HUNTINGTON BEACH : Teacher’s Award Will Benefit Her Classes

Bonita (Bonnie) L. Roohk, an instructor of biology and pre-nursing at Golden West College, has been named a finalist in the county’s Community College Teacher of the Year competition.

Finalists receive $15,000 to spend any way they choose, and Roohk, 44, plans to use some of the money for a week’s cruise to Mexico with her husband, Vern, a biomedical consultant.

Roohk said she will plow the rest back into her classroom at Golden West.

Some of it will pay for a printer and visual equipment she has developed for her biology classes.

Some will be used to match grants she has won for her college from the National Science Foundation.

Roohk said she is determined that anything remaining go for educational purposes.

“I don’t want it to disappear and then wonder what I spent it for,” she said.

Roohk has been an instructor at Golden West for 20 years.

In 1978, she developed an introductory biology course that has been used by about 50,000 students for university and college credit.

The telecourse still is being shown on cable TV and at public TV stations, including Channel 50, KOCE, at the Golden West campus, she said.

She also has won grants from the National Science Foundation totaling nearly $100,000 for this year and last.

One grant is to create visual displays of charts, graphs, photographs and microscope views on large projection screens that can accompany and illustrate biology lectures.

The graphic displays will help to increase students’ understanding of scientific principles and processes, she said.

The second grant is aimed at using computers as a measuring tool for such things as chest volumes and lung capacities in the human body during exercise, she said.

Roohk also is a member of the Orange County Science Education Network, made up of a number of college science teachers from UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and all eight Orange County community colleges.

The network was established to share information and serve as a resource for teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade, many of whom must provide science lessons when they already are stretched thin by other classroom demands.

“If college teachers don’t (help out), we are not going to have the kinds of students that we need for the future,” she said.

This year, the competition for the top teachers in Orange County included recognition of community colleges for the first time.

The program is sponsored by the Orange County Department of Education and the James Hines Orange County Teacher of the Year Foundation.

Laguna Beach residents William and Sue Gross contributed $100,000, to be shared by winning teachers, as a way to recognize excellence in education, county officials said.

The foundation is named in honor of James Hines, a professor of literature at Saddleback College.

Roohk said being named a finalist helps emphasize how important a role community colleges play in training students who will go on to four-year colleges as well as those who will take up vocational fields such as nursing and auto mechanics.