Lone Star College-CyFair’s Dr. Sandra Harvey, history professor and two-time Faculty Excellence Award winner (in 2005 and again in 2020), has been chosen as a Texas Piper Professor nominee.
This most prestigious Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation program honor is given to only 10 professors annually in recognition of superior teaching at the college level.
Dr. Harvey, a founding LSC-CyFair faculty member, has taught history for more than 24 years. Her passion for teaching and her love of history has only grown throughout the years.
“History is to me is the best of all worlds. I love to examine how events impacted people in their everyday lives and the changes that occurred going forward,” she said. “It is a story that I enjoy working through with my students.”
Growing up in an impoverished and difficult home, Dr. Harvey struggled to envision a future. Life was a daily struggle and a successful future seemed unattainable. She felt destined to fail; however, thanks to key faculty encountered throughout high school and college, she instead succeeded.
These early experiences shaped her teaching philosophy. There are four things very important to her. First, she values student success and seeing her student academically grow and blossom in the academic environment. Second, she values relevancy and wants students to find connections with the past to help in intellectual empowerment. Third, she values organic teaching moments, remaining open to occurrences outside the classroom as well. Finally, she values students, cheering for their success, treating everyone with respect, striving to inspire them to try, lending support when needed, and celebrating with them when they succeed.
Dr. Harvey uses a variety of student engagement activities to achieve her goals. One of her favorite ways to create relevance for her students is through the use of an oral history project, in which students interview someone a generation older than themselves.
Dr. Harvey also provides historical insights for her students with engaging projects. For example, to understand the importance of the cotton gin and its impact on slavery, she brings in cotton to have students manually extract cotton seeds. In studying the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare, students learn how fear and hysteria lead to such phenomena. Preferring to bring “realism” and a human interest aspect to her class, she is always on the look out for visual aids and examples of individuals who faced obstacles, persevered, survived and sometimes flourished.
Going beyond the classroom, Dr. Harvey serves in numerous roles that support students and her coworkers, such as LSC-CyFair’s current Faculty Senate President, department chair, a member of curriculum, advisory and hiring committees, a chaperone for study abroad and an Honors College mentor, just to name a few. Moreover, she also delivers historical community presentations on a variety of topics to the Academy for Lifelong Learners and volunteers at several Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District campuses.
Piper Professors winners will be announced this spring. Since the college’s inception in 2002, LSC-CyFair has had two of the seven winners in the LSC system’s history including Susan Edwards in 2005 and Jeff Edwards in 2007. For information on the college, go to LoneStar.edu/cyfair.
LSC-CyFair is also currently registering for the December mini-mester classes that begin Dec. 20 and spring semester classes that begin Jan. 18, 2022. For information, go to LoneStar.edu/registration.