Why I Teach: Stephen Hendrix
Why I Teach: Stephen Hendrix
This episode features Stephen Hendrix, a tenured instructor in the Department of Computing in ETSU’s College of Business and Technology. Mr. Hendrix is a three-time ETSU graduate. In addition to teaching, he is actively involved in service at ETSU, where he has represented his fellow faculty members in various leadership roles.
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Video Transcript
Stephen Hendrix
The basic process of coding is relatively simple. But understanding the whys and the hows and the logics and all of those things, that's really where it's impactful. So for me, one measure of success in a successful day in the classroom is the "aha moment."
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Hi, I'm Kimberly McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at East Tennessee State University. From the moment I arrived on this campus, I have been inspired by our faculty, their passion for what they do, their belief in the power of higher education, and the way they are transforming the lives of their students. This podcast is dedicated to them, our incredible faculty at ETSU. Hear their stories as they tell us "Why I Teach."
In this episode, we will talk with Stephen Hendrix, a tenured instructor in the Department of Computing and ETSU's College of Business and Technology.
Mr. Hendrix is a three-time ETSU graduate earning his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Computer and Information Sciences here, as well as an MBA. He's currently completing his dissertation to earn his Ph.D. in Information Systems at Dakota State University.
In addition to teaching, Mr. Hendrix is actively involved in service at ETSU, where he has represented fellow faculty members in various leadership roles. He has served as past president of the Faculty Senate, and he's the current chair of the Sub-Council for University Governance. He serves on various other university committees and councils such as University Council, the Budget and Strategic Planning Committee, the Strategic Resource Realignment Committee, and the Facilities Design Task Force. He also teaches a variety of computing and information systems classes ranging from health information systems to programing for data analytics. He's also taught ETSU 1020 Foundations of Student Success, which is ETSU's first-year experience course designed to help students on a successful path towards graduation. Enjoy the show.
Stephen, welcome to the show. I start my podcast with the same question for every guest. Take me back to your first day of teaching at ETSU as a faculty member and looking back on that day, what is one piece of advice that you would have given yourself?
Stephen Hendrix
Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Looking back on that first day in 2013, coming to ETSU to teach full-time for the Department of Computing, there was this this feeling of excitement, nervousness, a lot of nervous energy. Thankfulness to be a part of the journey. And so, looking back, if I was to give myself a piece of advice for that day, it would be to enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey that the students go on throughout the next ten plus years of my career, but then also enjoy the journey that I go on to grow as a faculty member.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Yeah, that's great. So I mentioned in your introduction that you're a three-time ETSU graduate and last year I heard you share your story about how you came to ETSU as an Upward Bound student. Will you tell us a bit about that program and how it impacted your career and life path?
Stephen Hendrix
Absolutely. So the Upward Bound Program is a program that works with low-income students whose parents did not complete a four-year education. So low-income and what we call first- generation college-bound students. And it's a program it's a very intensive program. Students live on the campuses in which those programs reside. And it shows them the opportunity to be successful. Right. So helps to fill in the gaps for first-generation kids.
And my story is no different. As a first-gen child, I was all about sports, loved baseball, loved playing sports, but wasn't necessarily thinking about what was next. You know, what comes after high school. And so the Upward Bound Program, they aired a video on the closed circuit television network in my high school and talking about this program that gets kids ready and excited for college. And my buddy was sitting beside of me and he was like, "Who would want to do that?" And I was like, “I think I would, actually. This college thing seems intriguing, maybe.” And so I signed up for the program, and it was life-changing. It was an opportunity to shift my focus. I still played sports, but to shift my focus towards academics and to think about what were those next steps when I completed high school and so I got the opportunity to actually live here at ETSU during the summer months my sophomore junior and senior year the chance to take dual enrollment classes. So I became a college student while in high school here on campus, having incredible instructional opportunity from the faculty here. And ultimately it led to an exposure moment for me which was being exposed to this idea of creating websites which to that point a computer to me was playing Oregon Trail and having fun and never thought about what are the other uses. And so web design was a class that I took when I was in Upward Bound and fell in love with it. I came here to ETSU as an undergraduate student and kind of floundered around a little bit trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and thought about psychology, thought about being a radio deejay at one point. And then I landed in an Intro to Computer Science class with Dr. Martin Barrett, and it affirmed to me that is what I wanted to do the rest of my life was to be in computer science.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
I'm certain that the experience you had in Upward Bound impacted the way you work with students.
Stephen Hendrix
Absolutely. The opportunities that were provided to me in Upward Bound, as I reflected on those as I began teaching full-time at the university, it became this sense of, okay, how do I make sure that all of my students feel welcome to my classroom? How do I use language that all students can understand that aren't just the academic terms that we sometimes get caught up in? And how can I make all students feel like they're important and valued and a part of this institution which sometimes is really important for those first-gen kids?
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Yeah. Who are some of your teaching role models and what did you learn from them that you continue
to use in your classroom today?
