Professor Robert Alexander
teaches one of the most dreaded
courses at Bucks: Public speaking.
Students dread the course because
of the anxiety that public
speaking inspires.
Because Alexander knows how
nervous students become when
speaking in front of the class, he
starts the course off with a speech
due just two weeks into the semester.
“I know if we don’t jump
right into it, they become even
more nervous with anticipation,”
he said.
Alexander tries to make the
topic of the first speech simple
and unintimidating. “They pick a
fruit, and inform us about it.” The
“fruit speech” is simply a primer
that will eventually lead students
to more complicated forms of informative
and persuasive speech.
Alexander describes his teaching
style as very relaxed. “I’m
having a conversation with my
students,” he said of his lecturing
style. He prefers discussion in the
classroom over him lecturing to
his class.
Because speech presentations
take up only about half of the
classes during the semester, he
uses the rest of the classes to educate
students on topics they might
have not already known about. Instead
of lecturing, he often shows
a movie on the topic.
Alexander explained that the
worst course he had ever taken in
college was world history, where
the professor read the textbook to
the class, verbatim, for the entire
hour. “I would never lecture for
50 minutes without a visual,” he
laughs.
Alexander shows his classes
“movies that
raise questions.”
One
of the
movies involves
the
controversial
nature of artificial
sweeteners.
According
to Alexander,
the chemical
that these
sweet ener s
are composed
of, aspartame,
can be
very dangerous
to a person’s
health,
especially if
consumed in
large quantities.
“Any
time I
see something like aspartame that
is going to kill students, I feel as
though it is my responsibility to
teach them about it.”
Alexander shows his class other
films hoping to spark students’ interest
in doing some investigating
of their own. “I present them with
the information, and it’s up to
them to research it and make their
own conclusions based on their
own research.”
Films like these lead to what is
arguably the students’ most important
speech. Alexander calls it
“the problem speech,” in which
the students elaborate on a current
societal problem.
Beyond the classroom,Alexander’s
favorite past time is flying.
He is a licensed pilot, and he is
building his own plane. Alexander’s
Osprey can land both on
water and on land. To those who
are afraid of flying, Alexander
says, “the sky is the safest place in
the world to travel.”
Alexander is also very involved in
the world of theater and has many
years experience in technical directing.
Technical directing is the
supervising and application of
lights and set design of a theater
performance. Six of the plays he
directed he also wrote.
His love for theater began during
his education at the University
of Hawaii where he saw an opera
performance for the first time.
From then on, he’s spent his life
building an impressive resume
that includes working on sets at
U.C.L.A. and working for 13
years as chairman of the
drama department at
Onondaga Community
College in
Syracuse.
Alexander is also
a prolific reader.
“I’m often
reading three
or four books
at the same
time.”