Episode 1 - Lessons in Excellence: A Conversation with Dr. Timothy Ball

Welcome to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, a space for continuous learning and actionable insights for faculty. 

In this first episode, host Eric Magrum sits down with Dr. Timothy Ball, Professor in the School of Communication Studies at James Madison University, to explore his journey through academia, the key moments that shaped his career, and what excellence in teaching means to him.

In this episode, Dr. Ball shares:
-His journey as an educator, where it started and how he arrived at JMU.
-The mentors and turning points that shaped his path.
-What it means to be excellent in his role.
-The hobbies and interests that bring fresh energy to his work.
-How he balances faculty responsibilities with personal life.
-Advice he’d give his past self before his first day at JMU.

Disclaimer: In discussing his transition from journalism to academia, Dr. Ball shares an experience that includes a difficult conversation with a grieving parent. Listener discretion is advised.

Join us for an insightful conversation about career growth, work-life balance, and the evolving definition of scholarship in higher education.

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Transcript

Welcome to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, an outlet created for continuous learning and actionable insights for faculty. I'm your host, Eric Magrum, inviting you to join us in conversations with dedicated educators who share their experiences, challenges, and effective solutions. Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Timothy Ball, who teaches within the School of Communication Studies at James Madison University, and to learn from his journey to and through academia.

Thank you, Tim, for being with us today.

You're welcome, Eric. Thanks for inviting me.

Absolutely. So, can you take us through your journey as an educator? Where the journey started and how you ended up here at JMU?

Okay. I come from a family of educators. My grandparents were teachers.

My dad was a teacher. I have aunts and uncles and cousins who were teachers. My dad, for most of my teenage years, he was a junior high teacher.

And I thought, oh hell no. I'm not doing that. So, I went to Iowa State University to become a journalist.

And then I discovered that I wasn't that good at it. Calling people up and asking, so, I know your daughter was killed in a car accident. Can you give me some information about her?

I didn't do that very well. So, I went back home. I'm from Spokane, Washington.

Got a master's degree, got an assistantship, teaching communication classes. I thought, okay, at least they're not 11 years old or 12 years old. They're adults.

And then I got a PhD at Washington State University. And while I was there, I met two people, Tim and Andrea, who I worked with Tim and Andrea became his wife. And they were from James Madison University, and they met in London during a semester abroad.

And they were always saying what a great place JMU was. So, I was ABD.

Okay.

And I saw this ad, it was just for a one year position teaching what was GCom back then, public speak, not public speaking, but entered up communication. I called them, by then they moved to Portland, Oregon. I said, there's this job at JMU.

And they said, you should go, I think you'll love it. I was in 1998.

Wow, okay.

27 years. That's how I ended up here. One year position turned into a three year position, turned into what is now 27 years.

Wow. That's a very peculiar happenstance that you met two folks that had such good things to say about JMU. I want to come back to something that you said in there, which was your folks were teachers, and that you knew that you did not want to be a junior high educator.

Can you speak to that a little bit?

My wife was also an elementary school teacher, and just the classroom management. I knew I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be involved with those age groups.

I actually had, in high school, I remember we had a substitute teacher who was talking about how he didn't want to be a teacher. And the first day of kindergarten, he was teaching kindergarten, he had a kid run at him with both barrels running, as in noses running for listeners. And he said, yeah, that was it.

That was absolutely it. So can you talk a little bit about some of the, perhaps the mentors? Obviously, your folks may have fallen under that category, but mentors that sort of pushed you in a certain way and maybe not formally, but informally.

I actually talked to my graduate student teaching assistants about this Monday. So, I teach a large lecture version of ASCOM 123. So, I have 300 students, but I also have six graduate students who run the recitation sections.

And I was, it was kind of the, we're at the midpoint, tell me what's going well, what's not going well. And I harkened back to Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach. And I asked them, why did you choose to be a teacher?

Why did you choose this kind of assistantship? And who were your mentors? And they named some mentors, because some of them got their undergraduate degree at JMU, so some of them I actually knew.

And I told them, my mentor who I met when I was getting my master's degree, David Cornelius, he inspired me. He could tell, he was originally from Kentucky, so he had the ability to tell stories that were relevant and kept students interested. I knew that I didn't have that same story telling ability, but he inspired me and I thought, I can do this.

And David and I were friends for about 35 years. Unfortunately, he passed away a couple of years ago.

I'm sorry to hear that.

But it was that I would watch him in the classroom. I would pick his brains. When I left or graduated from my master's degree program, I took a position teaching at the University of Idaho, and here I was, an instructor of record, teaching courses that I had never taught before, having never even written a syllabus, because, you know, the syllabi were provided to us.

