DL Ambassadors - Tonya Jackson

Tonya Jackson is associate dean of instruction and an adjunct faculty member at Mohave Community College in western Arizona. She has taught Introduction to Biology, General Biology for Majors I and II, Cooking with Chemistry, and Anatomy and Physiology I and II. She has been using Carolina Distance Learning kits since 2022.

What is the most fulfilling part of your work?

We have a diverse faculty pool, so there are folks that I feel like we learn new things from each other every single time that we talk. It’s great to get to watch them grow and change in their careers, because then I know how much it impacts their students.

I live in Mohave County, Arizona, and it is one of the poorest counties in the United States. And it has been for a very long time. I like to remind myself that every one of our students that gets a degree, there’s a large chance that that degree means that that student is going to be taken out of generational poverty, and that’s huge.

What do you think would have added to your own learning experience when you were a university student?

We did not have a lot of the support that we have now. For example, because I was first generation student—my mom didn’t make much money at all—I got a very generous financial aid package, but I had no idea what it meant. I think the biggest thing that would have made a difference in my education would have been having a person to go and talk to.

In the classroom, what do you think would have helped you?

I was one of those kids that did not have to study in high school. I never studied and I always got good grades, but it was always because I was really excited about what I was learning.

I got to college, and I really didn’t know how to study, and I couldn’t afford my textbooks, so I was kind of already behind the mark. I think in classes if I had had somebody that would step back and kind of walk me through things a little bit more, that would’ve made a really big difference.

What roles have you taken on as an educator?

I started as full-time faculty at our college in 2004. I became a department chair I think my third year of teaching and was able to be the instructional leader for life and physical sciences. I became a dean right when COVID happened. I switched from being faculty to the associate dean of instruction, and now I oversee all of STEM.

I’ve had a lot of different roles in my tenures as an educator, and I’m very much looking forward to the future. Making classes more affordable and making classes more engaging are huge.

What is one of the best ways that you found to connect with your students, both in-person and distance learners?

One of the starting points for a lot of my students is that I tell them rather openly either in person or through our LMS about all the struggles I faced as a student. I encourage them to use their resources.

I let them know that I have a learning disability, and if I could do this with a learning disability, working full-time through all of my degrees—sometimes I had two jobs because somebody’s got to pay the bills—you can get through all these things. I try very hard, while maintaining appropriate boundaries, to let my students know that they’re not alone in their struggles.

How do you feel using Distance Learning kits have enhanced your teaching and/or your students’ learning experience? Have any of your students given feedback on their experience with these kits?

I ask specific questions at the end of every class about course materials. One of the questions is, “Do you feel that the kit is worth the money?”

There are some students who are always going to say, “No, everything should be free.” But a majority of the students tell us, “I really like the kit,” because they got to feel the content and got to manipulate the objects or do the chemical tests. Because they have the opportunity for hands-on learning.

We have a lot of students who do have babies at home. What we’re doing by using these kits, especially putting them in people’s homes, is introducing scientific experimentation to a younger generation and really capturing students.