Jody Lisberger has been visiting Cal Poly for the past two quarters on the Susan Currier Visiting Professorship, and she said she has enjoyed her time in California.
Elyse Lopez
Special to Mustang News
Jody Lisberger can recall the moment she knew she wasn’t on the East Coast anymore.
It was another perfectly warm San Luis Obispo morning, full of sunshine cascading through tree branches. A soft, crisp breeze was blowing past the mountains and through the small, colorful homes surrounding Cal Poly’s campus. She stepped outside and was surprised she was once again smiling — just from the weather.
“I was a lizard in another life; this is very clear,” she said. “I love heat. I love the sun.”
Lisberger has been visiting Cal Poly for the past two quarters on the Susan Currier Visiting Professorship, and said she has enjoyed her time in California.
“I remain very impressed with the caliber of the students here. They’re intelligent. Their skills are really up on the same level as Harvard students.” —visiting professor Jody Lisberger
From auto mechanic apprentice to journalist to teacher to potter, Lisberger has done it all, but she didn’t pick up a pen and start writing until she was 46 years old.
“I couldn’t write a story to save my life,” Lisberger said. “I always knew I wanted to write the books rather than write about the books.”
It wasn’t until she began teaching others how to write that she really understood her passion.
“I wish someone would have encouraged me sooner,” she said. “Writing makes me tick. This matters most to me than anything else in my life.”
The Susan Currier Professorship invites different scholars from around the country to help encourage and diversify the curriculum in the College of Liberal Arts, said Debra Valencia-Laver, the college’s associate dean.
Valencia-Laver has some involvement in helping pick the professors for the Susan Currier position, named for a former associate dean who died in 2006.
“We try to get people who embody her spirit,” Valencia-Laver said. “Susan was an English professor, so it’s sort of nice to have a writer be in that position.”
The visiting professorship is about teaching excellence, and Lisberger embodies that, Valencia-Laver said.
“(Lisberger believes), ‘These are my students, and I’m going to bring out the best in them, challenge them, and have them think about things in different ways,’” she said.
Valencia-Laver also praised Lisberger for what she called a very strong, positive feminist perspective that has been good for the university.
“You know, sometimes, new ideas can help reinvigorate,” Valencia-Laver said. “The new ideas that Jody has brought have been really, really remarkable and fabulous.”
Lisberger has taught at several colleges, including the University of Rhode Island, Brown University and Harvard University.
Cal Poly students are just as tenacious as students at Harvard, and their overall work ethic is almost indistinguishable, she said.
“I remain very impressed with the caliber of the students here,” Lisberger said. “They’re intelligent. Their skills are really up on the same level as Harvard students.”
The main difference with Cal Poly students is that they are more sheltered, she said.
“They haven’t had the world experience,” she said. “At Harvard, people have come from all over the world.”
She was curious to come here because only 10 percent of students are from outside California, she said.
“Many Cal Poly students are much more conservative, sheltered and limited in their world views, but not because they want to be limited,” she said.
That’s why so many students excel at women’s and gender studies, she said: Students are naturally curious about ideas that are different from their own.
“We teach them things they might not have learned from their parents or their church,” Lisberger said. “We open up their minds to think about certain things.”
She taught a creative writing class in fall and has been speaking for special events during winter quarter, she said.
This has given her time to connect with students more, she said.
English junior Phoebe McHugh took the creative nonfiction writing class with Lisberger in fall.
“It was a therapy session of a class really,” McHugh said. “She encouraged us to go 10 times deeper than we thought. We thought we were giving our raw souls, and she said take it one more level.”
Lisberger would meet students on her own time at Blackhorse Espresso and Bakery to edit their work more thoroughly, McHugh said. After one such editing session, McHugh recalls Lisberger asking her if she was going to be a writer.
“It was so inspiring,” McHugh said. “She’s just amazing and cares so much.”
McHugh said she learned a lot about the craft of writing and herself.
“She is incredible,” McHugh said. “I’ve never had a class like that.”
The students came out of that class with strong example of personal narratives, Valencia-Laver said.
“It was very encouraging and enlightening and inspiring to see our students tackling some very difficult, challenging issues and doing it with their writing,” she said.
If Lisberger leaves her students with only one encouragement, it would be for them to explore and travel more, she said.
“Get out and see the world,” she said. “Question the world.”
Lisberger will continue writing and giving talks at Cal Poly until the end of winter quarter.
Correction: A previous version of this article reported Lisberger will teach at Cal Poly through spring quarter. She will actually only teach through winter.