On any weekday, a student might walk into a professor’s office to improve their grade or ask for exam help.
But instead of walking into bare offices, students often enter rooms with sand-sculptures, inventions and mementos. The Beacon toured four professor offices to learn the stories behind these spaces and what the rooms reveal about those leading our classrooms.
Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences Mark Pitzer has been inventing since childhood. From dismantling and reconfiguring objects to breathing life into abstract ideas, Pitzer’s office is a gallery of his 12 years at UP.
“My wife finally said, ‘We have too many [inventions] at home,’” Pitzer said. “Some of them started to spill into the garage, and so I started to bring them in here because they were relevant to the classes that I was teaching. And then classes began to inspire more things to be built.”
Hung on the walls of Buckley Center room 145, Pitzer’s inventions tell stories — a moss-growing, rotating stone defies the common phrase “a rolling stone gathers no moss.” A paint tube projects his late mother’s art onto the ceiling, memorializing her creative legacy. A winged-clock moves up and down in 11-minute increments to help him stay focused.
“I would be scared if I walked in here,” Pitzer said. “It's like, ‘This guy's a hoarder.’”
Pasted on his walls are also receipts from his TEDx and competitive open-mic The Moth StorySLAM talks. These mementos reflect his passion for storytelling, a skill he brings into the classroom.
Pitzer’s inventions have a unique history, whether psychology-related, like the eyeball made for his Sensation and Perception course, or darkly comedic, like a machine that counts how many breaths he has left. And being able to teach neuroscience through narrative has impacted how he tells stories, too.
“I tell stories, and I love doing it in class,” Pitzer said. “I try to make [my inventions] relevant to whatever I'm teaching.”
When you enter Associate Dean and Professor of German and Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Alexandra Stewart’s office, plants greet you.
The largest of them is a Monstera that once lived at her home. She brought the plant to campus after her cats chewed through all but one of the leaves. Now, it’s overgrowing, as Monsteras are notorious for climbing objects around them.
“It’s coming out by my feet over here,” Stewart said. “It is like a Little Shop of Horrors, but it’s not scary.”
During COVID, Stewart moved into her husband’s house. With a busy new home, Stewart relocated many personal items to her office.
“This office is the one room that is completely under my control, and that feels like me,” Stewart said. “This is my space.”
In the front of her office sits a maroon leather chair that Lou Mason, former UP English professor and mentor for Stewart, owned. Wedged between books on her shelves is his picture.
When Mason packed up for retirement, he and Stewart joked about who would keep the coveted red chair.
“One day, there was a knock at my office door, and I opened [it] and the chair was right outside,” Stewart said. “So that's Lou's chair. I've pushed it right across the road into DB and right back across the road. I love that chair.”
Tucked away from the noise of the Dundon-Berchtold hallways is room 114 — a windowless oasis for self-proclaimed introvert and Associate Professor of English Lars Erik Larson.
“I kind of like having this kind of quiet place,” Larson said. “It's nice to know whether it's hailing or whether the sun is out, but [my office] is a good little monastery. I’m a nastic thinker.”
As an analog person, Larson — who has never owned a cell phone — prefers old technology, which is reflected in the rotary phone and typewriter in his office.
“This [office] is my website,” Larson said. “Welcome to it.”
When Larson was in college, he saw a sand sculpture in a museum that he wasn’t able to purchase. So, he decided to make it himself.
He took out his sandbox and mixed in glue, and after sketching the Roman colonnade, he built his own structure. Now, the sand sculpture lives in his office.
“I made it with the stuff that was on hand,” Larson said. “Manipulating the world in an analog way. Because, I don't know how to make things like toasters or microwaves or computers, but I do know from being an Eagle Scout, how to shape things, and so that explains some of the shaping that goes on in this room.”
Larson studied road narratives for his dissertation at UCLA. Garnished by maps, a globe and a buffalo skull, his office depicts the spaces that guided his academic and professional life, and his focus in Western American Literature.
“One of my favorite quotes is from Winston Churchill, who said, ‘We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us,’” Larson said. “So I guess what explains the pictures on the walls are, you know, I wanted to shape these spaces, and I wanted these pictures to continue to tell me who I am.”
On Franz Hall’s third floor, you’ll find the door of Assistant Professor in the Pamplin School of Business Claire Costin covered with messages like “Black Lives Matter” and “Love is Love.” Walking up the quad, students can also see those signs, including a Pride flag, in her window.
Even before students step inside, Costin intends to create an inclusive space in her office with these messages.
“I try to make as much as I can this a safe-enough space for students to feel like they can be their authentic selves, come in exactly as they are, and feeling however they feel,” Costin said.
Alongside the room’s signage is merchandise from her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin.
A photo of Littlefield Fountain hangs on display as a reminder of her walk to campus from her sorority house, as well as memorabilia of Bevo — the University of Texas mascot.
But Bevo isn’t the only animal in Costin’s heart. She is also known for her golden retrievers which have made appearances on campus before: Mikey, Ruthie and Martha. Photographs of her pups are pasted on her walls and across her desk.
Through her pets, Costin has made lasting connections with students on The Bluff. For instance, after learning of one of her dog's passing, a student wrote Costin a poem which now hangs on her wall.
While she wants to make students feel invited with messages on her door and windows, in turn, the student notes in her office show that Costin is valued on campus, too.
Kaylee Monahan is a News Reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at monahan26@up.edu.
