Renee Penalver, CSUMB
100 Campus Center, Seaside
(831) 582-300, csumb.edu
In the Go to the Head of the Class game, players win by answering the most questions correctly. In the case of CSU Monterey Bay students and alumni, they had a clear answer to the question of who is the best professor in all of Monterey County: psychology professor Renee Penalver. It’s possibly because Penalver says she bases her approach to teaching on how she was treated while a first-generation college undergraduate and graduate student in the California State University system. “I relied on professors who took me under their wing,” she says. Her students are mostly first-generation college students themselves. “I see myself in them and I think they see themselves in me.” She gets to know her students, creates a community atmosphere in class and offers flexibility when life sometimes gets in the way of studies. She credits the students themselves for how they collaborate in the classroom atmosphere: “I’ve worked at a couple of different colleges in my career and these students are a shining light, for sure,” she says.
