Professors share their passions with students through specialty courses
Ross Vance takes the lead by explaining how a zipper lift should be performed.
Photo by John David Clark
Professors at Lee are known for their respected credentials, but some classes are taught outside the scope of their degree or main experience. Instead, the classes cover subjects the professors feel passionate about.
Classes like Portrait Photography, Wilderness First Response and C.S. Lewis are taught by professors who love the subject but didn’t go to school to pursue it.
Dr. Michael Sturgeon, faculty coordinator for instructional technology, offers a class in Portrait Photography. While his official position at Lee has nothing to do with photography, he said his experience and love of portrait photography compelled him to teach a course on it.
“People are very important to me. That’s why I went in the direction of portrait photography,” Sturgeon said. “I like capturing the people, their expressions, who they really are.”
Sturgeon’s education background consists mainly of information systems and psychology. By combining his love for people and his skills with technology, he said he can teach the art and science behind photography.
“You can have the creative eye and lose out because you don’t have the technical side,” Sturgeon said. “You need to have both to some degree.”
Sturgeon was hired at Lee in 1995 as a systems librarian, where he helped operate the computers in the library. From there, he’s worked many different jobs around campus, teaching education and technology classes and recently becoming a research coach.
Ross Vance oversees proper splinting technique during his Wilderness First Responder Class.
Photo by John David Clark
Photography has been a part of his life since his childhood in the Florida Keys, where he was exposed to scenic tropical sunsets and raised by a father who pursued photography on the side.
Later in his life, Sturgeon found himself drawn specifically to portrait photography and started teaching it as a class in 2011.
According to Sturgeon, portraits are unique in how every subject is different, and lighting is adjusted specifically for people. He said he is able to draw from his past experiences to make the class a success.
“In all my studies, I’ve learned how to work with people. That makes a big difference when you’re doing a photoshoot,” Sturgeon said. “Technology is a component across the board. In everything that I’ve taught, it’s been there.”
Another Lee professor has also turned his childhood passion into a for-credit class. Assistant Professor of English Dr. Chad Schrock teaches a course covering literature from C.S. Lewis. Ever since he was a little boy, he has been reading and learning from Lewis.
“The Chronicles of Narnia was a through line through my childhood,” Schrock said. “Lewis, as a theologian and literary critic, has always been ahead of me in my studies, teaching me how to do what I want and feel called to do.”
Schrock pursued both a Master of Divinity and a master’s degree in English, as well as a doctorate in medieval literature. He found the different degrees had more similarities than expected. Lewis, according to Schrock, just so happens to combine the subjects of religion and English literature, fitting nicely into his repertoire of literary knowledge.
“All my interests in language find their true home in the Bible and, even more specifically, Jesus as the Word of God,” Schrock said. “My seminary degree and my English degrees are kind of two sides of the same coin, or maybe not even two sides of it.”
Schrock said his hope for his students is that they can learn and apply concepts from Lewis’ works in their own lives.
“I have a strong sense that what’s to be done with his work is to live it out practically, and I try to draw students’ attention to his practical wisdom about spiritual and relational life in particular,” Schrock said.
Ross Vance after a Wilderness First Responder Class at Lee University.
Photo by John David Clark
On the other end of the spectrum, Ross Ian Vance came to Lee as an opera performance major in 2002 but currently teaches Wilderness First Responder. The class teaches students to handle emergency situations when medical attention is not close by.
“Preparing first responders looks very different than first aid. People are far away from medical attention,” Vance said. “It’s about what do you do to recognize things that are going to kill people quickly and how you treat and intervene to keep that patient alive before medical help arrives.”
In the class, Vance uses lecture time to go over what could go wrong in the wilderness and how to diagnose and treat problems without a first aid kit. He and his students then head outside the classroom to create mock emergency situations, complete with screaming “victims” covered in fake blood.
“We’re probably the only class that zip-lines over Schimmels Park and gets the police called on them,” Vance said.
Vance’s passion for medical care began when he was eight years old and his father was hit by a drunk driver, requiring at-home care. As a young child, he took classes at the local hospital to learn to be a caregiver.
Once he entered Lee University, Vance pursued opera performance then music education. He said he realized then that teaching was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
“I fell in love with teaching, and I knew that I wanted every aspect of teaching, not just the music education side,” Vance said. “It was God’s intervention in my life that led to me to fall in love with people’s emergencies, trauma and helping people on the worst days of their lives.”
Vance became involved in many medical endeavors, from volunteering at the emergency room to membership in the National Association for Search and Rescue. As a Lee student, Vance said he wanted to take a Wilderness First Response class, but no professor on campus was qualified to teach it.
Once he got certified as a Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician in 2005, Vance said he made the class a reality.
He explained that teaching, regardless of the exact subject, has given him the opportunity to inspire people to do what they love.
“It’s all about teaching people to prepare for something great they want to do in life, from teaching students first response to teaching adults customer service,” Vance said.
Vance said his aim for the class is to give his students the tools they need to handle difficult situations that may arise.
“I’m trying to prepare a generation of young people who are out in the wilderness, enjoying their lives, ready to be in emergency situations,” Vance said. “If I help students to be God’s hands and feet, it’s going to make a difference in the kingdom.”
These courses are offered on a case-by-case basis. To learn more about what classes are available, contact the Records Office at (423) 614-8200 or records@leeuniversity.edu.
