Name one person who made a positive impact: Advisor and mentor, English/ Creative Writing teacher, Prof. Dan Langton, who went out of his way to assure that I was able to transcend the process of being a returning student; he helped to keep things relevant, and offered community credit for work I was already doing; he was not a bureaucratic hoop jumper as so many teachers I encountered at SFSU have been.
Because I needed a correlative, I chose playwriting. Brighid Mullins was a fantastic Creative Writing/theater teacher, I learned a lot from her, especially a deeper appreciation of Aristotle. A good bridge. Roy Conboy too was the real deal. Relevant. A shoutout to Joe McBride who ran all the weekend cinema classes, He was fantastic. Loved the historical overview of film noir.
I found the late Justin Chinn to be an abysmal Creative Writing/theater teacher, if you could call him that—he was fine for the newbies, but not for someone with a lot of writing experience. He skated on his thin persona, and did not teach; my only B grade, out of 56 units of A grades, I might add, because I pushed for more in-depth material. But it turned me off to playwriting.
I might add that I had a profoundly disturbing experience when I first attended SFSU during the mid 1970s, I found the Art Department, and facilities to be sub-par, and I dropped out of school after a year, and finished my BA at Sonoma State.
The only bright moment was taking a class from Prof. McGrath in anthropology, which led me to a lifelong pursuit of Celtic Studies.
SFSU has made dramatic inroads since those early years, but it is still not top notch, at least in my experience.
What am grateful for: That I got my MA, but I never completed my MFA because I ran into too much obfuscation and run-arounds, and downright contradictions, from the respective deans of Humanities, and the Graduate Admissions powers that be, when I tried to file for my MFA. I was literally on the homestretch, I had completed ALL the coursework, it was merely a matter of filing papers, and turning in my thesis. But I couldn't get the paperwork completed and signed off. Tired of wrangling with bureaucrats, I left SFSU in disgust. This is one reason why I cannot wholeheartedly recommend SFSU.
I was simultaneously enrolled at UC Berkeley's Celtic Studies program, while pursuing a MA and MFA in Creative Writing, so working with SFSU English Prof. (Peter?) Flynn, whose office door was always open, allowed me to create a bridge for my ongoing learning, which wasn't offered at SFSU. It meant I was able to also pursue my scholarly interest with some of the great scholars at UC Berkeley including Prof. Alan Dundes, and Professors Dan Melia and Robert Tracy.
I find your Education Department to be the most appalling I have ever encountered. So much so that I gave up on the idea of obtaining a credential. I would not recommend them. Period.
Also, my partner, who got his credential at SFSU, got a similar monkeyhouse runaround when he tried to complete his MA in Education. Because I was witness to his Education classes, teachers and assignments, sometimes sitting in on classes, I can safely say, your Education Department is/ was awful. There is too much nepotism and concern which leads to a closed shop mentality. Probably only one decent professor in the department who had integrity, was Flores. The rest had their jobs, it was all about them keeping their jobs, not about the students' welfare, or a meaningful education. SFSU cranks out sub-par teachers who are incredibly ill-equipped to succeed in the real world. Pedagogy is not the teaching of pedagogy for pedagogy's sake. But there you have it. Mirrors reflecting mirrors ad infinitum.
I have worked in California schools as an artist in residence since 1979, so I have worked with an astonishingly wide range of teachers. The ones from SFSU are always the sub-par ones; they are C students.
You do need to hire more stellar and inspiring teachers within the Education Department, not teachers whose sole interest seems to hanging onto their jobs until retirement. I have never seen such nepotism and cronyism in my life. Perhaps by now it's improved as that was more than ten years ago and some of those teachers have moved on (one would hope). But I kind of doubt it. It's a self-perpetuating cycle.
Advice to future SFSU candidates, given that both my experiences at SFSU were not stellar, I would choose my words carefully, and remain non-committal, rather than say what I really felt, as I do know SFSU has been a great experience for many students.
Other comments: I think I've thoroughly covered the winter of my discontent pretty thoroughly in the above comments. Sadly, I'm still angry at SFSU, and its bureaucratic and often draconic policies after all these years. It was not a good experience.
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