Profs with Pride Builds Student Awareness of Campus Events

Program Helps Faculty Encourage Students to Experience Campus Life

Simon Bott believes one of the keys to student success is for students to become engaged on campus.

“For me, a university education is not just you come, you go to class, and you go away again,” said Bott, an instructional professor of chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Bott teaches introductory chemistry with a typical class size of 450 to 550 students per class. With that number of students in one place at one time, he saw a great opportunity to promote campus activities.

“It started out with me encouraging students in my classes to go to all kinds of things. At the beginning of class, I’d talk about different events, give facts about the university, and talk about famous alums and faculty,” Bott said.

In 2007, Bott expanded the program to other faculty, starting at first with professors teaching classes of 250 students or more. With that expansion, “Profs with Pride” was born.

Profs with Pride now includes about 300 UH faculty members.

“Profs with Pride faculty receive a weekly email and PowerPoint listing events over the course of the week,” Bott said. “Student group events, cultural events, workshops, athletics, concerts, plays and lectures are equally represented.”

Some faculty members run the presentation while students are arriving for class; others put it online along with weekly coursework for students to view. Professors also have access to Bott’s Profs with Pride blog where he categorizes the week’s events.

“Most of the colleges within UH are well represented with a slightly greater representation from NSM faculty than other colleges,” he said.

Faculty wanting to receive Profs with Pride emails can sign up by contacting Bott at sbott@uh.edu.

Kathy Major, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics