Follo

With 15 days until her baby’s due date, Associate Professor of Sociology Giovanna Follo says that the fatigue of keeping up with work and being pregnant has been a challenge, but it hasn’t affected her teaching.

“I don’t think I would have planned a pregnancy for the summer or any other down time,” Follo said. “You just take it as it comes.”

Follo came to the U.S. from Canada because she said it gave her the opportunity to work at a university where she could put more of an emphasis on teaching, rather than research.

“Canada has a lot of Research universities, so you really have to focus a lot on the research, where as in the U.S. there’s one, a lot more opportunities, but two, you have this ability to go to a university where you can still do your research, but really the bigger stress is the teaching,” Follo said.

Follo has worked at Emporia State for a year and a half and she says she likes it because she has the chance to teach a lot of different types of courses in her field. She says she dislikes the large sizes of general education courses, but she likes that the sizes of her upper level courses are smaller than most other universities.

“The smaller classes really do allow you to create a better report and better discussion,” Follo said. “I really love in class discussions and stuff like that but it’s just something that you kind of have to deal with and that’s kind of where things are going right now so you kind of have to just adapt.”

Eugene Terrell, chair of the sociology department and associate professor of sociology, said Follo has brought a new teaching style to the department where it is more group oriented and students discuss rather than listening to the professor. He said she also uses writing in exams as opposed to multiple choice questions.

“Since she’s from Canada, she doesn’t buy in to the traditional American school type of multiple choice exams,” Terrell said.

Follo received her bachelor of arts in sociology from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She got her master’s degree at the University of Windsor and her Ph.D. at Wayne State University in Detroit. She said she planned on going into social work, but didn’t get into the program. She said sociology interested her in terms of deviance and social norms.

“The idea of sociology really intrigued me because of the areas that I was really looking at in terms of gender, deviance and stuff like that,” Follo said.

Sophomore sociology major Evan Dean said he likes Follo’s classes because she gets the students views and perceptions of what they learn and utilizes YouTube clips that are pertinent to the topic.

“She makes you think but she also lets you create your own theories and concepts of what she’s talking about,” Dean said.

Follo has done martial arts since 1989 and played rugby for four years.

“I’ve done rugby, not doing that anymore,” Follo said. “Martial arts really isn’t a hobby it’s more of a lifestyle and something I do practice.”

Having been involved in sports, Follo said her three favorite areas of study in sociology are sports, gender and the body. She said that because she has been involved in more male dominated areas of sports, gender and sport work together for her.

Terrell said that Follo has brought new courses like sociology of food and diet and sociology of the body that have to do with her areas of interest.

“Those three areas really have a kind of fascination for me, especially the way we perceive it, the way society really looks at it,” Follo said.

Dean said that Follo talks about the baby everyday and jokes that she’s going to have the baby during class.

“She doesn’t plan on it, but she’s been joking around with us freaking out that she’s having the baby during class just to freak the class out,” Dean said. “She makes class fun and that’s what I like the most.”

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