Episode 3 - Creating a Classroom That Feels Like Home: A Conversation with Dr. Cindy Klevickis

Welcome back to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, where we explore the experiences and strategies of passionate educators. In this episode, host Dr. Eric Magrum sits down with Dr. Cindy Klevickis from JMU’s Faculty of Integrated Science and Engineering to discuss her journey from industry to academia and how she fosters a learning environment that feels like home. 

In this episode, Dr. Klevickis shares: 

-Her transition from working in the pharmaceutical industry to teaching at JMU 

-What excellence in teaching means to her and how she continues to learn from others

-The role of enthusiasm and hands-on experiences in student engagement 

-How food, real-world examples, and even dog walks inspire her classroom 

-The quote that guides her philosophy: “A classroom should be the next best place to home” 

-Why being a lifelong learner helps her grow alongside her students 

Tune in for a thoughtful and grounded conversation about curiosity, connection, and the everyday joys of teaching. 

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Transcript

“And he said that with love, a classroom should be or could be the next best place to home.

Welcome to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, an outlet created for continuous learning and actionable insights for faculty. I'm your host, Eric Magrim, inviting you to join us in conversation with dedicated educators who share their experiences, challenges, and effective solutions. Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Cindy Klevickis from Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University.

Welcome, Cindy, and thank you for being with us today.

Thank you.

So, I'd like to start us off by taking us through your journey as an educator and how you ended up here at James Madison University.

So, my first experience here at James Madison University, I think, was about 40 years ago. I didn't write down the exact time and the exact date, but there was a possibility of a position because Bill Voyage, who taught biochemistry here, was going to England to do a study abroad program, and they needed somebody to teach part-time to fill his classes. So, I taught part-time, and the first time I did it, it was about two semesters, and then a couple years later, he went back, and off and on for maybe about 10 years, I taught biochemistry.

Very cool. And what, how did you arrive here at JMU from your academic journey?

Let's see. I went to the University of Wisconsin, and from there, I followed my husband who got a job at Merck. A couple years later, I also got a job at Merck, and while I was teaching here part-time at night, I was making drugs at Merck.

Very cool. I'm sure we'll come back to that at some point in time. So, what does it mean to be excellent in your role here at JMU?

Oh, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I don't think that I know. I'm still trying to figure that out, and I'm still trying to learn from everybody that I come in contact with.

There are a lot of what I would call excellent teachers, and if I could find every bit of what makes them excellent and roll that into what I do, that would be an excellent teacher, but I haven't done that yet.

So, could you... I want to pry into those. What have you identified in other teachers as excellent teaching that you've tried to wrap into your own teaching?

One of the things that students learn from the most, I think, is field trips and hands-on experiences. And I've been able to see masters, master teachers, who have been able to use that to the best ability, and as much as I can, I try to incorporate that in what I'm doing here at JMU.

So hands-on, is there anything that they, I guess, I'm looking for the emotions that they can create in their students? Is there anything that you've identified that goes beyond the nuts and bolts of what they do, but who they are or how they carry themselves?

I have to think a little bit about that. Okay, that's okay. So emotions, I think the number one emotion is enthusiasm.

When a teacher brings enthusiasm to what they're doing, it's students, it's infectious. Students can't help but be enthusiastic too. But they can also tell when a teacher loves what they're doing.

I couldn't agree more with the enthusiasm piece. Now, shifting gears, what unique qualities do you bring to your role as an educator? I'm going to preface this by saying, for listeners, we are in one of the most colorful classrooms. 

We are actually in a classroom where Cindy teaches, and she elected to use this space because it allowed her to be in the space where she teaches. So, it is a very unique classroom, very colorful, and I am just inspired being in the space with all of the things that surround and all of the things that I just wanted to say, oh, what's that for? What's that for?

So, with that, what unique qualities do you bring to your role as an educator?

Well, some of the students that I teach are future teachers themselves. And for that, I have a quote, and the quote helps motivate this classroom. It's from Jay Milne, who was the father of the man who wrote the Winnie the Pooh books.

And he was a teacher. And he said, that with love, a classroom should be or could be the next best place to home.

Say that one more time for me.

A classroom could be the next best place to home.

A classroom could be the next best place to home. Wow. That's a very powerful statement.

Can you elaborate on how you bring that about?

Well, if we could look around here in the class.

Yeah, absolutely.

That the things that are surrounding us are things that are from everyday life. And all of that literally feeds into all of the classes that I teach. Not just the ones for future teachers, but biotechnology classes, and I've taught honors classes here.

And when I said it literally feeds into it, is food is a really powerful way of teaching a lot of subjects.

And so you talk about food. Do you feed your students?

Well, sometimes we use food as examples. If you're thinking of doing biochemistry, the safest biochemistry that you can think of is, well, there's as much biochemistry in a kitchen as there is in any industrial factory.

My mind is blown, honestly, just thinking about that and the examples you've given. And that quote was phenomenal. But I want to come back to the other qualities.

You talked about that quote. Are there any other qualities unique to you that you bring to teaching future teachers?

Well, I love being a student. And I think that what motivates me as a teacher is that whenever I'm teaching something, I learn what I don't know. There's no way that you can possibly know what you don't know until you try to teach something.

And what a great opportunity it is to be able to go through that process.

I couldn't agree more. I tell my students, in order to teach, you have to learn twice. You have to learn the content.

Then you have to learn to teach the content. And so there's a lot of inherent learning in just teaching itself, as you alluded to.

