Nancy Grass-Hemmert

Professor

“I did a study on new faculty hires in colleges and discovered that very few hung around long. They felt lost, ignored, and ‘outside.’ But SMC is a study in making teachers feel at home.”

Nancy Grass-Hemmert reports that she is having an enormous problem in her first full-time year at SMC. “It’s the cookies!” she roars. “Students keep bringing me bags of them, which I put out for everyone. And of course, when they have one, I have to have one.” But that’s actually not such a ‘hitch-in-the-get-along’ as the one Nancy faced when teaching part time all over the LA area. “I was putting about 1,000 miles a week on my car driving between all the colleges,” she says. “Now I live on Pearl Street, so I walk to work. And my kids walk to school. We’re all walkers. But do I lose weight? No! It’s those cookies!”

Managing kids and a household has been a complete plus for Nancy’s approach to the students in her classes. “I’ve had some great teachers, and they’ve all had great love and respect for their students,” she says. “It’s like with my own kids: There’s gotta be tough love, with understanding, openness, and clear limits. They’ve got to feel understood, but challenged as well. And I tell my students,” she continues, “you don’t have to like me. This is not a popularity contest. But I care deeply about whether or not you learn something. That’s my job!”

Nancy has been proposing a plethora of new classes to be taught at SMC dealing with intercultural and group communications. “It’s incredible how receptive people at SMC are about new ideas and trying things out. But without a doubt, the best thing about this College is the students. People playing guitars under the trees, reading, arguing heatedly about theories and ideas. They’re like university students, but with the hunger of the community college student. Perfect!”

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