Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D.

One day my father asked my brother and me why we had stopped roller skating. In those days, roller skates were constructed out of skin-bruising, abrasive metal. The design of the skates required a metal key. By turning the metal key, the skate adjusted by lengthening or widening to fit ...

My dissertation advisor and I were discussing my recently written chapter. She believed the chapter needed more work, needed a rewrite. I was passively resisting her advice believing my words were …. good. In a stern tone, my advisor said to me, “You must learn to kill your babies.” Her tone ...

“This class goes soooo fast!” “Wait, we just started! … It’s over?” “Doc, time in this class flies by.” Recognizing when students are learning and when they are not can be a challenge. The above student comments are the kinds of feedback I yearned to hear. I would listen for ...

Unprecedented. The current communal struggle to live through the viral pandemic is often called – unprecedented. In choosing to use this word, we are not so much trying to communicate that this moment of prolonged upheaval has never before happened. Historians routinely remind us that viral pandemics are part of United ...

In the late 1970s, the summer day camp hosted by my church was filled with children grades 1 to 6. The counselors, including me and my best friend Michele, were high school aged people. I taught Nature Studies and Michele taught Spanish. Along with these two subjects, the campers also took classes ...