Doug makes learning anatomy and physiology a little less overwhelming. He weaves storytelling into his teaching to keep the student engaged and help them remember the concepts, setting them up for success. Doug is a natural storyteller, and he has a way of making extremely complex concepts more tangible for the average student. I enjoy learning from Doug and am so grateful that he is here to lay the foundations for my career.
Doug has been a faculty member in the biology department at Camosun for over 20 years, and in 2025 received a Teacher Recognition Award. “My Camosun story begins with my great aunt Isabel, who received her teaching degree here, when Camosun College was the Normal School. When I graduated high school, because I had worked for my electrician father for several years, I came to Camosun to study electrical, but after one semester, I decided I didn’t want to be an electrician and returned home. At that time, I was also an athlete playing every kind of sport and at 19 I began coaching the high school grade eight boys’ basketball team. Then, while I wasn’t a teacher, I was invited to teach kindergarten through grade seven physical education at a private school because the regular physical education teacher became ill and they didn’t have a replacement. And I fell in love with the whole idea of teaching. Shortly after, I went to the University of Victoria (UVic) to pursue what was called a physical education specialist degree, which required both a physical education degree and an exercise physiology degree.” When he finished, Doug taught for two years at a junior high and two years at a senior high, but that kind of teaching didn’t work for him. “Because I’d had coaching teaching experience, the high school teaching experience felt more like class management to me.” So, Doug left teaching and became a personal trainer. “I did personal training for a while, and then decided to start up a rehabilitation clinic, to apply personal training ideas to giving someone the right exercises to improve shoulder mobility or help them to walk upstairs in their house for the first time in five years.” Doug ran his clinic for 10 years, and while helping people was satisfying, the sales part of the business was not. Then a job opened up at the Canadian Acupuncture Institute, looking for someone to teach human anatomy and human physiology (A&P) courses. “I jumped at it because this was post secondary teaching which was more like coaching.” Then Doug heard about a job at Camosun College teaching physical education for what used to be the Center for Sport and Exercise Education (CSEE). “I stayed there two years until a job came up in the biology department teaching A&P. I took that job and I’ve been there ever since.”
I asked if Doug could talk a little about the courses he teaches. “For most of my time here I’ve taught anatomy and physiology separately, not combined, and primarily for CSEE because my undergraduate and graduate degrees involved how to apply anatomy and physiology to sport. However, I have also taught nurses and dental hygienists.” Doug also enjoys teaching smaller classes than classes he encountered at larger institutions like UVic. “Students will tell me how nice it is to be able to talk to instructors. I’ve been at big universities and to sit down and talk to the prof is virtually impossible. That’s really one of the biggest reasons I didn’t go for a PhD, besides getting the job here: I didn’t want to spend ten years of my life getting my degree and then doing research. Here I am near the end of my career here, and I’m filled with joy. I’m filled with memories of my teaching at Camosun.”
This led nicely into my next question for Doug about what he enjoys most about teaching. “I would say it’s the relationships you build with the students. Both those who are looking for me every day, and who are hiding away in a corner trying to find themselves – and most exciting is finding that student who needs you. In a book I studied for a course in physical education classroom management, the author said it’s imperative when teaching physical education to give a student four positive statements for every single corrective statement and never use a negative statement. So, I try to give students at least one positive statement, then a corrective statement, and I try never to use a negative statement. I’m also a very energetic instructor. I’m animated, I’m vocal, and I put on a show. When I worked with a biology teacher at Oak Bay High School, I asked him how he managed to be in control all the time, and he told me that at any moment in a class where the energy in from the class is greater than energy out from you, you’re out of control. But if students can see the energy you’re putting in, if they see how engaged and how focused on the task you are, they’ll respond to that, and they themselves will rise and try to meet that. So, I always try to bring high energy to the class.”
I wondered what a typical Doug class looks like. “I’m a storyteller. My grandpa Henry loved to tell a story, as did my father, so I think storytelling comes naturally to me. I am constantly talking and moving in my classes, I’m telling stories, and I’m acting things out. For example, I might act the part of a white blood cell, and then play the role of the antigen. I try to come up with stories that can explain complexity in a way that relates to students’ everyday lives.” But at the same time, Doug’s classes are not easy. “When students walk in my door, it’s because they want to be health professionals. I’ll be nice and I’ll be kind, but I will push them hard and expect a lot of them.” As for keeping it fresh in the classroom after all these years, Doug says “first, unless someone retakes a class, I see 100 new faces every term. I don’t know what it is. I can have a terrible morning, but when I arrive in front of that class it’s like magic. It’s something about being there in front of that group of people, and suddenly I’m happy. I get 18 hours of contact hours during the week which gives me an enormous amount of time to spend doing lots of exciting things with students, working with them and tutoring them, and how that looks every year is so different.”
