LEOunion.org

The following letter was provided to LEO by the students in Kirsten Herold's ENG 125 course.  Herold is the LEO vice president, chief grievance officer, and a member of the union's bargaining team.  She was recently dismissed by the university, an action protested by many, including her students.

We, Dr. Kirsten Herold's students,

Are writing to protest her dismissal from the University. We are firmly of the conviction that Dr. Herold is amongst the best lecturers we have been taught by. Her work ethic is outstanding and each one of us is acutely aware of her immense contribution to our writing styles. Recently, when made aware of the University of Michigan's decision to not re-appoint Dr. Herold we were collectively shocked, upset and demoralized. Upset and demoralized, because of her warm and kind personality, but shocked because a teacher of this caliber is most rare and it seems like a great loss to the University in not re-appointing her. There is nobody who is more aware of the specifics in Dr. Herold teaching style and the overall impact of her English 125 class than us, her students. By writing this letter we hope to testify our unconditional support for Dr. Herold, and demonstrate the uniqueness of her teaching style, which would make the loss of this gifted lecturer a great loss indeed to our University.

Dr. Herold enters each morning with a wide smile on her face, enquires about the writing progress of each student, addresses all anxieties and then moves on to the teaching material. While teaching, she individually supervises that each student is grasping what she has to say, and constantly instill a spirit of confidence and warmth in all her students.

We are aware that personality may not be considered as a reason to retain her, but this personality has contributed toward out interest in the subject and also in our learning. Besides her bright personality, Dr. Herold has a very structured work ethic. Her plan for each class in the semester is presented to us right at the beginning and rarely have we abstracted from this plan. Her announcements regarding work are always well ahead of time and she always makes sure students have sufficient time to complete their work. She uses a wide range of resources for the class, including exercises developed herself and those of other authors; the real point of each exercise is to develop specific writing skills for us, each one seems to have worked exceptionally well in developing our ability to write argumentative essays. She gives us amazing feedback on our papers, and everything is given within the promised deadline; she is extremely astute in her overall time management, this has certainly helped us.

At the end of the day, a true measure of the worth of a teacher is how well their students have progressed. We feel that Dr. Herold's contribution to our success at college is profound; not only have we consistently improved our writing ability for her papers, but her knowledge and teaching has greatly helped us improve our writing in our other subjects, be it Political Science or History. While talking about this decision, each one of us realized that Dr. Herold's high motivation and motivational abilities, her depth of knowledge and her astute use of this knowledge, and her excellent overall instruction has significantly impacted out college writing careers and will play an instrumental role in success later on in life.

Besides discussing potential success we actually talked the numbers. Collectively as an English class in two semesters at the University, we have experiences at least 20 different lecturers. We firmly believe that among this diverse group of lecturers, Dr. Herold stands out; her loyalty to the University for 18 years, and her continual quest for excellence, accompanied with her obvious command of the English language distinguish Dr. Herold.

We firmly believe that she should be re-appointed at the earliest and are willing to amplify any details in support of this testimonial.

Sincerely,

The students of English 125 (044 & 048)