Professor Spotlight - Gilberto Martinez Jr.

In the past year Texas A&M International University has grown immensely, especially in its number of professors.  Gilberto Martinez Jr., native of Laredo, was thrilled to accept the position as Communication and Theater Arts instructor last fall.  Since then, Martinez has proven to be a success in the classroom and an inspiration to his students.  He may best be described as a "believer in his students' abilities."  Through his unique teaching style, he has not only been able to teach students the material in his courses, but has also made them believe that everyone has a talent, whether they know it or not.

Now approaching his eleventh year as an educator, Martinez has taught at the high school, community college, and university levels.  Although teaching is something he certainly has a background in, it's a profession he never thought he would take on.  "It kind of happened by accident.  When I first graduated with my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree I was trying to be an actor," said Martinez.

Unfortunately, Martinez was only able to continue on in his search for an acting career for one semester due to student loan purposes.  Shortly after, he got a job as a teacher of theater arts at the Vidal M. Trevino School of Communication and Fine Arts.  He obtained this position for a short two months and then took on a substitute teaching opening for speech communication at Alexander High School.  It was at that point that he realized his love for teaching and pursued a teaching career at the college level.

"By the time I got to teaching at Alexander, I had already made the decision that I didn't want to act and that I wanted to be more of a playwright.  I wanted a job that could give me time to write at night and so forth," explained Martinez.  So in 2001, Martinez began teaching theater arts courses at Laredo Community College and did so for 9 years. 

            Martinez's journey at TAMIU, thus far, has been a success.  In fall 2010 he was one in 18 professors that received the Student Recognition Award for Teaching Excellence.  This award is based off the students' feedback of their professor's performance throughout the semester.  Although Martinez had just started teaching that same semester, receiving the award says a lot about his ability to influence students in a short period of time.  Their  perceptions of him have remained positive.

 Martinez has had the privilege of teaching courses that he truly enjoys such as Fundamentals of Communication, Stage Performance, and Public Speaking.  This fall he took on the challenge of teaching a new course for the first time, Media Writing.  This class is taught in a rotation of three different topics including: 1) writing for news broadcast, print and news media; 2) writing for public relations in broadcast, print, and news media; 3) script writing including copy editing, story boarding, and writing for documentaries and TV pilots, according to the Communication university catalog.  Martinez has put an emphasis on screenwriting for this course, giving students the opportunity to pay close attention to details they see in movies, TV shows, and documentaries, while testing their writing skills at the same time.

Teaching in a "narrative" style, Martinez lectures in the way of telling a story that will keep students interested straight through, from beginning to end.  "I like to call it the wax on, wax off style of teaching.  Sometimes while it may seem like I'm off on a tangent in class, I'm really connecting it to a particular theory or experience," said Martinez.  He's proven that his passion for acting and film have remained strong, and teaching courses in these areas have helped him to do so.

As he continues his career at TAMIU, Martinez has set both short and long-term goals for himself.  A short-term goal of his is to complete his dissertation this December, which focuses on theater arts and higher education institutions.  For his long-term goal Martinez is determined to establish an active theater program on campus that will attract more students that are interested in this field of study.

"Whether I understand it fully or not, I do feel passionate about teaching.  It's not something I thought I would ever do.  My experiences have overwhelmingly been positive, I've never had a same semester or same year.  I've yet to get bored," said Martinez.

If you are interested in taking acting or writing courses, refer to www.tamiu.edu for updates on courses that will be offered in the upcoming semester. 

(Sarah Herrera may be reached at sarahrebecca@dusty.tamiu.edu)