Rose Drummond

Professor

“Socrates is my favorite person. He was, after all, our first teacher.”

The license plates on her car read “LA OPERA.” And as vice president of the Opera Guild of Southern California, Rose Drummond works tirelessly to bring the opera experience to school children. But introducing new concepts to the classroom is something she’s been doing for years at SMC.

“I introduced the women’s history course at SMC,” she says proudly. “And I taught it for more than 10 years.” She also introduced the post WWII history class. “And I also brought collective bargaining to the campus by organizing the part-time faculty into a union.” Rose says that she’s seen SMC take enormous strides over the years. “I particularly like the multi-cultural aspect of our students now,” she says. “And SMC people in general are just enthusiastic.”

Rose says that challenging people’s preconceptions is a very important part of her method of teaching history. “Every student arrives with their own prejudgments,” she says. “So I try to free them of those limitations.”

“It’s important, as a teacher, to get students to think critically and learn objectively,” says Rose. “History can be a very subjective field of study. So my purpose is to help students arrive at their own conclusions which are not judgmental. And it’s gratifying when they come to me and say, ‘You’ve really shown me both sides of a lot of the issues.’”

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