By: Deja Footes, Lion’s Eye Staff Editor, dmf5475@psu.edu
Dr. Angela Putman, a new communication arts and sciences professor, from Detroit Michigan is very excited to be in her first year here at Brandywine.
She graduated from Western Michigan.
“I didn’t take the traditional education path of getting all three degrees right away,” Putman said. ” I started teaching first.”
Putman began teaching in communications at colleges in Dallas and South Texas. After teaching full-time for eight years, Putman realized teaching
was her passion and decided to pursue her doctorate to be able to do this as her career. During the third year of her Ph.D. program in intercultural communication from University of New Mexico, she landed a job at Borough of Manhattan Community College as an assistant professor in the communications and theatre department and joined her fiancé in New York City.
Putman explained that living in New York City was not what she expected.
“It was hard, and fast-paced,” Putman said. “There is not much human connection at all. People rarely look at each other or talk to each other and are mostly wearing earbuds. Since I am from the Midwest, I am used to talking to people, even strangers. When I tried to strike up conversations with people, they would give me a funny look or not even respond.”
After filling out many job applications, she finally secured the perfect opportunity at Penn State Brandywine and she and her fiancé moved to Delaware
County. Her fiancé, turned husband, currently teaches middle school in Havertown. Putman did not always want to be a professor.
“I never thought I wanted to be a professor, I wanted to be Whitney Houston,” Putman said.
She originally went to college for voice performance, but learned that it was a struggle.
“Throughout high school I was the big fish in a little pond, but in college I became a tiny fish in a big pond,” Putman said.
After failing her sophomore jury exam and having a deep conversation with her voice teacher, she realized that she had the talent but not the drive to be an opera singer.
She took a semester off from music and decided to take all general education classes. One class she took and ended up connecting with was the interpersonal communication class.
“This was the first class in college that I took that made sense to me,” Putman said.
Putman then decided to go to graduate school, and is the first in her family with a degree. In graduate school, Putman earned a teaching assistantship and realized that she had found her dream job as a college professor, and the rest is Brandywine history.