Donald Green, Georgia Highlands’ president, is teaching The Environment of Business at the Cartersville campus this semester.

The class focuses on increasing students’ knowledge about governmental systems, legal systems and regulatory systems involved in business. Green intends for his students to feel comfortable in a business environment and equipped for success in the business field.

Green said that he has placed an expectation on himself to “make sure that the very optimal learning environment is being developed for our students.”

He says that his opportunity to teach has “helped him” to better understand the experience of being a student at Georgia Highlands College.

Green was surprised about his students’ struggles accessing D2L and their e-textbook, prompting him to work on enhancing orientation.

Green uses his experiences as a former human resources manager in providing anecdotes to help his students learn.

Kyle Wheeless, a business management major, said that Green’s teaching “makes learning the information simple” and that he enables a deeper understanding of the information by making his lessons interactive.

Green tries to differentiate between his roles of president and professor and tries to ensure that his responsibilities as president never intimidate his students.

“It was an opportunity to be able to help students to understand the value of building a rapport with faculty, that building those relationships will help them ultimately to be more successful in college. If they can get comfortable with talking to the president, they’ll be more comfortable with building those relationships,” Green said.

Vanessa Tully, a business administration major, recalls her reaction to being taught by Green.

She said,“I honestly freaked out. I thought that Dr. Green would be tough and have higher expectation from us. Dr. Green is actually an amazing teacher–and–president combo. He tries his best to know his students and always comes in the class smiling.”