Noon on a Saturday is about the last time you’d expect an instructor to be accessible for something that isn’t urgent. However, LBCC math faculty Shannon Harbert, self-described as “hyper-available,” was able to make that time slot work for her interview. Her passion for teaching math and making sure STEM students get the support they need was easy to see.
Over the 30-minute interview, she described her unorthodox path to teaching, book recommendations, and even obliged an impromptu explanation of differential equations to a curious interviewer:
What’s your role at LBCC, and what classes do you teach?
I’m a math faculty. I’m just now, this term, finishing my 19th year. I did 10 years as a part-time math faculty, and this is now me finishing my ninth year as a full-time faculty. I never wanted to work anywhere else, so I just waited and waited. They don’t hire very often, as you might have heard before. … I’m also the liaison between the math department and the Learning Center. Back during my 10 years of part-time, for two years of it, I was full-time, classified contracted, where I worked at the help desk – (math faculty) Mike Storrs and I were partners in crime, and that was before I had my first kid. So that was 13 years ago.
But yeah, the Learning Center is very special to me. My role is, besides teaching math, to really highlight and accentuate and make sure students are aware of all of our support services. It’s a real passion of mine, making sure they understand about the differences between the one-on-one tutoring and the math help desk and the drop-in help and the Zoom help, and just all the possible options that they have out there.
What do I teach? Well, anything. We offer [23 math classes], and there are only a couple I haven’t done. Now, this term, I’m teaching vector calc 2 besides the other classes I’m teaching. … I like to live in the upper 200-levels. Part of it is just out of selfishness – the material is really fun, and it’s just really fun being around students who are particularly passionate, either out of desire or need about the material, because they know they’re going to use it in their junior-level classes.
Most of my students are STEM students, mostly engineers. But I get lucky and have some math majors and some physicists and some computer science and some other kinds, and some students who just come off the street and just want to take math classes, which is always random and fun. But yeah, I can teach anything. Last year, I taught 111 and 95, but my passion is taking the classes that not as many other people choose to take. It’s two-parted: I like it – that’s the selfish product – but I’m good at it, and I’m there for them, is what I mean. Like a guide. I’m doing it for them. … The point is, why do I mostly teach the upper-level stuff? It’s because the material is really fun, but mostly it’s the student body, the student population. I get to just be with people who are nerds like me.
Do you have a favorite math class to teach?
Normally I would have said power series, but now I’ve been teaching differential equations. We call it diff EQs, Math 256. I taught that something like 14 or 15 times in a row now, and what I mean in a row, sometimes there’s multiple sections in a term, but I’ve been teaching it a lot. So I would have said that’s my favorite. But now there’s vector calc 2, even though I’m having to learn all of the material. I never took the class, never taught the class, and I don’t have any physics, unfortunately. It’s a physics-based vector calc 2 class. So it’s a lot of fricking work.
I’m working every single day, but it’s really fun, and the students are super generous and patient – they know me, we’re friends already, and they’re patient with the fact that I’m learning it. So I just have to be a day ahead, and so far I’ve been a day ahead. So I might say that’s my favorite, but it’s only offered once a year: winter term once. So I think anything in the 200s, but mostly 256, 255, 254, and 253.
What is a differential equation?
Here’s an easy example. Not easy, but I mean, most people will have heard of Newton’s laws of motion. Force equals mass times acceleration, for example. Well, acceleration is nothing more than a second derivative of position, and derivatives are nothing more than rates of change. So if you have a position function that tells you to plug in two hours, and it tells you you’re in Portland, for example, if you took this thing called a derivative, which is really just looking at slopes and rates of change, the first derivative would tell you: alright, two hours from now, you’re 120 miles away.
But your first derivative, when you plug in two hours, would instead tell you that you were going 60 miles an hour. … The second derivative tells you information about acceleration. Your position says 120 miles – that gives you some information – but then the second velocity, at two hours, says you’re going 60 miles an hour. So that still gives you some information, but then the third, the acceleration, let’s say it’s negative. Now you know that you’re 120 miles away, going 60 miles an hour with your foot on the brakes. So acceleration is usually due to gravity, and gravity is a second derivative, and so force equals mass times acceleration is what we call a differential equation. Why? It’s an equation with a derivative in it.
