Dr. Betty Levitov
Professor of English
Mention Dr. Betty Levitov's name and Africa leaps to mind.
Blame it on her frequent travels there, or the success of her pioneering semester-in-Africa course.
Africa sometimes overshadows the Professor of English.
But don't let it.
You might miss a story about growing up in a kibbutz - a three family Baltimore row-house version, with lawnmowers, car, and freezer space as communal property.
The free-spirited roots still show in the educator who has taught Doane students for nearly 25 years.
Teaching is her way of being political, of "changing a little corner of the world."
She advocates the importance of diversity on campus.
Desks in her classrooms don't form a circle by accident. (Arranging them in a circle demonstrates a lack of hierarchy.)
And there's always a better chance of hearing discussion than lecture. (Dialogue generates the most learning and eliminates a passive classroom.)
Her background probably has something to do, too, with the way she nurtures intellect and creativity. (Her son is a classical cellist; her daughter, an art historian.)
But a Levitov story wouldn't be complete without talking about Africa, which she was introduced to as a teacher at Our Lady of Fatima College in Liberia, West Africa.
Peace Corps friends from Nebraska convinced her to come to the state she only knew as a place "in the crease of my atlas."
Africa is a triumph of her career.
She designed a semester in Africa after seeing how life-changing short Doane College interterm travels can be.
She calls the semesters in Africa "transformative."
Students design a portion of the curriculum.
There is "a lot of learning in vans," the dust of seven countries trailing behind them.
There is yoga at sunrise, scuba diving, Swahili, volunteer hours at a village school, and apprenticeships with African villagers.
She shows students the Africa one won't find in the mass media version.
Levitov has traveled to 23 of Africa's 53 countries and spent part of her sabbatical there. It's all in her book, with the working title "Africa on Six Wheels, A Semester on Safari."
It shows all sides of Levitov, from Africa to Doane, and the poetry she sees in both.
You have to see the poetry, she says, or you'll only see the despair in the world.
"The human imagination to create -- literature, music, art, poetry - it's a mechanism for balance, a very real remedy that gives hope."