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| Eric Spalding, the "singing professor" |
Eric Spalding
Communications
Eric Spalding has incorporated his hobby of composing and recording original songs into his job of teaching UCFV students about media and communications.
Spalding recently recorded his second CD, entitled
Planet Eric: Socializing. Many of the songs deal with popular culture, or communications history or theory, and there’s even a ditty about UCFV entitled Bound to Please.
“I often use music in my classes as a way of diverting students and keeping them interested,” Spalding says. “Usually it’s other people’s music but I started to play my own songs as well, and they liked it. I played Nothing in the Fridge from my first CD when we were discussing the influence of food advertising on overeating, and that went over well, so that motivated me to write other songs for other components of what I teach.”
While the students still have to read texts, write essays, listen to lectures, and participate in class discussions, the songs provide a different way about thinking about the course material.
Spalding is probably the first person to ever write pop music songs about sociology gurus Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, film funding policy in Canada, multiculturalism, cultural theorist Raymond Williams, inventor Edwin Armstrong, and how our friends’ perceptions of our opinions on films affect our self-esteem.
The songs jibe with the introductory courses he teaches on communications theory and communications media.
Spalding is a hobbyist, musically. He loves to write songs and record them himself, with occasional background vocals from his wife. He uses the Pro Tools program to multi-track his vocals, and plays all the instruments on his recordings.
He calls himself a fan of “outsider” music, and enjoys playing “weird” stuff for his students that they likely have never hear before, as well as established artists such as Elvis Costello, who seems like ancient history to students born in the 1980s, but whose songs are relevant to the material they study.
To find out more about Spalding’s world, go to his website,
www.planeteric.com . Anyone who would like a free copy of his CD can email him at
eric.spalding@ucfv.ca .
