Dan Cano

Professor

“Don’t hesitate to come to the faculty for advice. Get a reading list and a feel for the teachers before classes start. You’ll be prepared and you’ll save a lot of time.”

A published novelist, teacher of Mexican American literature and inveterate traveler to Mexico, Dan Cano has been down a lot of interesting roads. But the road that brought him to teaching actually began at SMC. “I took a class on writing with Dick Dodge who’s now retired,” recalls Dan. “And in that class, he was enjoying himself so much and giving out such great information that I though, ‘Yeah. That’s the kind of job I’d like to have.’”

Dan was a “freeway flyer” for a while, teaching at various colleges around Los Angeles. But he feels that finally settling in at SMC has been ideal for him. “It’s wonderful teaching here. There’s such freedom in the classroom, and it’s a very academic atmosphere,” he says. “At a lot of community colleges you’ll find people that teach and then head off to sell real estate. But the instructors here are teachers first. At SMC, it’s learning that’s right up front. It’s inspiring.”

Dan’s Mexican American literature classes have inspired some notable successes in their own right. “A recruiter from Berkeley told me about one of my students who transferred there. The student said that one of my classes had really turned him on to learning. And if my teaching can help students find that kind of value in their lives, I guess I feel that’s a pretty good accomplishment.”

Dan advises that success in college often depends on developing your own network of contacts. “The best thing to do to succeed is to find people who’ve been here a while and ask them a lot of questions,” he says. “Students always give good information. They can help each other by advising which are good classes, which are the best teachers, and how to get through the administrative maze. You can save a lot of time by learning which line to stand in and how to register for the right classes.”

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