Adjunct Faculty Highlight
David DeBaker
Outstanding adjunct instructor comes from long line of teachers
Teaching is truly in David DeBaker’s genes!
DeBaker, an adjunct professor at Jackson Community College and recipient of the 2006 Outstanding Adjunct Instructor Award, comes from five generations of teachers. DeBaker’s family teaching line goes back to his great, great, great grandmother, who taught in a one-room schoolhouse during the Civil War.
“It’s the family business, some-thing I was designed to do. I guess you could say it was in my DNA!”
DeBaker has been teaching part-time at JCC for four years now, including courses in writing, reading and the film class that features the Winter Film Series at the Michigan Theatre. Outside the classroom he has organized monthly poetry nights to feature JCC and area poets, and is involved with the Michigan Shakespeare Festival.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in English and communications from Western Michigan University, and did attend JCC for a year before transferring to WMU.
“I love the students. I could never teach an online class or anything like that because I need to be with the students, watching them learn, seeing the light bulbs go off in their heads. Everything else is second to being in the classroom with them,” he said. DeBaker hopes to someday get a full-time position at JCC, and will start his master’s program in the fall to work toward that goal.
While he’s at home in the classroom and before students, the attention of the award was shocking. “I was just unbelievably flattered by it, and humbled.”
