Thinking about taking history classes focusing on the 1960s or 1980s? Here’s why you might want to look into Chester Pach.
Not many professors can say they have worn tear-away basketball pants to reveal psychedelic jeans underneath, but for Chester Pach, that’s just a normal day in his classroom.
Pach, a renowned historian and history professor, has been teaching at Ohio University since 1991.
“He wore these outrageous pants. It was fantastic, but he definitely has … always been very helpful for students,” Patrick Barr-Melej, associate professor of history, said. “I have been following his teaching for a long time, and I hope to become a teacher like him sometime before I retire.”
Brett Maszczak, a junior studying integrated media, said Pach often uses clicker technology for his classes and has used it before to ask questions about his pants.
“His follow-up question was something along the lines of like, ‘Where can I buy a pair of those? Do they look good on me?’ or something like that, but just things like that have made it kind of more memorable,” Maszczak said. “I can’t remember a single event from most of my big lecture classes, so I think it’s cool that he positively reinforces us with different things like that.”
Some of the courses he teaches include “History of U.S. Involvement in World Affairs, 1945-Present,” “1960s in U.S.: Decade of Controversy,” and “The 1980s in the U.S.: The Age of Reagan and Madonna.”
Pach is a Fulbright Scholar, has met Secretary of State John Kerry and has written op-eds for The New York Times.
Additionally, Pach’s writings and research have been published in 14 books including works such as “The War on Television: TV News, the Johnson Administration, and Vietnam," in A Companion to the Vietnam War, and he is currently working on another book called The Presidency of Ronald Reagan that is scheduled to be published in January 2017 with the University Press of Kansas.
Pach’s salary is $96,821 a year.
Pach also makes his own videos for each class and tries to keep incorporating different elements of teaching, such as music, throughout his courses.
“I think pop culture reflects some of our most widely discussed and important themes and issues,” Pach said. “So if somebody is singing about something or a music video that addresses that subject probably means that it’s on a lot of minds of the people.”
One music video he shows is Genesis’ “Land of Confusion,” which is a music video that shows Ronald Reagan going to bed at night and parallels it to political images.
“At the end, he ends up pushing on the wall a button that says ‘nuke’ rather than ‘nurse’ because he had a bad dream and he needs attention, and so he makes the wrong mistake and blows up the world,” Pach said. “If you’re going to make a video about that, that shows you that a lot of people were fearful of the nuclear arms race, and not only that but of Reagan’s policies, and so if I can tell them that these are not issues that just a few experts debated or people who follow politics closely, but (that) this seemed to be close to life.”
Maszczak said he thinks it is really cool that Pach tries to spice things up more than most professors.
“He makes his classes really relevant and lively, and it takes a certain talent for historians to do that because we’re not trained to be entertainers as historians,” Barr-Melej said.
When the professor invests personally and does more than just develop a course, Barr-Melej said it helps students to respond more.
“I’ve just never had a professor that would generate a class discussion about a nude image,” Masczcak said. “That’s what we did (on Dec. 2) for 15 minutes. We talked about Janis Joplin naked and what that picture was conveying. … I just thought that was really cool how it would be kind of like a safe space that everybody was talking — even though it was, like, something that usually everyone’s shy about or worried about offending (someone) … but I think it’s definitely a little bit more open in the class discussion because of the way he presents things.”
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="800a0540-b8c7-11e5-9c93-a37a43a4f3ca"}}
Barr-Melej said Pach has a special way of teaching his material not only creatively, but also relevantly to his undergraduate students.
“If you want to take a class in which you learn about the world, not just as it’s been but as it is now, and if you want to take a class that you are going to feel interested in, one that’s going to challenge you, but also one that is going to reward you, then that’s the kind of teacher you want to take a class from, and that’s Professor Pach,” Barr-Melej said.
@mmhicks19
mh912314@ohio.edu
