Max. Classroom Capacity: An Interview With Dr. Alicia Grandey

Loren J. Naidoo, California State University, Northridge

Dear readers,

It is my pleasure to present to you a conversation that I had with Dr. Alicia Grandey, SIOP’s 2024 Distinguished Teaching Contributions Award winner! Dr. Grandey is a full professor of I-O psychology at Penn State University. Her groundbreaking and influential research on topics such as emotional labor and employee health has been published in top-tier academic journals. In addition to being a first-rate researcher, she is also a committed and decorated teacher and mentor.

Loren Naidoo: Dr. Grandey, congratulations on winning the 2024 SIOP Award for Distinguished Teaching, and thanks so much for agreeing to speak with me for Max. Classroom Capacity!

Alicia Grandey: Thanks so much! It’s an honor to be among all those amazing teachers and mentors in our field.

LN: I think I first became a fan of your research on emotions when I was in graduate school in the early 2000s. You remain a prolific and influential researcher today, having won numerous best paper awards, achieved fellowship in SIOP and APS, published dozens of papers in top-tier journals, and racked up 30,000+ citations, among other achievements. What may be less well-known is how you became an I-O psychologist in the first place. What drew you to the field?

AG: Wow thanks for all that!

Like many of us, I came to the I-O field circuitously. In college, I knew I loved psychology and that I wanted to apply it, but I wasn’t sure if I could handle the emotional demands of counseling. I was at the University of Oregon, which didn’t have an I-O program, but in my senior year one of my professors informed me that I-O existed. I applied to a handful of graduate programs with professors studying emotions and stress and am grateful I ended up at Colorado State with Dr. Russell Cropanzano, who had just published the affective events theory paper with his advisor Dr. Howard Weiss! In short, I wasn’t sure I could handle the emotional demands of counseling, but I-O was a way I could study emotional demands and apply that knowledge to improve well-being.

LN: It’s funny how so many of us barely had an idea of what I-O psychology was before we entered the field. I don’t think I knew the difference between the “I” and the “O” until my 3rd year of grad school… So, you completed your PhD and (at some point) were faced with the choice of looking for academic positions or “real” jobs. What made you decide to go into academia?

AG. I don’t think I knew for sure whether I wanted to go applied or academic until my 4th year. I was driving my advisor crazy with indecision! At first, I wanted to be a consultant helping to reduce stress in organizations or develop stress training for EAPs. Then I taught a few small classes and finally got a graduate teaching fellowship, teaching two sections of introductory psychology to 250 students each. I realized I loved teaching, and that, in combination with having a few publications, made landing an academic job both a desired outcome and practically feasible.

I thought I wanted a more teaching-focused school but applied to a few R-1s like Penn State just to see what would happen. And it worked out!

LN: What made you realize that you loved teaching? Can you point to any early teaching experiences that really cemented that realization for you?

AG: There are two things that come to mind.

As a graduate student, I took a seminar on the dramaturgical perspective of teaching. That helped me to realize that I could leverage my high school theater experience to be a better teacher and that I could keep my love of theater alive as part of my job. I use drama skills to ensure my body posture and vocal dynamics to convey excitement and passion for my topic and signal my curiosity and interest in what students say. I start off with a structured “script” of slides and discussion points if I’m teaching something new, but as I get more comfortable with the topic then I move to a more “improvisational” approach that rolls with audience/student input.

The other was realizing that students needed to feel seen as individuals and that often their college course instructors treated them as a mass or a chore. I always take the time to learn their names—in big classes, offering 1-point extra credit if they came to my office hours the first week. I had several students share their personal struggles with me that really opened my eyes to how I, as a teacher, can help students learn and grow by seeing them and valuing them as individuals.

LN: On learning students’ names—I totally agree, and I refer readers back to the Max. Classroom Capacity column on the topic. How interesting that your background in theater has informed your approach to teaching—I didn’t see that coming! I’ve always felt that teachers should be interesting and fun and that being so doesn’t have to come at the expense of substance. I think this aligns with what you said. It sounds like you use your theater training to convey your own interest and enthusiasm in what you’re teaching and in your students’ ideas. Do you think “putting on a good show” as a teacher has other benefits? Also—while we are on the topic—what are your top 3 movies about teaching?

