When Wendy Farkas joined the NMU-AAUP Executive Committee this year, she just wanted to help out as the vice-president and learn more about the union. However, with the resignation of Brent Graves in early February, Dr. Farkas found herself serving as the interim president. “I was a little scared at first because the outgoing president had years and years of experience and institutional knowledge that I didn’t have, but I had amazing support from everyone on Exec, so I thought this is something that I wanted to be a part of and showcase what I can do as far as building those relationships and what I can contribute to the membership and the Executive Committee,” said Farkas.
Upon her appointment as interim president, Farkas immediately started researching the history of the NMU-AAUP and drew upon her background in leadership training. “In all my leadership classes, I lean toward the style that you are only successful by how well you support people and provide the tools they need to empower themselves. That’s the strength of a good leader, seeing all of the great qualities of the people you’re working with and then encouraging them.”
Even though it was a bit stressful at first, Dr. Farkas was able to lighten her teaching load with help from Joe Lubig. Dr. Lubig is the Dean of Teacher Education, and he hired a teaching assistant to cover her Global Campus Course for the remainder of the semester. Wendy is also getting a lot of help from her husband Dave. “My husband is great. When one of us gets overburdened, the other picks up the load. So, he’s pretty much doing all the cooking, the cleaning and all of those things right now. If it wasn’t for him, life would be really hard.”
Wendy grew up in the small town of Glennie, Michigan which is about thirty miles inland from Tawas City. She graduated from Oscoda High School and went to college at U of M Flint and taught in several school districts in the Flint area, and earned her Ph.D. at Oakland University. In 2014, Farkas left her position as a tenured K-12 teacher in Lower Michigan to take a position in the department of English. “I’ve always been in the greater Flint or Detroit area, and I know it’s the same state, but it feels like a completely different climate and culture here, but in a good way. I was so used to being five-minutes from everything while I lived in Flint, and then when I moved up here it was a lot like where I grew up because it was very rural. But the climate, that took a while to get used to. Now that we have a home up in Ishpeming on Little Perch Lake, we can’t imagine ever leaving or living anywhere else,” said Farkas.
As a teacher, Wendy stresses critical literacy skills and the role technology plays in that. “I feel like students are so overwhelmed with information, especially information coming at them digitally that I really wanted them to not only hone their critical reading skills, but how they synthesize information and affect change,” said Farkas. To engage students in her Academic Literacy and Study Strategies course (EN 103), Farkas created a multimedia meme project where the students could pick any social media issue covered over the semester. After students completed their research and evaluated their sources, she had them create a rhetorically powerful meme for a target audience that may think a certain way about a topic based on emotion and opinion instead of fact. The meme was then linked to their credible sources, and the students had to synthesize that information in a ten-minute TED Talk. According to Farkas the results were startling. “Many of the students had vastly improved their reading levels, and so this was a project that really resonated with them because they were using digital tools they usually use for social activities but not academically.”
When Farkas is not serving her fellow union members or teaching, she enjoys traversing America and whitewater rafting with her family in the summer months. “One of the very best times we have had as a family was on a trip out West. We put 8,500 miles on our truck in one month, and we visited eight National Parks,” said Farkas.
Wendy started whitewater rafting at age nineteen when she took a trip to West Virginia. “The training scared me more than the actual rafting because the guides warned us not to get your foot entrapped, cause that’s a for sure drowning. Nevertheless, we took the plunge, and it was the most scary but exhilarating thing I’ve ever done, and after the first time, I was hooked. I’ve gone at least 15 times since. It’s like a natural roller coaster ride,” said Farkas, who now involves her family in her passion for whitewater.
While Farkas has enjoyed her time as interim president, she plans on going back to being vice-president. “I can’t tell you how many people reached out to me and said we are really glad you are in this position, and that was really nice,” said Farkas. However, she said she loves teaching too much to serve as the president long-term.