So I'd go even further than that is, I think that I think I learned the content when I first went to school myself. But I don't really learn the content until I after I've taught it. And even after I've taught it many different times and many different ways, I still learn more.

That's the beauty of being a teacher, isn't it? We're always learning.

That's my whole motivation.

That's your whole motivation. That's a wonderful quality. And I think if we're open to learning, we're going to be a better teacher because of that.

Now, switching gears a little bit, are there hobbies or personal interests that help you bring new energy and perspectives into your role?

Well, you said new energy. I don't know if this is new energy, but energy in general is just being able to go home and walk my dog. And that's enough energy to carry me through any day.

Dogs are magnificent animals, aren't they?

Yep.

They absolutely are. Now, you talked about working at Merck. Yes.

Can you speak a little bit about how your work at that institution, maybe what that institution is, and then how you brought that into your teaching?

Well, I think that's how I got the job that I have now. So when I was teaching part-time, that was for the chemistry department. I taught biochemistry.

And because I had done that, because I was here at JMU, I was here when they first started the Integrated Science and Technology Program. And the purpose of that program was kind of to bring professors who had industrial experience, so that there would be some real world context to what students were learning about technology. So my experience at Merck, I think, was what allowed JMU to hire me as a full-time professor.

And so you were, the only thing I can come up with right now is you were doing the science at Merck, and then you brought that to JMU. What exactly were you doing at Merck, or if you can talk about that?

Well, it wasn't any industrial secrets or anything. We were making sterile antibiotics. Okay.

So all of the processes of what did, does it take the chemistry behind making the antibiotics, packaging, making sure that everything is sterile, testing, all of those processes? That's not just the science behind what it's doing, what's happening, but the technology too.

Okay. Do you often use examples from your time in industry to infuse them into your teaching?

Oh, yeah.

Is that a daily occurrence, or is that almost a minute-by-minute occurrence?

Well, minute-by-minute.

How do you go about balancing? Could we talk about work-life balance? How do you go about balancing your personal life with your roles and responsibilities as a faculty member here at JMU?

Well, sometimes it's really busy here, and so now I'm looking really, really forward to the holiday. And that's the best part, I think, of teaching is that it's intense, but then not everybody gets a whole month off during the holidays, or the same thing for during the summer. And that really helps balance.

So do you come back from breaks, whether it be winter break or summer break or another break, do you come back rejuvenated?

Oh yeah, every semester is a brand new start.

Do you have any processes that you go through? For example, I have to have a day, a day before, because usually I live out of town, or I'm from out of town, if you will. I'm originally from Ohio, my in-laws live in Virginia, so we're constantly traveling.

So I have to have a day when we get back to just kind of chill, and just recharge the batteries and get back to neutral, if you will, before we, so that I am rejuvenated to go back into the semester. Is there anything like that, those processes, that you go through during those breaks?

Well, if I'm going to teach something new, I buy myself every book I can find on the subject, and I pile them up in a big pile, and try to discover what's interesting and important about this.

Any insights for somebody who might be trying to do that, but not quite as refined as yourself with those? How would you tackle going through those books?

So, first time I taught biochemistry, for instance, I bought every biochemistry book I could find, and they're all a lot alike, but they're enough different that you learn something new. So, chapter by chapter, read one chapter from one book and another book and another book, and by the time you get through four books, well, you feel like, oh my gosh, I could talk about this subject.

I can't say I've ever taken that approach. I think that approach would intimidate me, to be honest with you, and I applaud you for doing that, because that would give you a lot of different perspectives from a lot of different authors, too, on one particular topic, which would allow you to see sort of the gaps in the knowledge. So, that's a phenomenal insight.

But that doesn't mean that I learned everything.

That's true.

I mean, it's not until you tried to explain something to a class, and then, oh, I didn't really understand that.

I've had more than my fair share of those moments, unfortunately. Now, if you could hop in a DeLorean with Doc Brown and Marty McFly for Back to the Future, and travel back in time to meet yourself before your first day here at JMU, and give yourself advice, what advice would that be?

I'm remembering back when I worked at Merck, the plant manager was asked that exact same question, and his answer was, never say no to an opportunity. I thought it was a pretty good answer at the time, and I think maybe that would be a good answer for me too.

Very good. Are there any opportunities that have been just the highlights, or maybe it's the one highlight, the salient opportunity that you took advantage of, and was like the penultimate to some sort of transformation, whether that be in your teaching, or in your research, or in your service, anything like that?

I don't think there's any one opportunity, but the best opportunity has been to get to know the people that I work with, and the students that I work with. And sometimes that just sneaks up on you, and you don't realize that that's been an opportunity. But hearing what people are doing over and over again, and tell, oh yeah, I could use that too.

And that's a worthwhile thing to think about. So, the best opportunity is to learn from everybody that's around you.

How would you start that process?

Maybe ask lots of questions and listen.

Very good. And lastly, anything you want to share with our audience about teaching, about teaching future teachers, about pursuing greater depths of knowledge?

Well, I have a lot of people to thank because I'm here, and I don't know if you want me to list names, but.

That's okay.

Yeah.

That's okay.

But.

And any insights from maybe the salient themes that you've garnered from those folks, that those listeners could grab on to and they could say, okay, this is something I could apply in my life?

Well, for teachers, hands-on, that's my best advice. Hands-on, enthusiasm. We've already talked about most of the things that are, if I were going to give advice, my best advice.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. It's been wonderful.

Thank you.