{"id":131365,"date":"2020-03-06T10:38:20","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T15:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=131365"},"modified":"2024-10-28T11:02:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T15:02:34","slug":"my-last-year-of-teaching-i-really-love-the-one-on-one-interaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/03\/06\/my-last-year-of-teaching-i-really-love-the-one-on-one-interaction\/","title":{"rendered":"My Last Year of Teaching: ‘I really love the one-on-one interaction’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Various shelves and closets, both in and around Jane Costlow\u2019s office in Hedge Hall, are filled with bound senior theses from years gone by.<\/p>\n

Costlow selects one and reads the acknowledgement. The senior thanked Costlow for \u201can enlightening process\u201d during a time when Costlow was \u201cdealing with hard times herself. She made herself available and helped me through my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Costlow wonders about the \u201chard times\u201d reference. Checking the date, 2009, she remembers: \u201cThat was the year my father died.\u201d Such touching acknowledgments are a \u201creminder of these wonderful students I\u2019ve had,\u201d Costlow says.<\/p>\n

\"Jane<\/a>

Jane Costlow reads the acknowledgments from a former student’s senior thesis. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

The college\u2019s Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, Costlow is now in her 34th and final year in the Bates classroom. Adding it all up, she\u2019s advised well over 100 thesis students in her career.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heart of the thesis experience is having a student who comes once a week and sits in your office and talks with you about this topic that they\u2019re having the pain and the pleasure of getting to know a lot better, that they\u2019re really diving into,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In that sense, it\u2019s timeless, no different from when Costlow first began. \u201cI really love the one-on-one interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jane<\/a>

Jane Costlow meets with thesis student Erin O’Farrell ’20, environmental studies major from Burke, Vt., who is writing on the photography from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico with an environmental perspective. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

The one-on-one model is also intensive, making the month of March a notorious crunch time for both seniors and professors, coming in like a lamb and going out like a lion as seniors generate reams of thesis pages for their advisers in advance of the April 10 submission deadline.<\/p>\n

As March progresses, says Costlow, faculty \u201cget more bleary-eyed just because of how many pages they have to read.\u201d<\/p>\n

Easing the load somewhat in recent years is a new thesis option for environmental studies majors. Instead of a traditional independent thesis, they can choose to take a seminar course called \u201cEnvironmental Writing in the Public Sphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Environmental<\/a>

Environmental studies major Hermione Zhou ’21 of Shenzhen, China, speaks with Costlow about possible thesis topics for next year. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Costlow taught the seminar last year, guiding students in major projects including documentary film and long-form digital journalism, such as podcasts. \u201cThey\u2019re really useful formats and genres for students to learn about producing work for which they still have to do all of the deep research\u201d required for a traditional thesis.<\/p>\n

One of her 2019 seminar students, Hugh Kenny \u201919, produced a film about the Auburn, Maine, agricultural zone; now he\u2019s working as a communications fellow and videographer for the Piedmont Environmental Council, a land trust in Virginia.<\/p>\n

This semester, Grace Ellrodt \u201920 of Lenox, Mass., started as one of Costlow\u2019s thesis advisees then switched to the thesis seminar, a better fit for a project that grew out of work she\u2019d done in Chile and Colombia investigating the public health issue of loneliness among older people. Ellrodt\u2019s project includes a photography exhibit and website \u2014 a launching pad, she hopes, for a career in digital public-health journalism.<\/p>\n

\"Grace<\/a>

Grace Ellrodt ’20 discusses her thesis in Costlow’s Hedge Hall office at the beginning of the fall 2019 term. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s no coincidence that many of Costlow\u2019s thesis advisees are interested in film and photography. Costlow, who for many years taught in the college\u2019s Russian program, teaches courses in environmental literature and over the years has expanded her interest in visual culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something I always did when I was teaching Russian because it\u2019s such a fabulous way to give a rich, complex sense of the culture. And our students are really visual,\u201d she says. \u201cIn environmental studies, we do a lot of class work in looking at documentaries and photographic traditions that have been really important in American environmentalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, one of her current thesis students, Ava Gulino \u201920 of Wilmington, Del., is focusing on the island of Antigua to explore the connection between tourism and photography. \u201cShe\u2019s looking at how Antigua gets represented and marketed as a \u2018paradise,\u2019 and what that marketing tends to obscure or erase,\u201d Costlow explains. \u201cAnd then, within that context, she\u2019s also looking at what it might mean to be a mindful and responsible visitor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ava<\/a>

Ava Gulino \u201920 of Wilmington, Del., meets weekly with Costlow in her office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Costlow herself has just finished writing a paper that is, in part, about contemporary Russian photography. \u201cIt\u2019s a good example of how my own work and student work can overlap in some ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Bates, the thesis experience varies enormously from one academic division to another. In the social sciences and especially in STEM disciplines, for example, thesis topics often reflect a faculty member\u2019s research, with students becoming integral members of their adviser\u2019s lab.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s really exciting,\u201d Costlow says, noting how meaningful it is for students of environmental studies colleague Holly Ewing to do field research on water quality on Lake Auburn, read the literature, and then make sense of it.<\/p>\n

For majors in the humanities, the experience and approach is different, Costlow says. \u201cIt almost always involves letting the student become the expert,\u201d she says. \u201cThe student becomes the person who, in a way, is teaching you.\u201d The student, in a way, becomes the \u201csage on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jane Costlow describes the joy of senior thesis advising and how she helps seniors develop their topics. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/em><\/p>\n