- Faculty; On Campus
The first instruction Dr. Andrew Martino gives students: Smell your books.
"My students sometimes look at me like I'm nuts. Reading should be an experience, more than just talking about it in class," he says.
Martino, who teaches literature and composition, doesn't give conventional tests and spurns structured classes.
"My students get more out of exploring things, going down a lot of different avenues, than having a very rigorous, structured setting," he says. "I like it when we get lost in conversation, because that leads us to places that we never would have attempted to go."
Fundamentally Martino, who chairs SNHU's English Department, wants his students to learn what it means to think. He hopes they depart his classes with an appreciation for literature and two realizations:
"One, there are views other than their own, and two, that learning doesn't stop when your degree is finished," he says. "So if I introduce a (Italo) Calvino or a (Gabriel) Garcia Marquez, maybe they won't appreciate it now as much as they will 10 years from now."
He finds teaching, especially introducing students to literature, thoroughly rewarding.
"I learn something every day. I can't imagine doing anything else," he says. "It's going to be interesting to see how I teach "Don Quixote" at 80, as opposed to 40."
