on a project at the South Pole.
At SMC, every department has their generous share of academic standouts. According to the Department Chair Merle Arnold, the Physical Sciences wing alone has professors with degrees from MIT, Yale, Princeton, Brown and, of course, the UC system.
At many four-year universities, lower-division classes are mostly comprised of 100-200 other students, with discussion sections led by grad students.
At SMC, it is common to be taught by a PhD holder in a class of 15-30 people. My aforementioned astronomy professor, Simon Balm, said, “At a research university, you are given a salary to teach. The problem is you are evaluated based on your research and you are always at odds with that, with the pressure to keep generating papers. I enjoyed the teaching so much that I couldn’t be a bad teacher. That’s why I came to SMC. You can concentrate on teaching and still have time to do research.”
“I think there are two kinds of professors here,” said English professor and Berkeley PhD holder Judith Remmes, “Those that happen upon it, and those that target the community college system.”
Remmes is clearly in the latter category. “I believe in the system,” she said. “I’m a product of it. I’m a product of this very school.”
The professor said she graduated at the bottom of her class in high school and flunked out of SMC her first time around. She returned a decade later, and with the inspiration of several SMC professors, earned her first A, uncovering a love of ideas and of academia.
“I always knew I was coming back to a community college,” she said.
Community colleges frequently have the reputation of being places where students go who can’t afford or are unprepared for four-year college work. While students do indeed attend for a variety of reasons, professors emphasize that, in reality, SMC has become a place that students seek out for its academic reputation and affordability.
Chemistry Professor Peggy Kline, a graduate of Brown who has been at SMC since 1988 said, “I would put my best students against the top students anywhere. They don’t have to be here for academic reasons. They’re here because they want to be, not because the couldn’t get in elsewhere. And the students are not just coming from nearby affluent areas. I had one student recently who took two trains and a bus to get here.”
School administrators seem to be focusing on the school’s success as a transfer vehicle for the local UC system. All of the professors that were consulted for this article have said that they are quite satisfied with the trajectory of the academic quality of the school, and that they do not feel that the conflicts of the past year will have a significant long-term effect on their particular program.
There is an overarching concern among the faculty, however, that with the elimination of some of the school’s vocational pro-gramming and other issues stemming from the budget cuts, that diversity may be adversely affected in the long run.
The faculty at Santa Monica College reflects the long-term academic quality that the school has been able to achieve. While Santa Monica College is clearly a leader in preparatory academic coursework, there is still some mystery about how the school’s character will evolve.
The community has a responsibility to weigh in on the discussion in clarifying the school’s vision. It is vital that community members are aware of the value of this incredible resource, so that they will be able to both use it and protect it. In the meantime, SMC will continue to build its dream team roster of creative, dynamic, hyperqualified instructors to serve their students.
I encourage every Santa Monica resident to take advantage. (Deborah Helt is a senior in the urban studies and planning program at Cal State Northridge who attended SMC. She is a musician and former community organizer who now lives in Echo Park.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 24, 2004. Read the original PDF.