TCNJ

17 FALL 2025 There were extensive literature reviews and deep dives into methodology. And, iN WHAT BECAME A BRACE-YOURSELF RiTE OF PASSAGE FOR THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS, there were Pollock's regular and very public in-class edits of works in progress. POLLOCK'S ZEAL for education emerged during his boyhood in Dallas, where his godmother regularly took him to nearby Southern Methodist University to watch the commencement procession. The first time he glimpsed the faculty in their academic regalia — which he called "wizard costumes" — he was entranced. "I wanted to be one of those magical guys," he says. At Swarthmore College, Pollock studied political science and international relations and discovered a passion for research. But it was his professors' interest in student ideas that changed his world. "It was very much, 'Your opinions are as valid as mine,'" he says. "We're all smart people here. The professors had just been at it a bit longer." That spirit would anchor Pollock's teaching philosophy, as would his experiences conducting fieldwork in India while earning his master's degree in international public administration from Syracuse University and pursuing his PhD at Stanford. He carried the best parts of his education into his own classroom. Pollock taught political science and communication classes at Rutgers University and then at the City University of New York. But he also had a young family to support. So after a decade of teaching, Pollock made an unexpected detour to a public relations career. Despite success conducting public opinion research and operating his own communication firm for seven years, he missed teaching. In 1992, in his attempt to find a job back in academia, Pollock rang the communication studies department at TCNJ. To his relief, they hired him. "I will always be indebted to TCNJ for hiring me," he says. "I had been given a new life." Top to bottom: John Pollock and Andrew Feldman '00; Induction ceremony in 2009 for TCNJ's chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, the national communication student honor society; Pollock and Kelsey Zinck Chado in South Africa. He arrived energized and ready to make up for lost time, setting goals for his classes that soared past simply mastering the curriculum. "I wanted students to think way beyond the classroom," Pollock says. "I wanted them to feel empowered. I wanted them to realize how bright they were." The key, he decided, was helping them achieve professional — not undergraduate — levels of success. He designed a research-intensive method that mimicked the stages of article production. Coining it the "Communication Commando Model," he warned students it might feel a bit much at first. Instead of tackling an array of unrelated essays and exams, Pollock's students immersed themselves in one semester-long project. The paper that emerged from their work wasn't meant to earn a passing grade to maintain their GPA, but to make a serious contribution to the field of communication studies. There were extensive literature reviews and deep dives into methodology. And, in what became a brace-yourself rite of passage for thousands of students, there were Pollock's regular and very public in- class edits of works in progress. "It was terrifying," says Kelsey Zinck Chado '14. "It wasn't you just getting back red marks to yourself, where you could sit and sulk at your desk. It was a reality check in a public forum." But she found that she loved both the process and the demanding but charismatic professor who wore suits with a cowboy hat and told vivid stories about books he'd written, fieldwork in South America, and his teenage years riding horses in Colorado. Though she'd planned on a career in sports communications, publishing and

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