And so I remember driving from Moscow, Idaho, back to Spokane, and it's like, David, I need help, I don't know how to do this. So now, with the graduate students, we have a pedagogy course, and one of the things that we will work on in the spring semester is, what does it mean to be an instructor of record? What should you include in your syllabus?

How do you scaffold learning? So we have speeches, an informative speech and a persuasive speech, but okay, so your informative speech is, let's say, week eight. How do you get them there?

How do you scaffold their knowledge? How do you, what kind of experiences do you give them so that when it comes to the speech, it's not a totally new experience? So that was my mentor.

Yeah, I want to ask more of a nitty-gritty question about what was it that he did that inspired you? Can you think back? Because I think to my own journey, and there was specifically a couple moments, one in particular where I had what some psychologists call ignition, and it was, that's what I want to do.

I think it was his, he enjoyed teaching, and I enjoy teaching. After 27 years, I still find ways to keep myself interested. Working at the CFI is one of my ways of challenging myself.

I think, and I remember my dad, he taught for 30 years, and I remember the last couple years, he would come home, and he would just collapse on the couch. He was just burned out. And I don't want to be that, and I'm not that person.

But that struck, that stuck with me. It's like that image of, I'm just going to lie here on the couch, because I'm exhausted.

And how do you, going a little off tangent, but how do you personally try to get away from that, or know that, okay, if I do these things, it's going to end up being like that. What do you do to make sure that you don't end up in that situation?

I have learned probably later than maybe some other people to draw boundaries. I remember when my wife was teaching and she would work all the time. We would both work all the time.

And then she retired and she went, you know, I miss being with you. And I'm upstairs working and she said, you know, you just need to stop. That and working with Dana Henry here at the CFI in the scholarship area, just focusing on, you know, you can say no.

And saying no and going, okay, I'm done. I'm going to shut off the computer. I'm not going to answer any more emails.

I'm just, I'm going to spend time with my wife, with people who are important to me. Not that the students aren't important to me, but I can't go and, you know, as long as I used to, because that would lead to that image I have of my dad, sprawled out on the couch, just exhausted.

So those of us who may be struggling, withdrawing those boundaries, what would be a sort of cursory step or dipping your toe in the water of trying to draw a boundary that might lead to more work-life balance?

Shutting off the computer. Not looking at your phone. I also started reading for pleasure.

I remember I was here and I thought, oh, I'd like to read the Harry Potter books. So I read all of those and then I thought, do you know, I have never read the classics. I've never read Hamlet.

I had never read Dickens. So I started with Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, and then Nicholas Niccolby, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, Bleak House. That is my, I guess it's one of my hobbies.

It's how I decompress.

Absolutely. That works. You couldn't have segued into my next question better, which are, are there hobbies or personal interests that help you bring new energy and perspectives into your role and or maintain that balance?

So reading, I like to cook, but professionally, I've been involved with the CFI almost since it was established. I remember shortly after the CFI was founded, I was, I thought, I'm going to be, I want to be a teaching fellow. And I applied and worked with people from other departments.

We were focused on Second Life. I don't know if you even know what Second Life is. It was a big deal.

You created avatars and there were islands and organizations bought islands and you could fly into meetings. And it seems silly now, but we were exploring, it's like, so how could we use Second Life at JMU? Now, of course, with the pandemic, the Zoom, but we were just exploring that, so what is Second Life and how could we use it at JMU, and how do other universities use it?

So professionally, being involved in the CFI, both in the scholarship area and the teaching area, keeps me interested, keeps me engaged.

So it seems like the CFI has been a central tenant to your sort of work-life balance. It gives you a different purpose other than your occupation that you're contracted to do. Can you talk a little bit more about the evolution of yourself within that CFI or within the CFI and then how it's continued?

That fire in the belly is still there.

I remember as an undergraduate, the mode of instruction was sage on the stage. That was my model. So I remember coming to JMU, like I need to be the person in charge.

And through my involvement with the CFI, I became more committed to active learning, to student focused learning, and to scaffolding, and the idea of backward design, which is very important. So there are programs here, like JMU Design, that I was a part of, that helped me really think about, I want the students to be here, but what steps can I take to get them there?

So switching gears a little bit, what does it mean to be excellent in your role?

I saw that question, I thought, I'm not sure that I'm excellent. I see myself as somebody who's striving. So I have a large lecture class on Monday and a large lecture class on Wednesday.

So Monday, I tried these activities.

How can I do this differently? So on Monday, instead of walking around Miller, we just hung out in that courtyard outside of Miller Hall. And that was okay, but I think if we walk around, we can hear different things, notice different things.

So I'm always asking myself, did that work? How could I do that better? I look at their non-verbals, I go, hmm, let me see if I can do that differently.

Now that's in your teaching role. So you obviously have the academic three pillars. How would you approach that excellence in your role from those three pillars?

