A great class setting is one where students are working hard to grasp information and a professor is available to encourage and offer insight. Dr. Patricia Matthews, professor and department chair of economics, accounting and business administration, has been recreating this setting in her classes since 1975.
"At Mount Union, if you ask students to stretch and offer them support, they will be phenomenal," she says.
Matthews expects students to be sharp, focused and ready to explore. She says this is what makes her job worthwhile.
"If they know what you expect from them, no matter where you put the bar, they will achieve," she says. She also appreciates that her teaching has impacted her students' lives. "The students that come back and say, 'you've made a difference in my life' those success stories are what it is all about."
As an advisor, she works to help students learn to evaluate their options and "explore beyond these walls."
Matthews wants the lessons learned from her lectures to be useful to students. "I don't want students to memorize or regurgitate facts," she says. She thinks that lesson application is important. "Students have to learn to be able to adapt and logically figure out how to approach problems that don't fit the mold."
Matthews is proud of the faculty unity that exists in the economics, accounting and business administration department. She says that she has the best group of colleagues to work with, and she also appreciates the support she gets from the faculty in other departments.
Before coming to Mount Union, Matthews worked as a junior high and high school substitute teacher and taught at Stark State College. She has also worked as a financial consultant for McDermott Financial of New Orleans.
"I bring back, in a broad sense, what goes on in the field to the classroom," she says.