Stephen Hendrix
So I would definitely think there's a think about role models in the classroom, um, Marty Barrett was one - Dr. Martin Barrett, who was one of the first faculty members that I had in the Department of Computing. Dr. Barrett did an incredibly good job being able to share his content in a way that we could relate as we went topic to topic. And so connecting each of those topics together to form a bigger picture in the learning process. And so I try to model that to this very day. I try to build on things that students would come in with some understanding about and try to relate that to the topics that we're discussing in that class, whether it's our first-year kids and first-year experience courses or it's graduate students designing digital dashboards. Try to relate them to here are the fundamental concepts that are building on each other. Yeah. That will help you ultimately get to some type of goal. And oh, by the way, here's some of the theory and logic that goes behind all that. Uh huh. Yes. Kind of sprinkled in there a little bit.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
What is the successful day in the classroom look like to you?
Stephen Hendrix
So what I think of a successful day in the classroom, I think of things such as the "aha moments." Right. So when you're sitting in a lab and you're talking about web design and you're talking about how do we use this particular element and why we do this? And the student goes, "Oh, I completely get it now." I understand why that's so important. Yeah, we talk a lot to our students about we can teach almost anybody to code. The basic process of coding is relatively simple, but understanding the whys, and the hows, and the logics and all of those things, that's really where it's impactful. So for me, one measure of success in a successful day in the classroom is the "aha moments." The second would be the day that the students start exploring on their own and then start asking some challenging questions that make me go, "I don't know that I even know that. Let's take a look." I was teaching a web design class and was talking about creating an ordered list on a web page. And the student goes, "Well, can you do this?" And I was like, Well, yeah, here's how you do it. Can you do that? I have no idea. Why don't you go look it up and let us know? Tell us. And so, you know, having that engagement with the students, those make for successful days in the classroom.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
And always a great teaching strategy to be willing to say, I don't know, let's find out.
Stephen Hendrix
Right. Well, I think especially because that class is a freshman level class, there's this perception that the faculty knows everything and that we aren't open to learning or admitting that sometimes we just don't know. And so I think being able to say, yes, there are things that we don't know, but let's talk about how we figure it out together.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Oh, that's great. Yeah. Computing is a rapidly changing field of study. So, how do you prepare your students for a career that's constantly evolving and developing?
Stephen Hendrix
It constantly changes. I remember having a conversation with a colleague of mine the other day and he was getting ready to give a lecture on a particular technical topic, and he had listened to an NPR broadcast that introduced something new that made his topic completely, like, obsolete. I was like, I can't believe this. So, you know, teaching in this field sometimes can be very challenging. You know, constantly for us as faculty, keeping up with the current technologies, understanding what industry is looking for. For us, I think the big focus is that at the end of the day, there are some core concepts. So, for example, an if statement, regardless of whether you got curly brackets or semicolons or whatever language, the idea behind an if statement is it's all the same. The logic of how it works. Yeah. So understanding those critical concepts and then expanding that into learning a new language or a new paradigm or a new way to develop technologies. It will always be changing. And we tell our students that. From a first-year experience forward, this field is a field you'll have to grow in, and be able to continually grow as the years go on. So, understanding that up front and understanding the process of learning and the process of making yourself better and investing in yourself is important.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Well, you mentioned community partnerships. So tell us a little bit about the partnership ETSU has with Blue Cross Blue Shield and the BlueSky Institute.
Stephen Hendrix
Absolutely. So the BlueSky program is just absolutely an incredible program. It's, you know, program that works with students, 30 students in each of our cohorts to provide them the opportunity to earn almost a completely free degree in Chattanooga, a two-and-a-half-year program, where they'll walk out with an accredited Bachelor of Science and Computing, with a focus and Information Systems and with job opportunities available to them. So it's an immersive experience. The students are together in cohorts that entire duration, so they get to learn with each other and grow with each other.
We have dedicated faculty down there who are teaching those courses and providing instruction, and then they're also gaining some incredible experiences along the way. So like for next week or two weeks from now, they are traveling to San Francisco, as a cohort, for the opportunity to go to Silicon Valley and meet with folks from Google and meet with folks in the tech sector to better understand what's happening in that space. So just an incredible partnership. Blue Cross has been incredible partners with us as we've continued to develop and grow that program.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Yeah, it's been a real model.
Stephen Hendrix
It really has been. It's you know, we hear from other corporate partners. How do we get involved? How do we bring this to X location? And I think that that speaks volumes to not only the need that that industry has for folks in Information Systems, but the quality of the program that we're offering. And the ability to deliver that.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Yeah, I agree. Would you tell us a bit about how you are preparing students to address the use of AI?