So we sort of talked about the teaching aspect, can you talk about the others? And then perhaps how they all sort of mesh together?

I probably read Boyer's book, Scholarship Reconsidered, maybe in my Ph.D. program, but I had kind of forgotten about it. Then I reread it and thought, oh, what I do is the scholarship of teaching and learning.

I'm a SOTL scholar. And I collaborate with people in my department. Right now I'm collaborating with people from various institutions.

We're doing a mega-SOTL project focusing on the ethical use of generative AI. So that is my focus as a scholar. I've done some SOTL work, got published, worked with colleagues in my department.

And I'm just interested in what works or what doesn't work and why doesn't it work. And would that be interesting to people who read SOTL journals?

Okay, so when you say SOTL, because I'm familiar with the term SOTL, but I would not be shocked if you said the term SOTL to 100 faculty members, 50 don't say, what? Can you explain what that is? And a little bit more.

SOTL, the Scholarship Teaching and Learning, again comes from Boyer's book, Scholarship Reconsidered. And he talked about scholarship as being a discovery and application, but he also maybe didn't invent but said, you know, it's okay to do research on what your students are learning and how you're getting them to learn that.

I have a, I don't know if this is something you experienced, but when I am lecturing, because that is a mode that I do use, because there are certain topics I just, I have a hard time being creative enough to create an activity for, but when I'm lecturing, there's almost like a stopwatch in my head. And if I've lectured for too long, I instantly know, yeah, we got to do something different. I've got to ask them a think pair share question.

I've got to throw out a little pop quiz, if you will. I've got to do something. I've got to do a demonstration.

I have to have them get up. For whatever reason, my mind is like, you can't just keep talking at them.

No.

Can you speak to that a little?

Lecture is certainly appropriate, laying the groundwork, but like you said, even in a 50-minute class, their attention is going to wane or stop, or they're going to get on their phones, or they're going to check their social media. So, let's give them other opportunities. Okay, I lectured about this.

Let's apply this. Let's see it in action. I love the Think, Pair, Share.

And that works for large groups, certainly.

If you could hop in to a DeLorean with Doc Brown and Marty McFly and gun it to 88, travel back in time, meet yourself before your first day at JMU, what advice would you give yourself?

You're dating either me or you or both of us. If you remember Doc Brown and Marty McFly.

From the movie Back to the Future for listeners. Yeah.

I remember coming to this university, coming to Communication Studies. And the thing that struck me and will always stay with me is colleagues who freely gave me, it's like, here's our syllabus. You're not familiar with this class.

Here's some activities that I use. That has always struck me as a way in which JMU is different from other universities that I've either taught at or attended as a student. I actually remember when I was at Washington State University, and Karen DePauw, who was then an associate dean in the graduate school, but she was in charge of the interdisciplinary programs.

So when I was at Washington State, the Communication Department didn't have a stand-alone, they didn't have Ph.D. programs, they didn't have the 700, 800 level classes. So I designed an interdisciplinary program.

But I remember Karen DePauw, who became the dean of the graduate school at Virginia Tech, she asked me about, so what do you want to do? And I said, I know the one thing that I don't want to do is I don't want to teach at an R1 institution. And by then, Washington State was an R1.

Yeah.

And so I had a sense that JMU was going to be where I was going to fit in, but I didn't think I would be here as long as I have been. So it is the collegiality, it is the caring. My department is, we have 45 full-time faculty members.

Holy smokes.

So, I mean, we're the biggest department in the College of Arts and Letters. We've grown tremendously, but there is still that carrying new faculty members. We still, hey, if you'd like, I could send you the syllabus.

You can look at it. You can adapt it. You can say, no, that's not for me, but it still happens.

You've taught communications for decades, hundreds of individuals. Can you provide an example of a low-level, actionable item that a faculty member might be able to put into practice easily and relative ease, that's subjective, I understand, that would improve their communication competence?

Be willing to be open, introduce yourself, tell the students a little bit about yourself, humanize yourself. This is something I talk to the graduate students a lot about because most of them are 22, 23, they're first-year graduate students. A couple of them, I have a cohort of six, so a couple of them are recent JMU graduates.

And so they talk a lot about imposter syndrome, but they also are wary about establishing the boundary and also trying to be authoritative in the classroom.

Yeah, all the above.

Right? But I do encourage them to disclose things about yourself that you're comfortable disclosing for human beings. I think maybe that would be my one piece of advice.

So in a roundabout way, connect. Yeah. Connect with the students by...

Don't divulge anything. You don't feel comfortable divulging, obviously, but allow them to see that you are a human being and to connect, because I think before we can learn, we have to connect.

I totally agree with that.

Well, thank you for being on today's pilot podcast or our podcast today. Thank you very much for your time.

Appreciate you.