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Office hours with Dana Emerson

Max Brown
The Commuter

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Dana Emerson Photo by Max Brown

Most people get nervous at the thought of public speaking, in Dana Emerson’s classes students are not even allowed to say the word “nervous.” If you need help conquering your fears of public speaking, Emerson will help you obtain that goal.

Commuter: What do you teach here, and do you like it?
Dana Emerson: I teach different areas of speech communication: public speaking, small group communication, interpersonal communication and introduction to persuasion class, and I absolutely love it.

C: What do you like most about it?
DE: Probably the variety [of situations] that happens in the classroom every single day. I can never predict what’s going to happen, so the classroom is like a reality TV show. It’s a little bit scripted, but the boundaries are so poor you never know what’s going to happen; you just get to have a good time doing it. And I love to see the transition that my students make, from being really fearful of getting up and expressing themselves in front of a class and introducing themselves to people, to not necessarily loving it but being able to do it and being able to do it with confidence.

C: Which class is your favorite to teach?
DE: I love to teach them all because they all just bring something completely different to the teaching experience. I probably have the most fun in public speaking. I get the most relationships in interpersonal communication class, I see the most emerging leaders in small group class, and I definitely see students go far beyond what they think they’re capable of in the introduction to persuasion class.

C: What do you do outside of teaching speech?
DE: [laughs] Yeah, what do I do? I try to explore Oregon as much as I possibly can. I’m really interested in seeing the beauty of the state, so I always ask my students to give me some adventures they think I would like, and that won’t kill me, because I would like to come back to work someday. [laughs]

C: What would you be doing if you weren’t teaching?
DE: I’d probably be doing what I used to do in California, which was run a couple of businesses. With my consulting firm I worked in the area of politics and I was being groomed to run for public office. I would probably still be somewhere in the political arena.

C: And why’d you leave all that?
DE: [laughs] It’s hectic and California got really, really, really expensive to live [in]. It just didn’t seem like you could ever get ahead, like you were running this race really fast and they kept moving the finish line.

C: What are your plans for the future?
DE: [laughs] I can feel myself being pulled towards some political work here in Oregon. I’m really interested in expanding the views of diversity here in Oregon and finding ways to incorporate a better understanding of diversity in just every institution that Oregon has. I think there’s a lack [of that] here. There’s no reason why we can’t step up and start having more conversations about diversity and just bring it all up to the surface and not be afraid of it anymore.

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