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Home » About Norwich » SGS Today »
Prof. Nick Marianos and his family enjoy a boat ride on the Bosphorus River in Istanbul, Turkey [photo by Sophie Marianos].
MCE professor talks teaching from Turkey
by Sarah Tuff, correspondent
© Mar. 13, 2009 Norwich University Office of Communications
It was 4:30 p.m. in Ankara, Turkey, and Master of Civil Engineering (MCE) Professor Nick Marianos paused from a phone interview to usher his 7-year-old son out the apartment door to choose a movie from a video store across the street.
"Where we were in Texas, there was no way he could have done that — there's actually more of a neighborhood feel here," said Marianos, who relocated from the northern suburbs of Houston to Ankara in August 2008 with his wife, son and 11-year-old-daughter. He still marvels at the ways their daily life has changed.
"I'm starting to learn Turkish, and it's definitely farklı — different," said Marianos, explaining his family's basic adjustments to a denser population and use of mass transit instead of cars. "And different in ways that I really wasn't expecting."
Also farklı is the way Marianos has taught his MCE courses — different, perhaps, in ways neither he nor his students were expecting.
Marianos was living in St. Louis when he joined Norwich University's School of Graduate Studies in 2005. But after moving to The Woodlands, a planned community near Houston, he decided it was time for a bigger change. "I think it's important that the kids live somewhere else in the world," said Marianos. "There's more to life than the suburban United States."
Teaching online courses meant that Marianos could easily pick up his computer and go — sort of. There was a brief hiatus while the family was on the plane, and then when they signed up for a faster Internet connection than the technology in their Ankara apartment building could support. (The problem was quickly resolved.)
Thanks to co-instructors like Thad Gabryszewski in Portland, Maine, who helps Marianos teach a seminar, the transition was virtually seamless. According to Gabryszewski, the seven-hour time difference between himself and Marianos enhances the benefits of an asynchronous learning environment.
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“Here, they don't call [bridges] historic until they are 300 or 400 years old.” |
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"He seems even more available now," said Gabryszewski, who graduated from the MCE program in 2007 and will be teaching a course on his own this spring. He hopes to exhibit the same patience and respect for students as his colleague.
Marianos said he spends most mornings doing "Turkish things." A self-employed engineering consultant, he is particularly interested in historic railroad bridges and works with Turkish officials on translating U.S. bridge design specifications and pursuing structural-health monitoring of railroad bridges in Turkey.
"I've worked on a number of historic bridges in the U.S. that are 100 or 120 years old," said Marianos. "Here, they don't call them historic until they are 300 or 400 years old."
In the afternoons, Marianos works with U.S. clients and shifts into professor mode for the MCE courses. In the past, he's had students from Guam and Albania; and others who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. This term, Jamaica, the Persian Gulf and Africa round out the originating points of emails and Skype messages sent to Marianos.
"The neat thing about Norwich is that it doesn't really matter where you are," he said. "They say that about the students and now I'm getting to see it as an instructor."
Although he has to keep an eye on various time zones, Marianos said being seven or more hours ahead of the U.S. is a plus. "From a student's perspective, I've probably been able to turn around grading faster from their perception because of the time difference," he said.
Two mornings a week, Marianos gets his own student perspective as he takes Turkish language classes.
"I'm back into the learning mode again," he said. "And I think that does help give me a little more insight into what the students are going through."
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