The Chart Online

Students energize instructor
Monica Thomason

Chart Reporter

A new assistant professor of psychology at Missouri Southern is Christie Cathey, originally from Fordyce, Ark.

Cathey has short brown hair, likes to be different and dresses to suit herself.

Although she married Chris Panza, professor of philosophy at Drury University, Springfield, she plans to keep her maiden name.

I ve been Christy Cathey my whole life; I don t know myself as anything else, she said.

Cathey has been published as Christie Cathey, and if she changes her name no one will recognize her as the author.

Cathey graduated from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. She received her bachelor s degree and attended the University of Connecticut. She chose UConn because she liked what it was doing in the social psychology program, and she loved the scenery there. She also spent a year studying in France.

Cathey prefers to be called Christie by her students to keep their relationships personal. She thinks the student-teacher relationship is important. She began instructing in the spring of 1999. Cathey enjoys her job and loves to teach social psychology.

She said she is effective in the classroom because she likes to imagine what the students want to experience and tries to keep their attention.

Even if it means getting in their faces and pumping them up, Cathey said. I want them to experience everything I would want to.

Cathey said her energy for the classroom is not always there.

Sometimes I have to jump up and down in my office before I go just to get going, she said. Once I get to the class, I usually feel the energy and I go with it.

Her classes attempt to involve every student. She lectures while enforcing with videos and handouts. Cathey loves to teach her classes.

Cathey came to Southern because she wanted to be in a small teaching-oriented institution. She also liked what was happening in the psychology department.

Cathey s favorite foods are her mom s cheese grits and homemade biscuits. Her favorite movie is Harold and Maude, but she knows every word to The Sound of Music.

In her spare time, Cathey likes to play tennis, but she doesn t have a partner here. She also likes to play softball, make Rice Krispies sculptures and do anything crafty.