Differential equations are where you can relate the thing you want to know about to its derivatives. The more information, the better, right? But yeah, a differential equation is simply an equation with derivatives in it, and they get complicated. Once you hit calc 2, 252, you can start solving the most basic of differential equations. They don’t call it that, so people don’t know that they’ve already done that, where you differentiate to undo that, you integrate, that sort of thing. Well, that only works when the functions are pretty and nice. So that’s why you have an entire branch of mathematics that studies differential equations and partial differential equations, because it’s very rare that in real life, things are actually integrable, differentiable, or actually easily computed. Most things are too computationally expensive.
How did you get into teaching? Was this something that you always knew you wanted to do, or something you found later on?
No, and this is the funny part. In high school, I was in AP everything. And this was a million years ago, and I just got burned out. I was really into chemistry and AP chemistry, but I was in AP calc, AP bio, all that stuff. It sounds braggy, but trust me, it’s coming to a point here. And I moved out my senior year. … I moved out of my house and got a job and still went to school, and was like, “This isn’t working and I’m burned out.” So I joined the Army.
I took a five-year break and was in the army for four years. I was in Germany for three – I wanted to get out the whole time, but they don’t let you do that, by the way. So I stuck with it for the four years I signed up for. All I knew was I wanted to go back to Portland. I wanted to work at a pub, get a cat, live by myself, and go to school at PSU. And I didn’t know what to go to school for, because I’d been gone for five years. So I was like, “Well, I was an AP chem tutor.” And I was a huge nerd about that stuff, so I decided to major in chemistry. One year into it, I was like, “I just like the math.” I don’t really enjoy lab reports, not knocking chemistry. But that’s not really what I liked about it, I guess.
So my sophomore year, I was 24 and I switched to math. I dropped my AP, I dropped my O-chem and my physics with lab, and switched to math, never with the intention to teach. That was always the thing that people would say to me: “So, you’re gonna be a teacher.” I’m like, “No.” But I had grand ambitions after the Army. I did well, whoop-de-do, but I got lots of awards and stuff, so I was just ready to keep getting awards. And I was like, “I’m gonna get a Ph.D. in math.” And then I thought I was gonna go do this thing called CO2 sequestration – I thought I was gonna go into industry. All I knew was I wasn’t gonna teach. That’s for sure. … And then I started teaching in grad school, because that’s how you get the full ride. And then I was like, “Well, this is fun.” But lots of things are fun. This is still not what I want to do.
And then I started working at LBCC, because somebody approached me about it back in 2006 and I’m still in grad school. I have two master’s, so the first master’s is in pure math, and I was going for the Ph.D., and I did all the coursework for the Ph.D. before I realized I was in it for the wrong reasons. It was ego, not enjoyment. … So, I started teaching at LB, and I was like, “I love these people here. This is fun.” Still, I didn’t want to do it. I mean, I was still going to grad school. And I was like, “OK, I like this.” I did that for a couple years. I graduated, quit the Ph.D. program, got the master’s, but did a whole other year of the Ph.D. program. I quit that, and then I had a year where I didn’t know what I was doing.
So then I got a job teaching at Sweet Home High School, even though I didn’t have the requirements to teach K-12 with a master’s in math. Most people don’t know this: You cannot teach AP calc in high school – you can teach college – but you have to have a master’s in math education. So I could teach college, but I couldn’t teach high school. Calculus is what I would care to teach. I mean, I would have done the other stuff too, but I’m not going to get a job where I can’t teach calculus. Anyways, I went back and got another master’s degree in math education, and in that degree, realized I don’t want to teach K-12. … I’d rather deal with grown-up students. So my passion is dealing with students who are wanting to be there, at least somehow, somebody’s paying for them to want to be there. And that’s when I went on the journey of waiting and waiting and waiting to get full-time employment.
You have to wait for somebody to retire or move away. Luckily, I didn’t get it when I applied the first time. I applied twice in total; the first time I didn’t get it. And I won’t name who did, but I’m so glad she did. She’s amazing. She had 10 years experience full-time on me. Then I had kids, and so that was perfect. So I just did part-time for many more years. And now I couldn’t imagine… I make jokes with my students. I’m like, “So guys, my trajectory was to sit in front of a computer and a cubicle and not talk to people all day. Does that sound like me?” They’re like, “No,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I didn’t know.” So I try to be a good advisor, because I did not get good advising. I double-majored in German. Why not physics or electrical engineering or computer science or anything else that could have helped me? Oh well.
