Education could not happen if there was no one to teach. Some teachers and professors can be boring at times, and some can be your best friend. At UW-Platteville’s Baraboo campus, most or all his students love this professor. When you hear this, you are probably thinking of someone like Dr. Seals.
As a professor, he can make my day just by smiling. However, I am not the only one in my College Writing class who feels that way. Destiny Deo said, “Having Dr. Seals as a teacher is such an honor. He is the first teacher I’ve had that I enjoy going to [an] online class.” Dr. Seals takes time to connect with his students and cares about them. If one student is a regular attendee, and they miss a day of class, he mentions, “Hope everything is okay.”
Dr. Seals started out at a two-year college in Florida. “Kinda like Boo-U,” he said in one of our college writing classes. I asked him about how his teachers from his experience as a student might have helped him become the teacher and friend he is now. “He was always making us laugh,” Dr. Seals said memorably about his theater professor, Dr. Dehart, who had a great sense of humor. “We learned a lot, but he made us laugh to make it entertaining.”
Dr. Seals remembered the times where he and some of his friends would try to get a game night together with Dr. Dehart because he was just that much fun. “A colleague of mine said to me, ‘Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,’” Dr. Seals quoted. “I have tried to apply Dr. Dehart’s level of empathy to all of my classes.”
Dr. Seals is more than just a professor at Boo-U; he is also the proud Captain Codger the Fourth.
“This means he is the third captain of the faculty/staff softball team that has beaten the students 51 straight times,” according to Jason Schulte, the Student Events Coordinator at Boo-U, which is the nickname for the Baraboo campus.
The Codger vs. Brat game is a traditional softball game between the faculty and students that Boo-U hosts once a year. He proudly carries the Codgers, the faculty, to continue their winning streak against the Brats, the students.
Dr. Seals retold the story of how, when he had just begun teaching at the Baraboo campus, the faculty elected him to be the next Captain Codger. Dr. Seals was stunned and asked why. They replied, “We need some new blood.” Apparently, the Codger-Brat game was also going to be a thing of the past, “a dying tradition,” if no one stepped up.
“I think what happened is that the captain before me played the game very, very seriously,” Dr. Seals stated. Thanks to Dr. Seals, this game goes on, but it is not at all a serious game, according to Dr. Seals, it is a game “to have a stupid fun time.”
Dr. Seals has learned and kept memories of the past and keeps applying them to the future. Not only have I learned from him, but he has gotten me to feel like this is the college to which I belong. Someday, Dr. Seals will retire, and I wonder who will take his place at this college. Maybe someone who was a student of his; who knows?
Dr. Seals is also just all-around fun to talk to. He seems to fit a little bit of knowledge into whatever he is talking about. In my first semester here, he makes me feel like I belong here.