{"id":3359,"date":"2026-04-24T16:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/?p=3359"},"modified":"2026-04-27T20:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T01:03:31","slug":"faculty-friday-deborah-williams-offers-perspective-expansion-to-her-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/2026\/04\/24\/faculty-friday-deborah-williams-offers-perspective-expansion-to-her-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Faculty Friday: Deborah Williams Offers Perspective Expansion To Her Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Photo provided by Deborah Williams)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Deborah Williams is a lifelong learner who draws inspiration from what she describes as serendipitous moments, epiphanies that motivate her to explore a topic in-depth to learn and grow. Her inner holistic, interdisciplinary approach to the natural world informs her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s like something happens\u2013a question is asked, a comment is made,\u201d Williams, Professor and Chair of Environmental Science and Sustainable Agriculture, says, \u201cIt inspires me to explore the topic more, and I feel that learning the language of philosophy and learning the language of law, it’s like learning foreign languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams holds multiple degrees from across the state of Kansas. She has bachelor\u2019s degrees in biology and animal science, a master’s degree in Student Counseling, Philosophy, and Indigenous Studies, to name a few. She also holds a J.D from Kansas Law and a PhD from the University of Kansas in Cultural Anthropology.<\/p>\n

She brings experience and education to JCCC in her classrooms, and she feels that these overlaps in her way of thinking allow her to offer what she calls perspective expansion to her students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt expands your perspective and enables you to ask questions that you may never have thought of before, because suddenly now you have a vocabulary for the new topic,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThat’s new, and you can overlay that with something else that you learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

She describes these moments of expansion as blended interactions.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor that’s one driver, but also, just this curiosity and wanting to make sense of the world and science will get me so far. Philosophy gets me so far,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI’m curious. I want to learn more.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Williams\u2019 favorite classes is her honors forum in Indigenous and Western Views of Nature. This class helps her identify what she calls intersections across her disciplines of study. She can bring multiple disciplines together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis class is informed by my recent PhD in cultural anthropology,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI feel like the most interesting questions and experiences that I have come from the frontiers of disciplines, and I encourage the students to go intellectually off-roading, so that you can have this kind of undefined and charted territory that is rich with new questions and intriguing aspects to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Messenger spoke to one of Williams’ students in her honors class, Shreya Bhakta, who described Williams\u2019 teaching style as very collaborative.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think students are able to really discuss the things that we find confusing or find interesting and talk to the other students about it,\u201d Bhakta said. \u201cWe’re able to lead the discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that Williams offers a different perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we’re really used to these, like cut-and-dry prerequisites for all these different classes in social sciences, especially,\u201d Bhakta said.<\/p>\n

Williams wants to model a new generation of learning for her students by taking the curiosity that she has and transferring it to her students.<\/p>\n

\u201cGive yourself permission to explore what’s interesting to you, and don’t feel like you have to be siloed in,\u201d Williams said. \u201cChoosing a major because these frontiers, these intersections, these between disciplines can be kind of fertile ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams thinks there’s a lot more need for insights that incorporate alternate methodological approaches to questions, but also different insights from different discipline areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cCraft something new for yourself,\u201d Williams said. \u201cBlended degrees, interdisciplinary programs exist now, and they’re a lot more common than when I was a student and undergraduate for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wants students to explore and go beyond what they thought they were capable of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deborah Williams is a lifelong learner who draws inspiration from what she describes as serendipitous moments, epiphanies that motivate her to explore a topic in-depth to learn and grow. Her inner holistic, interdisciplinary approach to the natural world informs her.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[342],"class_list":["post-3359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Saul Epstein","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/sepstein\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2026\/04\/IMG_7765_optimized_2000-300x217.jpeg","coauthors":[{"link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/mike-kemper\/","display_name":"Mike Kemper"}],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Life<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Life<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 5 months ago","modified":"Updated 5 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on April 24, 2026","modified":"Updated on April 27, 2026"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on April 24, 2026 4:00 pm","modified":"Updated on April 27, 2026 8:03 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":342,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"mike-kemper","display_name":"Mike Kemper","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2026\/04\/IMG_7765_optimized_2000-scaled.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3359"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3388,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359\/revisions\/3388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3359"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}