Are you fluent in German?
No, I lived there for three years. I did it in high school. It was just for fun. I can get it around, but I can’t talk about your dreams and thoughts, for example, but I could ask where the bathroom is and order dinner.
You have one of the best Rate My Professor profiles I think I’ve ever seen from an instructor at LB. What’s your teaching philosophy and what makes it so well-liked by your students?
Only because I’ve been doing this so long, I don’t mind talking about it. I think it’s because I can relate to them, and I treat them like people, like friends. I mean, I have boundaries, and I have deadlines and I grade stuff still, but I make sure to be really clear and organized. I try to make sure that they understand what I’m expecting of them, and I haven’t forgotten when things are hard, why they’re hard, and how they’re hard. I haven’t forgotten that, and I give them lots of feedback, and I’m hyper-available.
I make jokes about how I don’t have any boundaries because I’m currently on Discord – students are texting me on there right now; 8 at night; Sunday morning. I regularly go in on days off, and sometimes meet with students, too. But I just think it’s my availability and that I try to keep it fun.
I always put on nice music in the morning to warm the classroom up, and I just think I’ve been told that I explain things clearly. … I think it’s just that I’m clear, and what’s expected is clear and it’s an easy, relaxed environment – and hyper-availability. … A lot of people have the curriculum knowledge, or whatever. I mean, that’s not the problem. For some, it’s just they don’t feel like they could ever find their teacher. That also drives me crazy. A lot of my colleagues, it’s hard to find them. Some you can find just like you can find me. There are a lot of faculty you can’t just find randomly in the hallway.
What are your music picks to warm up class in the morning?
Oh, I like teasing. I like weirding my students out. So it’ll be anything – Lofi Girl, or sometimes I’ll just put a fireplace on, crackling. But I also like to put on hardcore rap or something. Just so they’re like, “What? You listen to who?” I’m a product of the ’80s and ’90s, so I’ve seen lots of people in concert. It’s just funny, most of the students could be my kids. That’s how old I am now, which is fine. But I’m like, “I saw Nirvana in concert. Did you? Do you know who they are?” It’s just funny. So no, I don’t have a norm. Usually it’s either something super silly or just something chill. I like to play songs when they’re taking too long on a quiz or something. I’ll play something like, “If You Don’t Know Me by Now.” I just make that start playing.
College level math can be intimidating to a lot of people. How do you make it more welcoming for students?
I try to make sure they understand that I prescribe to something called “just in time review” – that if it’s been a while, for example, and you’re taking calc 1, and you haven’t had math since high school and it’s been a while, you’re going to need trig. You’re going to need algebra. But I don’t tell them, “Go study all of the trig and all of the algebra,” but just make sure that they understand if they’re coming in with some hesitation or some lack of prerequisite knowledge, that they may have to do a little extra, but that I’m there for them.
I may not be able to do all of the prereq stuff in class while doing the new stuff because we run out of time, but come see me. I love algebra, I love trig. I’ll help you catch up. Just making sure they understand that all the support services I constantly talk about: the Learning Center and the three hours of free one-on-one tutoring you get a week, and how I’m available every single day, and how there’s math help drop-in on Zoom and in-person. I try to help them. Like a person had a mental health crisis recently, and I tried to help that person find help, and another person needed help with some money, and they don’t know that there’s like, little, tiny funds that we have out there for them. I don’t know, I think mostly it’s just being approachable and understanding.
What do you think is the hardest part of teaching math at a college level?
A lot of it is the preconceived notions that people come in with, and you can go either way. They either think they’re terrible, so they already just know it’s going to be hard, which doesn’t have to be true, or they make it to my calc classes and previous to that they’ve done so well. Math was easy, and now they actually have to do work. And then another part is – and a lot of my colleagues and I talk about it – the prerequisite knowledge gap is wider than it used to be. We’re in an upper level, and I’m having to teach you what a matrix is, or I’m having to teach them properties of exponent stuff they should have learned many, many terms ago.
