By Tre Shuttlesworth News Editor
Susquehanna University Provost Dr. Dave Ramsaran may have seen his two decades of full-time teaching come to end when he took up the role as chief academic officer, but he still cherishes the experiences he’s had as a sociology professor.
“I really liked the fact that I can work with young people and really think about how their ideas evolve. When I’m in the classroom, I learn more from my students than they do from me, but they don’t know that,” Ramsaran said.
Prior to his time in Susquehanna starting in 2000, Ramsaran had only taught at large research-based institutions such as American University. The first liberal arts college he ever visited was Susquehanna.
“My first teaching gig, when I taught quantitative methods, I had 120 students in the classroom, and when I came here I had 15,”’said Ramsaran.
During his near two decades of teaching Susquehanna classes, Ramsaran has found the most enjoyment in teaching courses related to his research work like Social Stratification in Contemporary Society and Development and Mobilization.
“Those are the ones that I had the most passion for, largely because it dovetailed into a lot of my own research about race, class and gender and how about economic development policy influenced those,” Ramsaran said.
He also found a lot of enjoyment in his class on Caribbean culture in society, which he didn’t get to teach often.
“For me, it was the space that you could really begin to interrogate some of the processes happening in the world now. Long before globalization, before the impact of when we talk about jobs moving overseas, those things were happening in the Caribbean.”
Beginning his education in Trinidad, Ramsaran quickly realized that education was the only option for social mobility in a colonial society.
“My experience in Trinidad had been that one that understood that education was probably the only mechanism for me to get upward mobility,” he said.
Another benefit of a well-rounded education for Ramsaran was the increased social status that came with it.
“That was really important because education meant that somebody would listen to me, he said.
Despite the strong effects of a growing oil industry in the 1980’s in Trinidad, Ramsaran still noticed the negative effects that come with the economic development process.
“They had to devalue their currency, unemployment is going up, women were not getting equal access to particular things.”
Since starting as provost permanently in October of last year, Ramsaran has laid out the goals he hopes to accomplish as chief academic officer at Susquehanna.
“My goal is to make sure that the quality of the academic program that we deliver is what is needed for contemporary students in our society now, and to see what changes are happening in the whole of society and what we need to change to deliver that.”
Since stepping into the role of provost, Ramsaran has already overseen several changes. The department has already reduced the amount of credit hours needed to graduate from 130 to 124 along with granting new students who have completed Associate’s Degrees junior status.
His office has also overseen the name change for the Center for Academic Success.
“We focused less on the concept of achievement and more on the concept of what we need to do to make our students successful.”
Ramsaran hopes students leave Susquehanna with a few key takeaways. He hopes students evaluate the usefulness of any kind of information, have the skills to be effective citizens and he hopes students are able to give back to society.
“We all should be willing to put something back into the system because we got something out of it. That’s my hope that students will get that, that they will see a path towards good citizenship.”
