Dr. Michael E. Bryan, Coordinator
Office of Student Outcomes Assessment
PO Box 9000
Norfolk, Virginia 23509-9000
Office: (757) 822-1073
Fax: (757) 822-1060
Email: mbryan@tcc.edu
Homepage: Office of Student Outcomes Assessment
Homepage: Faculty/Teaching

Meet the Professor

In his role as Coordinator for the Office of Student Outcomes Assessment at Tidewater Community College, Dr. Bryan enjoys collaborating with administrators, faculty, staff and students. As TCC enhances its culture of evidence and assessment's role in curriculum planning, he stresses three guiding concepts which are coined "Baby Steps", "M&M" and "SOD". “Baby Steps” is a metaphor used to describe the assessment reporting process. As with a child's growth, assessment is a continuous process and a gradual sequencing from one stage of development to another. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor should our assessment activities. The "M&M" rule calls for the need to balance manageability with meaningfulness. For instance, when writing outcomes and identifying assessment measures, the data collection process must be manageable yet produce meaningful results. The "SOD" rule calls for curriculum planners to transform informal, ad hoc, and undocumented data collection and analysis processes into those that are Systematic, Organized, and Documented. This can be achieved by creating short, simple tracking forms such as check-off lists, event logs, or other systematic rubrics.

In addition to his responsibilities in directing the college's outcomes assessment efforts, Dr. Bryan teaches as an adjunct for the Division for Business, Public Services, and Technologies at the Chesapeake Campus. He developed this faculty webpage for use with the 3 courses he currently teaches (ACC 215: Computerized Accounting; CHD 230: Behavior Management for School Age Child Care; and EDU 200: Introduction to Teaching as a Profession). Beginning in spring 2008, he began his 2-year term as Chair of the Administrative Association. His interest in educational leadership, governance, and professional development are perfectly aligned with the direction and needs of the Association. To address an important aspect of student life and the collegiate experience at TCC, Dr. Bryan founded the TCC College-wide Golf Club during spring 2009. The club provides TCC students, faculty, and staff with opportunities to interact while improving their level of play. Equally important, the club allows participants to the engage in a healthy, active lifestyle.

In his spare time, Dr. Bryan enjoys karaoke to classic and contemporary tunes such as Roy Orbison and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, cultivating his vegetable and flower gardens, acrylic painting, freshwater/bass fishing, and spending time with his family (wife - Michelle, and three children - Kayla, Mason, and Sarah). He and his children are students at Chesapeake Tae Kwon Do. He is also an active member of the Great Bridge Masonic Lodge #257 and the Southeastern Elementary PTA Board. At Southeastern Elementary, Dr. Bryan serves as a Classroom Parent and the Correspondence Secretary for Board. He holds an EdD in Educational Leadership from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a MS in Secondary/Business Education from Dowling College, and a BBA in Public Accounting from Hofstra University. Dr. Bryan is a licensed and experienced public school Business educator and central office administrator, and a trained and licensed Principal and Superintendent in North Carolina and Commonwealth of Virginia.

Although he served as a fulltime administrator at the college, his passion is teaching. Shown below are the courses taught and links to the course outlines as well as the feedback provided through the Student Evaluation of Instructor forms.

Courses Taught

Course Outlines Student Evaluations
Fall 2009 ACC 215 Computerized Accounting (Class Nbr 54634, Section O01C, 3 Units) Click Here Click Here
EDU 200 Introduction to Teaching as a Profession (Class Nbr 66834, Section O02C, 3 Units) Cancelled Cancelled
Spring 2009 EDU 200 Introduction to Teaching as a Profession (Class Nbr 25283, Section O02C, 3 Units) Click Here Click Here
Fall 2008 ACC 215 Computerized Accounting (Class Nbr 33862, Section O01C, 3 Units) Click Here Click Here
CHD 230 Behavior Management School Age Child Care (Class Nbr 33466, Section O01C, 3 Units) Cancelled Cancelled
Spring 2008 EDU 200 Introduction to Teaching as a Profession (Class Nbr , Section O01C, 3 Units) Click here Click here

Fall 2007

ACC 215 Computerized Accounting (Class Nbr 44967, Section O02C, 3 Units)

Click here Click here
CHD 230 Behavior Management School Age Child Care (Class Nbr 63193, Section O01C, 3 Units) Click here Click here
Spring 2007 CHD 230 Behavior Management School Age Child Care (Class Nbr 44733, Section O01C, 3 Units) Click here Click here
EDU 200 Introduction to Teaching as a Profession (Class Nbr 23620, Section O02C, 3 Units) Click here Click here

Fall 2006

ACC 215 Computerized Accounting (Class Nbr 33909, Section O01N, 3 Units)

Click here Click here

Spring 2006

ACC 215 Computerized Accounting
* Norfolk Campus (Class Nbr 29493, Section O01N, 3 Units)
* Chesapeake Campus (Class Nbr 36563, Section O01C, 3 Units)

Click here Click here

Fall 2005

ACC 215 Computerized Accounting (Class Nbr 60468, Section O01N, 3 Units)

Click here Click here

Spring 2005

ACC 215 Computerized Accounting (Class Nbr 37082, Section N01N, 3 Units)

Click here Click here

Sample of Favorite Quotes

Aristotle * The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
Russell Baker * An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.
Bill Beattie * The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.
Warren Bennis * Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.
* Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
* Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.
* Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
* Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
* Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.
* People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.
* There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.
* There is a profound difference between information and meaning.
* You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.
* The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
Claude Bernard * The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek.
Yogi Berra * Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.
* It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
* You can observe a lot by just watching.
* We made too many wrong mistakes.
* The future ain't what is used to be.
* If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.
* It's deja vu all over again.
* A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
* Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.
* He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious.
* In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
* It ain't the heat, it's the humility.
* Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
* The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.
* We have deep depth.
* When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.
* You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.
Wernher von Braun
* One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions.

Mandell Creighton

* The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.

John Cusack (line from Say Anything) * I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
Edward DeBono

* The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.
* Perception is real even when it is not reality.
* If you do not design the future someone or something else will design it for you.
* We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.
* Traditional thinking is all about "what is;" Future thinking will also need to be about what can be.
* Effectiveness without values is a tool without a purpose.

Albert Einstein * Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Robert Frost * Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
John Gardner * Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
Gail Godwin * Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.
Robert Ingersoll * It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
Jeremiah * For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).
Carl Jung * One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
* If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
Martin Luther King Jr. * I don't ever want you to forget that there are millions of God's children who will not, and cannot get a good education, and I don't want you feeling that you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are all that they ought to be.
Roger Lewin

* Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

Abraham Maslow * We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.
* A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
* A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
* He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.
* If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
* If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.
Karl Menninger * One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.
Ivan Pavlov * While you are experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things. Don't become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.
Alfred Pennyworth * ...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Plato * ...and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
Carl Rogers * The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn... and change.
* The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.
* The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.
George Santayana * The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
B. F. Skinner * Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
* I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.
* We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
George Steinbrenner * I haven't always done a good job, and I haven't always been successful - but I know that I have tried.
Vernon Sanders Law
* Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
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