Of course, Doug has many amazing memories of past students to share. “I had a student this year from China. He’s a professional basketball player here to do research at a Canadian University on how Canadians develop high-level athletes and keep them at high levels for very long periods of time. He came to me outside of class to get some advice not only on how to approach the A&P course, but also about his project. And at the same time, I was learning more about China and how their athletic system works.”
Then Doug told me about another student from five or six years ago. “This student was originally from Mexico, and was one of my most memorable students. She had moved from Mexico to the United States, but eventually, her mother and father moved to Victoria, but she stayed in the U.S. went to high school there, but fell with a bad crowd and things weren’t going very well for her. So, her parents talked her into moving here and encouraged her to take courses. She talked to me on the first day of class, and we kept talking over the term. After a few weeks, she said she wanted to get on the student council, so I encouraged her to take advantage of all the things she could. She won, and then joined some other student bodies. She began to perform well in the course quizzes, got an A on the midterm, and then I saw her starting to help other students. She went on to get an A plus in anatomy as well as in physiology, while continuing to tutor other students in labs and maintaining her positions on three student bodies the whole time. At the end of the year, she decided that maybe she wanted to go into nursing. But because she was an American citizen, she applied to a very good nursing university in Pittsburgh and got in. Within two years, she became the university student spokesperson and maintained that until she graduated a full scholarship. She’s kept in touch with me and told me that if it was not for me, none of this would have happened. But I told here that’s not true. She did it and all I did was encourage her and show her a path. But she walked every step of that path and is now she’s a nurse in United States and her life is fantastic.”
Then Doug told me about another student, one who came from a small village in the Yukon. “He was the first person from that village to go into post secondary education. He failed anatomy twice and passed on the third time. Then failed physiology twice and passed on the third time. But in the end, he received a degree and is now working for the Nunavut government. And since then, six more people from his village have gone on to post-secondary.” It may have taken this student three times to pass each course, but he stuck to it with patience and ease, and “by the end, he had developed all the skills he needed to be a productive professional. He just needed more time. I learned a lot from him.”
Doug’s final story of a student was quite different from the first two. “This student was in his 50s and had been working in a museum for the 31 years as an Indigenous language interpreter. Unfortunately, the class could not meet his educational needs.” The class is built around lecture, lab, quizzes, etc., and “what he needed was a different environment, one that included more storytelling and personal connection, but with almost 100 students, I could not accommodate that. So, after a few months, he dropped the course and to this day, I still get a little angry that it was impossible for me to meet his needs.” Doug reflected on his days tutoring Indigenous students in nursing, and how being able to work with individual students really built their confidence. “I wish we could identify those people who could benefit from more of a tutoring style, and meet them where they are at. But our system doesn’t allow for that. In the tutoring sessions I ran, I just listened to students, let them express themselves, and heard their stories about their learning experiences and how they felt they were fitting in. I would like to teach in that kind of tutoring environment. That would be a great way to finish my teaching career.”
My final question to Doug was around what advice he might have for new faculty coming to teach at Camosun. “Spend time with the students. Listen to what they have to say and don’t be afraid to sit down and address difficult issues. What I have found over the years is that the more I do for the students, the easier my job is, even though it’s counterintuitive to think that putting in more hours makes teaching less difficult. As instructors, we deal with a lot of issues that have nothing to do with education because students are adult human beings with complicated lives. Being rigid or avoiding students and their needs is not going to make this job easy, but if you address their needs and go the extra mile for them in the moment, in the long run the job will be less stressful.” And of course, Doug believes that if you can excite and inspire students, they will learn. “I read a recent study that said that good teaching is about what works for you. I tell my stories, I put on my show. I’m very focused, and that’s me. I seem to inspire students, and they get excited to learn. But you have to be yourself. Not everyone is comfortable being loud and potentially making a fool of themselves.” So, find your own way and be yourself.