AG: Yes, and it’s not about simply performing or putting on a “show,” it’s about conveying the material in a way that engages students. This can be as simple as using changes in my voice—getting louder and then quieter, using a conversational tone rather than a monotone, and changes in posture and motion, like moving around the room so they never know where I’ll be or what I’ll do. When a theater or movie is predictable, we get bored and tune out; likewise, I don’t want my behavior or the material to be obvious or predictable. I also try to start class with a curious problem or a tension to resolve (i.e., are financial rewards controlling or supportive?), invite them to wrestle with what they think based on their experience, and then present some evidence to interpret. And I tend to share my own experiences and invite them to share theirs so that it feels real and engaging to their own lives, just like theater resonates with us personally. The benefit of that is that it can help us understand our own past experiences better and understand what matters to us moving forward.

I love the movie Dead Poets Society. In fact, I’ve jumped up on desks in my Introduction to Psychology large classes in a nod to Robin Williams’ character to make a point about social norms. I love seeing the power of a teacher to connect with individual students and their personal development. (I cry every time I see Ethan Hawke get on that desk.) School of Rock is fun, and, at a deeper level, is about connecting with what moves the students and trying lots of strategies to get them engaged. And Mr. Holland's Opus—I want to be the teacher who inspires their students by pushing them to be their best, even if they don’t appreciate it until years later (way after the class ratings are submitted).

LN: Wow. You nailed that movie question! It’s impossible not to cry at that moment in Dead Poets Society! OK, we’ve talked quite a bit about inspiring and connecting with students, and I think that’s very important. But, thinking of the (dozens of?) graduate students or early career teachers who read Max. Classroom Capacity, do you think that this aspect of teaching can be taught? In other words, is this aspect of teaching inherently personal and not replicable? The idea of jumping on a desk might make some instructors feel uncomfortable or inauthentic. Can you be an effective instructor without inspiring and connecting with students? What advice would you give to instructors out there on this issue?

AG: Sure, everyone has their own teaching and self-presentational style, and it has to be authentic for it to work in front of a classroom. Let me clarify that a lot of early teaching is simply getting familiar with the content that is being taught, and confidence about the content has to be there to build the foundation for effective teaching styles.

But with confidence and practice, you get past focusing on WHAT you are teaching and can focus more on HOW. And more than ever these days, we have to be thinking about HOW to get students to engage with the material. They can get the WHAT from Wikipedia, a Google search, or ChatGPT. As instructors, we have to teach them skills so they know HOW to summarize, analyze, synthesize, and question the information they can find online. I try to do that by inspiring and connecting with them personally, but as long as the students feel curious and engaged with the material, that’s what matters.

More specifically, to get students to engage in the material, I take several steps

1. Find out what they think they know. This can be with a prequiz, or ask them to evaluate a work practice for its efficacy.
2. Show discrepancies in what is known. Have them share their (differing) views with each other or show competing results in science.
3. Ask them why it matters. Personal experiences/cases are a good place to start here or cases where work went badly.
4. Ask them to generate solutions. What science or practice is needed to solve the problem? Does that exist (search and evaluate)?

LN: I love this framework! Do you have any final words of advice for new instructors or those simply looking to up their game?

AG: When I first started teaching, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was teaching Intro Psych and basically learning the material the week before the students did (especially the neuroscience sections!). I had to say “I don’t know” a lot, but then I’d learn and come back to class with new insights. I was surprised when I got really good evaluations. That’s when I learned that being a good teacher is about being motivated to learn and engage with the material, not about being the most knowledgeable person in the room.

Over time, teaching styles should grow and change—that means you should never feel bored or like you have it figured out. It’s not about having the perfect slides or the best activity or the most knowledge. Every time we teach is different because there are new problems and new science, plus every class has its own dynamics based on the students and how they show up. That variety is challenging and exciting—and a big part of why I love teaching.

Thanks again to Dr. Grandey for agreeing to be interviewed! Readers, please email me with your comments, feedback, or your favorite movies on teaching! Loren.Naidoo@csun.edu