UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A wide array of teaching techniques exist at Penn State, and especially so in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, where communications intersects with topics like health and ethics more than some may realize.
Teaching Professor Shannon Kennan’s one true love may be teaching, but she has spent years flexing her blended knowledge of health, ethics and communication to effectively teach Bellisario College students.
“I knew in high school that I wanted to be a teacher. I’ve been a teacher my whole life,” said Kennan, who earned her initial degree in early childhood education and said she realized she wanted to learn more and help older students as well. “I realized in myself that I enjoyed helping the students become better people. So, I went back to school to get a master’s degree that had a counseling focus. It was a blend in higher education, administration and counseling psychology.”
Kennan uses her experience and expertise to help students succeed with a combination of mental health awareness, psychology and therapeutic techniques. Kennan joined the Bellisario College in 2011 as director of e-learning initiatives, and earned her doctorate in mass communications from Penn State in 2017.
“I am in my perfect job right now for my interests and skills,” Kennan said. “I started on the path of journalism ethics, and I’ve been on that path the whole time I’ve been at Penn State, and I just love it.”
As coordinator of first-year seminars in the Bellisario College and curriculum coordinator for the Department of Journalism, Kennan collaborates with faculty to integrate healthy, ethical teaching practices into the curriculum. Prioritizing student success and individual attention rests at the core of her preferred approach, she said.
“My teaching philosophy is what I call mastery learning,” Kennan said. “My one primary goal over every other goal is I want my students to be able to master the content of the class.”
As a result, Kennan’s students intentionally have more than one path to success baked into their course. “In my online teaching, every student can meet with me on Zoom and just have conversations, either about class or about life, and I give them extra credit for it,” Kennan said. “They get to know me, and it’s not just a name on the computer.”
This hands-on time spent with students, both in person and online, creates a two-way learning opportunity, allowing Kennan to adapt her methods each semester. She said she believes the best teachers connect with every student, professionally and personally.
“The students really pay attention to the tone in the instructor’s language,” Kennan said. “So, I go out of my way to be friendly and engaging and to make sure that they know that I’m really reading what they write.
“They really want to be known as individuals, and they want to know that we care about the work that we’re doing and that they’re doing, that it matters.”
Kennan said her approach creates more than a welcoming class environment; it immerses ethics into the core tenets of the classroom.
“One of the things I do with ethics that I think is extremely important is a lot of self-reflection,” Kennan said. “I want them to think about how these ethical things we’re talking about apply to them. What do they think they would do, and why? The 'why' part is really important in ethics.”