Newton Sussex County Community College professor and gallery director Julie McWilliams is traveling to Princeton University for a mid-career fellowship, designated by the McGraw Center for Teaching and learning. She is one of two SCCC professors participating in a program of studies and seminars on teaching and learning at Princeton. “I am honored to have received this fellowship and am enjoying hearing and developing new opinions at Princeton,” McWilliams commented. “This is a time for me to gather information, read, think, look at new work, sort out my thinking and bring it all back to SCCC’s students. A good college instructor isn’t any use at all unless they are continuously wrestling with new concepts related to their own field. If college instructors are only reading assorted novels and watching a few films over summer break, they are not doing their jobs; they are not really working. The “work” part of being a teacher is not the teaching; it is the self exploration that goes into making a teacher. One may be able to organize material from the textbook and present a dazzling PowerPoint presentation, but that has nothing to do with teaching. One must create edges and lead students to recognize them.” While living in New York City in the 1970s and 80s, McWilliams worked as a commercial artist while studying fine art, painting and drawing with painters Philip Perlstein and James Ernst at Brooklyn College. After earning her B.A. in fine art, she moved to Sussex County and continued to paint and exhibit her work in New York City. She later earned her MFA and entered into a doctoral program in Aesthetics/Art Criticism at New York University. Before being granted tenure at SCCC, McWilliams acquired another masters in library and information sciences, concentrating on art libraries and art collections. In addition to teaching painting, life drawing, and art history classes, she is the academic coordinator of the fine arts degree program at SCCC and directs the college’s art gallery. McWilliams’ fellowship with Princeton continues through the spring 2008 semester.