By: Malak Sherif
Dr. Oshane Santina Thorpe who is a current faculty member at AUE, was born and raised in Jamaica, US, but moved to UAE in 2018 after receiving AUEs job offer which he started it on September 02, 2018.
Before moving to UAE, he worked 7 years in China, 4 of those years in Higher Education. In both the Tianjin Foreign Studies University and the Beijing University of Technology which he misses because he likes relaxed environments, and it was accepted and required to take a mid-day nap after lunch. Therefore, they all had fold out beds in their offices.
Education was his choice of career because of how inspired he was by the passion of his own teachers. Ever since he started his teaching career, he has taught many different courses such as Public Speaking, Media Literacy, Mass Media Theory, Fundamentals of News, and many other more. He even proposed courses for the PR specialization in his first year of work at AUE.
Dr. Oshane always made sure that his students are his number one priority in his career, that is why he always tries to adapt his expectation based on the students, but he tries to never lower his teaching standard. His aim is to bring them up to the level of the class, not disadvantage those who would like to learn because of a few unmotivated students. “My proudest accomplishment surrounds private gratitude given by students at the end of a semester. That keeps me going.” His preferred teaching style is conversational, based on discussions and reasoning. He does not like to lecture. He believes that the best way for a student to learn is to arrive at the conclusion via logical reasoning and problem solving. The effect of the pandemic did not quite shake Dr. Oshane as he is very adaptable to different teaching and learning scenarios. He knew that if it is done from home then it will be quite boring, so he tries to utilize Whiteboards, Polls, YouTube, and MS Forms in his teaching to feel more connected to his students. “I am fine with whatever method of instruction will guarantee safety. But I do miss the personal touch of teaching and interacting with my students.”
Moreover, knowing professor Oshane personally you would know that he is a family man. From staying at home to cook instead of his wife for the kids to having his greatest inspiration be no one other than his Father. He truly enjoys a good family quality time, but with this pandemic affecting us all, Dr. Oshane had a different side to it in which he said “With a baby born in March I was able to spend more time with my family. I still had to work, as in the early days of the pandemic, but I did not feel like I was working from home. I felt like I WAS LIVING AT WORK.” Which might have been the case with many of us when it was the start of a pandemic especially with the lockdown being initiated.
When Dr. Oshane is not in the academic environment he is usually doing one of the following: Business developments, exercising, walking trails or swimming, and as much as he is successful in all of that it didn’t change the fact that when he was asked what would he want to change in his life he mentioned this “I would probably change my major and focus on something practical for my higher education, like design or film making and If I were not an academic, I would love to be a farmer. It is something I hope to achieve in my lifetime.”