And I don’t make them feel bad about it, but I do kind of tease them. Be like, “Okay, now you need to go do some of these.” Anyways, it’s literally just not being ready for the right class, and then don’t get me started on the co-rec stuff. … We’re now advocating that students immediately take 100-level classes, and I get it and I get it financially, and I get it for retention and completion.
But some students really need… I don’t know where they’re supposed to get that refresher, or they never even graduated high school, or they didn’t take algebra. And that’s not a lot of what I get in the upper level, 200 levels, but I still get plenty of just, they can’t focus on what we’re doing currently because they don’t have it locked down, what we did before. But I don’t even know if that’s that new of a thing. It’s just a little worse than it used to be after the pandemic.
Yeah, I feel like high school higher-level math can be really spotty depending on where you are. So I assume you have students coming into the same class with the same experience, but just wildly different levels of how much they understand math.
Oh yeah, even institutional, even between OSU and us, even between teachers I like. So you guys did spherical coordinates last term, right? And they’re like (silence, laughs). I’m like, “OK, my students did. You guys didn’t.”
What would you like to tell students who are interested in taking STEM at LBCC?
Oh, man – do it. We have the most loving faculty. We have lots of options. We have people in charge of when our classes are offered who are trying to work with OSU schedules, too. So I highly recommend being DPP. I mean, we’re a third the class size, a third the cost, we are not “publish or perish” if we do any research – it’s to research how to be better teachers, or research for fun, like I’m researching vector calc to be a better teacher, and that’s all.
I’m not saying that our sister school is only like that, but for the cost, for the reachability, for the class size – and I have a lot of my OSU students say that one of the biggest draws, besides price and class size, is how their teacher actually knows their name.
And our passion, again. If we’re at LB, it’s a competitive process to get a job at LB. A full-time faculty position, I think 60 people applied when I applied, but it was luckily a position for three and two other people got hired. And the time before that when I applied, it was 40 people who applied for one position. So we really do pick the kind of people that we want to work with, people that students hopefully will relate to.
And then you can always take a STEM class and see what it’s like. You don’t have to marry into it. I do recommend that people try to be as well-rounded as possible and take as many other classes, like anthropology and women’s studies, for example. I talk to my engineers about that a lot. I want them to not just take STEM classes. They need to be well-rounded members of society.
What’s your life like outside of LB?
I’m married to my husband, Ryan, and he’s an electrical engineer. He’s been where he works now for over 20 years. He comes in almost every term to Brian Reed’s engineering class – his intro class – and the students don’t know it’s my husband because they don’t know me yet, because they’re not in 200 level stuff yet. But Brian Reed is one of my best friends, and so my husband will go in and give them talks, just what’s it like to be an engineer.
Then I’ve got my daughter, Penelope. She’s in seventh grade, and my son, Dustin, is in fifth grade. He’s taking after me with the math and that sort of thing. And my daughter’s really into arts and humanities and drawing and reading.
But besides family, I cook a lot. I cook every day. I like to cook from scratch. I like to make pies. Pi Day is coming up, and I’m gonna make a bunch of pies for that. We’re buying a bunch of pies for that. … I like things that start with “C” – children, cooking, cats, camping. We camp a lot. We’ve already got four trips planned this summer, and we like to raft. So we’re rafting the Grande Ronde. So yeah, rafting and animals and cats and chickens and hamsters and mice. … I’m reading, lots of reading. Thousands of books.
What books are you reading right now?
Science fiction and fantasy right now. I’m re-reading “Dune.” There are a bunch of books, but I don’t remember “Dune” well enough to watch the third movie when it comes out, so I need to re-read them.
Another really good one is “The Three-Body Problem.” It’s a trilogy, but it’s one of those ones where the first book is so good that my kids know the storyline because I can’t stop talking about it. This was a couple years ago, but it’s a Chinese translation, and it’s just too many people to keep track of, and names that I’m not good at keeping, like picturing, so I have to start over.
Yeah, honestly, we mostly just hang out a lot. My family’s all playing video games right now, and mostly my hobby is work. I like feeling good, and I feel good when things are graded and emails are met and my students are happy, and I know what I’m teaching. And then anytime after that is cooking and camping.
This article originally appeared in the March 2025 edition of The Commuter.
