March 28, 2018 | UHCL Staff
For Andrea Baldwin, lecturer in communication at University of Houston-Clear Lake, her class is not simply a room full of students. Her class – especially her Storytelling and Oral Communication class – is an incubator.
“Storytelling is the class that I took when I was an undergraduate that changed the entire trajectory of my life,” Baldwin said. “This class is the crux of all I study. I teach students communication theory, but I also get them on their feet so they can tell their stories and understand why it matters so much.”
Baldwin said that when she began her career in the Department of Communication at UH-Clear Lake three years ago, there was no opportunity to teach the subject she had chosen as her concentration for her doctorate in communication studies: performance studies. She found her niche and has become well-known among undergraduates as the professor who teaches the Storytelling class, where students learn to tell their stories through embodied learning, which involves getting out of their seats, doing warm-up exercises, getting on their feet and creating narrative performances based on learned theories.
“I want students to communicate via narrative and understand the human condition through storytelling,” she said. Students begin class time by sitting in a circle where they can see each other and engage on a level playing field. “There are some pretty good pedagogical things that happen,” Baldwin said. “Students find their voice. Everyone is asked to speak.”
Over the course of the semester, students study narrative on a theoretical basis, perform personal or other narratives, and learn to critique and analyze narratives. “I hope students are learning to how to be confident in being critical on their feet,” Baldwin said. “They’re learning how good storytelling will help them in all career paths.”
Students take what they have learned about Communication Theory in class and apply it to daily life, explained Baldwin. “We learn to merge narrative theory and theater methodologies. The students learn who they are as communicators, and how theory and play come into practice together.”
Senior marketing major Christos Patelis has been Baldwin’s student for two years and transferred to UHCL as a junior, having spent his freshman and sophomore years at two different large Texas universities. Patelis said that during those first two years, he never connected with any professor and felt jaded enough about college to consider quitting altogether.
“I’m a first-generation college student, and I later found out, so is Dr. Baldwin,” Patelis said. “I first took her for Public Speaking, which was a required class I had no interest in taking and started with a very negative attitude and a lot of eye-rolls. That public speaking class turned out to be the first class where I ever felt a connection to the professor.”
Patelis said he spent his first two years of college looking for a professor who wasn’t just there to teach, but wanted to be there for the students. “Dr. Baldwin is emotionally and academically accessible and her students always show up to her class,” he said. “And her students are always successful. I think that’s due in part because she has high expectations of us and she invests so much, and her students do not want to disappoint.”
She takes high theories in communication studies, continued Patelis, and makes them palatable. “So much so, that she’s inspired an undergraduate marketing major to want to go to graduate school,” he said. “I’d like to eventually get a doctorate in communication studies, just as Dr. Baldwin did. She’s taken me from possibly quitting college completely, to applying to graduate school and wanting to make my career in communication studies. Through her classes, she gives students a voice – literally.”
Patelis said that he is working with Baldwin as assistant director of “Rememberall,” a student-faculty collaborative theatrical production to open at the Bayou Theater April 19-20. “When I’m in graduate school, I’ll have to teach two undergraduate courses,” he said. “This experience is helping me learn to organize large groups, learn more about social media marketing, and get the tool set to be successful in my master’s through these pedagogical moments with her as her assistant director.
“And it’s the same with all her students. She gives us the agency to do well in life, and we know how much she cares about us,” he said. “This is what comes from someone who invests as much as she does.”
“I just view this as paying it forward,” Baldwin said. “When I was an undergraduate, I had great professors who were engaging and fun, and who opened the door to me wanting to become a lifelong learner. My professors were so good, that part of what I want to do especially in my Storytelling class, is give students a small piece of what my professors gave to me.”
She added, “I know I give a lot, but they give me so much, too. The magic is watching them figure it out, and grasp some theory that they thought was beyond them. That’s powerful. That’s why I invest so much.”
For more information about UHCL's Communication program, visit www.uhcl.edu/human-sciences-humanities/departments/communication-studio-arts/communication/.
