Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2018 – Jamestown: Dale Yerpe

Dale Yerpe joined Jamestown Community College in 1976. He teaches in the Arts, Humanities, & Health Sciences department. Dale received the Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1980 and 1984, the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998, and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998.

Online teaching spoke to me right from the start. It said that SUNY-quality education should be available to everyone everywhere in every form possible. It said that as Internet connectivity flows from urban areas out into the hills and hollows of rural NY, opportunities will grow for people too far from campus or with conventional class times already overflowing with children and jobs and hearth and home.  It said that a college education belongs in every corner of the state, and it said we could do that.
Of course, I found it’s more complicated than I thought, but I accept that philosophy of education and still believe that my online teaching is one way to merge higher education into the lives of students both on campus and at a distance. This passion for the transforming power of college, available to all, is what first drew me to online teaching in the days of IBM ThinkPads and Windows 95. I am kept there by the courageous students who overcome all sorts of obstacles to use college in shaping their lives.

I am a community college writing professor through and through, with degrees from SUNY Fredonia and Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English.  My current cause is promoting OER resources where I teach, Jamestown Community College.