{"id":2289,"date":"2015-04-07T18:05:09","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T22:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2015\/04\/07\/always-the-teacher\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T18:15:50","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T23:15:50","slug":"always-the-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/always-the-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Always the teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/o7WusIhoits\" width=\"100%\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When their curious young son went \u201cmissing,\u201d the Charles Brewer&#8217;s parents always knew where to look.<\/p>\n<p>He might be playing ball with some of the neighborhood kids. But more than likely, the four-year-old was attending school unofficially in the back of Miss Laverne Kennaway\u2019s third-grade class at Watson Chapel School, or possibly even teaching classes of his own to the neighborhood youth on the family\u2019s sun porch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was always the teacher,\u201d said Brewer, who grew up in Pine Bluff, Ark. \u201cBack then, the question was, what am I going to teach?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He first considered English, history, and political science. Finally, the answer materialized during his second semester at Hendrix College, when he began Dr. John Anderson\u2019s psychology course.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat literally shaped the rest of my life,\u201d said Brewer, Furman University&#8217;s William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology. \u201cDr. Anderson was the best lecturer and the hardest teacher I\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Brewer is quick to point out that he never made an A in one of Anderson\u2019s classes, though he took every course Anderson taught.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was so good that it didn\u2019t matter what my grade was,\u201d Brewer said.<\/p>\n<p>Anderson taught Brewer, not only how to construct his famous multiple-choice tests, but how to tell stories. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.<\/p>\n<p>Brewer went onto earn his master\u2019s and Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Arkansas. He taught first for two years at the College of Wooster, then for three years at Elmira College in New York before coming to Furman.<\/p>\n<p>Even with 52 years of experience, Furman\u2019s most senior faculty member admits he still gets first-day jitters. \u201cI don\u2019t sleep for two nights before that first class in the fall,\u201d Brewer said.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t take long for him to settle in. An old-school, rigid taskmaster, Brewer does not accept late papers and forbids students from wearing caps and hats in his classroom. He encourages students to write with \u201cclarity, conciseness, and felicity of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t use PowerPoint.<ins cite=\"mailto:Erikah%20Haavie\" datetime=\"2014-05-01T14:56\"> <\/ins>\u201cI have sat through too many PowerPoint presentations that have no power and no point,\u201d he says. \u201cNo thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not to say that Brewer\u2019s lectures aren\u2019t attention grabbing.<\/p>\n<p>Jim Ewel \u201979 remembers being distracted one sunny spring day during one of Brewer\u2019s lectures. To help students understand the infinite number of possibilities, Brewer drew a line on the board from end of the board to the other, then took the piece of chalk and threw it out the window.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat got our attention and made his point,\u201d said Ewel, who started a box of quotations in Brewer\u2019s honor and still has it, 36 years later.<\/p>\n<p>Brewer has also been known to crawl under his desk and bark like a dog to make a point, or to perform a pirouette on top of his desk.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll do anything to get and maintain students\u2019 attention,\u201d he laughs. \u201cInitially, it is spontaneous, but it\u2019s worked so well over the years . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 1969, he received the first Alester G. Furman, Jr. and Janie Earle Furman Award for Meritorious Teaching and has received the Furman Award for Meritorious Advising. He has been widely honored by the American Psychological Association for his teaching and other exemplary contributions to the profession.<\/p>\n<p>As chair of the psychology department from 1972 to 1984, Brewer rapidly modernized the curriculum to reflect more accurately the current state of the science. One of his legacies in today\u2019s Psychology Department includes faculty who have continued to equip labs through funded grants, as well as faculty whose individual research grants make it possible for more undergraduates to be involved in original, publishable research, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean John Beckford said during a retirement dinner for Brewer and other faculty this spring.<\/p>\n<p>At the suggestion of a friend, John Batson \u201974 took Brewer\u2019s class during the fall of his sophomore year and called it \u201cthe most amazing classroom experience I had ever had at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Batson and Brewer have now been teaching together in the Psychology Department at Furman since 1982.<\/p>\n<p>When Bridgette Martin Hard \u201901 thinks back on her first months as a freshman at Furman, she remembers feeling terrified. It was the first time she had been away from her parents for more than two weeks and she was nervous about how she would handle the transition to college.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had planned to take the standard freshman courses and hope for the best,\u201d said Martin Hard. But that wasn\u2019t enough for Dr. Charles Brewer, who served as her advisor for four years. After a few phone calls, he had her enrolled in upper-level, challenging history and English courses as a freshman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBrewer saw potential in me that I didn\u2019t yet see in myself,\u201d said Martin Hard, who graduated with a 4.0 GPA from Furman and after earning her Ph.D. from Stanford, now coordinates Stanford\u2019s Psychology One Teaching Program. \u201cHe helped me to discover traits that I valued most in myself: my love for learning and my willingness to do hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Martin Hard\u2019s story is one of many. Brewer\u2019s inspirational teaching has reached so many over the years that American Psychological Association\u2019s Distinguished Teaching of Psychology Award was renamed in Brewer\u2019s honor, something he called \u201cthe ultimate accolade.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though Brewer may have given his last official lecture at Furman, he will continue to have a strong presence on campus. He will be keeping his office in Johns Hall and will be coming in daily, though it might be as late as 9 a.m.<\/p>\n<p>He will be working as consulting editor of the journal, <i>Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology<\/i>, sponsored by the American Psychological Association, and as a consulting editor of the journal, <i>Teaching of Psychology<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Brewer is planning his first-ever trip to Europe, to Florence to look at art with his daughter, Stephanie. He also has a list of books he plans to read. The first book atop the list? A biography of Mahatma Gandhi.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never want students to say, gosh, he should have retired 10 years ago,\u201d Brewer said. \u201cI want to go out when I\u2019m still at the top of my game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>John Roberts contributed to this article.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When their curious young son went \u201cmissing,\u201d the Charles Brewer&#8217;s parents always knew where to look. He might be playing ball with some of the neighborhood kids. But more than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":13203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-psychology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}