Stephen Hendrix
So AI, of course, is new technology, generative AI in particular - new technology where we are seeing students coming with both excitement and concern at the exact same time. You know, there's always that that fear of will this replace me? Will this replace what I'm doing or what I'm going to be doing when I leave the institution. And we remind our students that AI is a tool in your overall toolbox. So, AI can help assist you in learning the exact syntax for a particular piece of code that you're writing, or to maybe understand a little bit more detail about a particular topic. But you were ultimately the experts. And so you're walking out of here both with the technical skills, but also the ability to logically and computationally think through these problems. And that's what employers are really hiring you to do, is to be more than what we're currently seeing out of AI and really go deeper. Now, that may change as a AI continues to grow. But but at this time, that's really where we're trying to help our students understand how they can use AI both in the classroom and as they move into the work world.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Would you tell us a bit about the types of careers that our computing students typically pursue?
Stephen Hendrix
Absolutely. So in the Department of Computing, we have four concentrations, which would be our Computer Science concentration, our Information Technology, Information Systems, and our Cybersecurity. And so we're seeing students who are leaving the institution, who are heading into those traditional software engineering roles, where they go and they sit behind the computer and they type and write code and do all the fun things. But we're seeing a significant amount of our students heading into cybersecurity. We have a student who's heading to Oak Ridge in the next couple of weeks and he'll be working in cybersecurity down there. We're seeing students who are going into database administration and managing these large amounts of big data and how do we use them, which also leads into data analytics. We're seeing students, especially some of our graduate students who are heading into that data analytics space to help make meaning and sense out of these large quantities of data. And so we're seeing students go into a wide variety of different careers. And what's really interesting is that many of our students are not going to tech companies. So the jobs at the Facebooks and the Googles and Microsofts are there. And we see students go there, but we also see so many students who are going into industry. Right. Like Eastman Chemical or Ballad Health, or they're going to Oak Ridge, or they're going to other types of locations in which the computing and model, so computing and some other skill kind of come together.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
What hands-on community-engaged learning opportunities do computing students have while they're enrolled at ETSU?
Stephen Hendrix
So students in the Department of Computing, from undergraduate to graduate students, traditionally work in some form on a project. So our undergraduate students work in Software Engineering I and II, where they work on some type of project. Typically, those projects have been identified as projects that could assist in community partners. So the opportunity to maybe work with a nonprofit organization on developing a website or developing some technology. Our graduate students are required to do capstone projects, and some of their capstone projects can be anything from working with Public Health on creating visualizations to working with the International Storytelling Center to develop a solution for digitizing their stories and also to take their stories and translate them from spoken language to written. And so doing that is an automated process. So we encourage our students in every step of the way, and we value those opportunities. We do internships. But we go beyond just doing internships. We actually have a class that's dedicated to preparing them for college and for career success. So that classes a 3000 level class. We bring in industry partners. They actually go through the interview process. We talk to them about being good stewards in the community when you're working in these various fields.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
It's fantastic. As I mentioned, in addition to all the work you do inside the classroom, you've also represented the interests of your fellow faculty members on Faculty Senate and on several other committees and councils. Why is this service important to you and what impact do you think that it has on the university?
Stephen Hendrix
As somebody who has seen the mission, lived out in my own personal life - you know, Dr. Noland always talks about that you know, one of the missional parts of this institution is impacting the lives of the people the Appalachian Highlands region. And I can sit here today and just say that my life was impacted because of the work before me. Yeah. It has changed me forever for who I am, my friends, my wife. All of the things can be linked back to the work of this institution. And so for me, the opportunity to be a small part of that story, to be able to contribute and to serve and represent the faculty through the Faculty Senate, to be able to serve through the various committees at the department and institutional level - the opportunity to continue just to give back. And for me, I've also found that through those opportunities, I've been able to bring it back to my classroom, which has been phenomenal. I've had the opportunity to talk about the Voyager project, as enterprise systems is one of the areas in which I teach. We've talked a lot about how as Voyager went through the process, what are some of the pitfalls and challenges, success stories and how does that tie back to what our students are going to be doing one day?
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Right. Well, I can reflect that I think one of the things that I've recognized is what an outstanding and positive ambassador you've always been for faculty and for the university and as you say, for the mission of the university. So, thank you.
Stephen Hendrix
Thank you. Yeah.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Finally, what impact do you hope you've made on your students?
Stephen Hendrix
At the end of the day, I hope for my students, I've had two ways of impact. One is being a positive influence, being a smiling face, someone that they can talk to, go to, have a conversation with. And then second, I hope that I've inspired them to go and seek careers in health care information systems or to seek careers in enterprise systems or to further their studies and come back and get their master's or doctoral degrees. So to me, it's about inspiring students having the opportunity just to be a part of their journey as they're going through their time here at ETSU.
Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle
Thank you, Stephen. I appreciate your commitment to your students and to your fellow faculty members. Your passion for ETSU is clearly rooted in your history here, and your work is paving the way for our current students to follow their dreams here, just like you did.
Thank you for listening to “Why I Teach.” For more information about Mr. Hendrix, the ETSU Department of Computing or this podcast series, visit the ETSU Provost website at ETSU dot edu slash Provost. You can follow me on social media at ETSU Provost and if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like and subscribe to “Why I Teach,” wherever you listen to podcasts.
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East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.
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