{"id":7621,"date":"2013-09-18T08:50:05","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T15:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=7621"},"modified":"2013-09-17T10:51:51","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T17:51:51","slug":"know-your-profs-camosun-college-fine-furniture-instructor-cam-russell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2013\/09\/18\/know-your-profs-camosun-college-fine-furniture-instructor-cam-russell\/","title":{"rendered":"Know Your Profs<\/em>: Camosun College fine furniture instructor Cam Russell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Know Your Profs<\/em> is an ongoing series of articles helping you get to know the instructors at Camosun College a bit better. Got someone you want to see interviewed? Email editor@nexusnewspaper.com and we\u2019ll get on it.<\/p>\n

This time around we caught up with fine furniture and joinery instructor Cam Russell and talked about shop safety, losing sleep, and moving backward.<\/p>\n

1: What do you teach and how long have you been a teacher at Camosun?<\/i><\/p>\n

I teach the fine furniture-joinery program, and this is my 27th year.<\/p>\n

2: What do you personally get out of teaching?<\/i><\/p>\n

Not many people are lucky enough to have a job where they help others realize their dreams, but that is exactly what I get to do.\u00a0Folks come to us with an ambition to learn how to design, build, and finish furniture, and between my teaching partner Ken Guenter and me, we\u2019ve worked out a course that allows them to do just that; it is hugely satisfying.<\/p>\n

3: What\u2019s one thing you wish your students knew about you?<\/i><\/p>\n

How much I respect them for their courage in taking a year out of their adult lives to come and spend no small amount of time and money in pursuit of their training. It\u2019s a pretty big leap of faith in us and, to be honest, I\u2019m not sure I would have the nerve to do it.<\/p>\n

4: What\u2019s one thing you wish they didn\u2019t know about you?<\/i><\/p>\n

How much sleep I lose some nights worrying about it all.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun\u2019s Cam Russell finds himself in a familiar position: covered in sawdust (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

5: What\u2019s the best thing that\u2019s ever happened to you as a teacher here?<\/i><\/p>\n

So many good things, it\u2019s hard to list. But I think my ultimate satisfaction comes each year when we exhibit the final projects and everyone can stand back and look at how far their skills have come in the past 10 months.\u00a0Also, it\u2019s great when a grad from 10 or 12 years ago who has gone on to establish their own business phones in May or June to ask if we have any recent grads to recommend as prospective employees.<\/p>\n

6: What\u2019s the worst thing that\u2019s ever happened to you as a teacher here?<\/i><\/p>\n

So few bad things, but it would definitely have to be when a student injures themselves in the shop.\u00a0We focus on safety from day one, but in our shop environment, with spinning blades and knives, injuries do happen, fortunately very few serious ones over the years\u2026 touch wood.<\/p>\n

7: What do you see in the future of postsecondary education?<\/i><\/p>\n

Naturally I love the focus on trades training that we\u2019ve enjoyed recently, so more focus in that direction would be my hope.\u00a0So many of my students have dabbled in other postsecondary courses for years and finally come to us to receive enough skills and knowledge to go out and earn a living within the few months we have to provide that.\u00a0Of course, I acknowledge a place in society for research and focused study, but it would be great to see the imbalance between that and lowly vocational training brought closer to level.<\/p>\n

8: What do you do to relax on the weekends?<\/i><\/p>\n

A few years ago my wife Karen and I built a house and workshop, so lots of time is spent on finishing that, but a bit of time is left for gardening and cooking, too.<\/p>\n

9: What\u2019s your\u00a0favorite meal?<\/i><\/p>\n

A couple of years ago we built a wood-fired pizza oven in our garden, so something cooked with wood heat has to be on the list, along with a salad from our garden that we can be eating when all of the ingredients were\u00a0still growing a few minutes previously.<\/p>\n

10: What\u2019s your biggest pet peeve?<\/i><\/p>\n

Overuse of the phrase \u201cmoving forward.\u201d\u00a0Just once I\u2019d love to hear\u00a0our politicians and leaders\u00a0propose to move us backward\u2014just to an era where we made the things we need to live in Canada and didn\u2019t import them from half a world away just because they cost less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Know Your Profs is an ongoing series of articles helping you get to know the instructors at Camosun College a bit better. Got someone you want to see interviewed? Email editor@nexusnewspaper.com and we\u2019ll get on it. This time around we caught up with fine furniture and joinery instructor Cam Russell and talked about shop safety, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-september-18-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7624,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions\/7624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}