Associate Professor of English and Communication Studies Kathleen Keating has a favorite hobby: using plaster of Paris, Styrofoam, sculpting compounds and found objects, she creates tiny pieces of furniture, miniscule buildings and small-scale landscape features, all of which fall into the artistic category of "miniatures." "It's important for teachers to keep trying new things so that we remember how it feels to  be learning something new," Keating said. "I am still very much an amateur, teaching myself the basics. I'm fine with the fact that I'm not a professional at miniature - just doing what gives one joy and perhaps brings a smile - or a laugh! - to someone else is reason enough to pursue my hobby."
Keating's much-loved miniature pastime parallels her love for literature. "You're looking at a little world when you open a novel," she said, adding that her two passions are opposite enough to lend balance to her life. "My miniature creations are physical and visual as opposed to mental and textual, so this is a way to use that part of my brain that's not used at work."
Her latest miniature project is a landscape scene of a colonial New England village, which quite possibly calls to mind her hometown of Westport, Conn. A native of the Northeast, Keating grew up in a family that valued liberal arts education. She attended Wellesley College in Cambridge, Mass., earning the bachelor of arts degree in English and psychology. Graduate studies took her to the West Coast, where she completed the master of arts and Ph.D. degrees in English at the University of California-Irvine.
In 1998, Keating returned to the East Coast to join Greensboro College. As a professor of literature and drama and director of the College's Writing Across the Curriculum program, she delights in helping students make new discoveries - about literature and themselves.
"As a teacher, the value for me is when students discover a new idea or a unique talent or skill within themselves. I know how much I enjoy discovering new things, and I see myself as a facilitator of their discovery," she said. "Part of the pleasure of being a college professor is the ability to explore new ideas and new people. I get to go out into new terrain and experiment. This is the real value of learning."
Thus, Keating welcomed the opportunity to teach one the College's first hybrid online classes this fall. Known as "brick-and-click" courses, the classes convene online in chat-room discussions in addition to holding periodic classroom meetings. Assignments and materials are posted on the class Web page, and completed work may be submitted via the Internet.
"The online hybrid course has been a positive and intriguing experiment for my students and me," said Keating. "The students enjoy the online component in part because it provides a different perspective from the traditional classroom setting. In the virtual world, they must use their imaginations more and be more self-directed. Greensboro College's student body is open to diverse viewpoints, so we can foster this curiosity about other perspectives."
Teaching an online course seems a natural step in Keating's professional and personal evolution: although her favorite literary focus is 18th- and 19th-century British literature, she simultaneously devours information about computer and World Wide Web technology. She has presented numerous lectures and published a growing list of articles on the subject of information-age technology and education.
"I have a very strong desire to see technology infused in intelligent ways in our curriculum and all over campus. As a college, we need to be using new media, electronic discourse and virtual reality and examining how the electronic age is changing everything from the act of reading to personal identity," Keating said.
According to Keating, information-age technology involves two major components: thinking critically about information and developing specific strategies to use existing and new technologies with intelligence and confidence.
"Thinking critically about information is perhaps even more important to me as an instructor at a liberal arts college than helping students figure out how to operate specific applications," Keating said. "Students, faculty and staff need to be critical inquirers about the role of technology in our lives and in the future. We need to critique technology, which does not mean to reject it but to consider the matter philosophically."
Keating's new course, Web Authoring: The Rhetoric of the Web, which she'll teach for the first time this spring, will allow students to practice different ways of thinking about technology. The Writing Across the Curriculum Program has created a new forum on its website (http://englishgc.org/writing/techtalk.htm) for considering technology critically. Called "TechTalk," the forum reflects on teaching and technology.
"Faculty have as many smart questions as students, and we need to come together and share our brainstorming and our expertise," Keating said.
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