William Huet

About me

My name is William James Huet (but please call me Bill).
    I was born in Chicago, Illinois but at a young age my family moved to the small town of Huron, South Dakota. I attended Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD and graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in psychology and a strong minor in political science. I next applied to and was accepted at the University of South Dakota School of Law. I graduated in 1985 with a Juris Doctorate and passed the Bar exam in that same year. While in law school I took advantage of a joint degree program to obtain my Master's in psychology jointly with my law degree, also earning that degree in 1985.
    I then applied to and was accepted into USD's APA-approved clinical psychology program to work on a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I completed four years in that program before leaving on my one-year internship at Atascadero State Hospital in Atascadero, CA.   Atascadero is a California's primary maximum security facility for the criminally insane. The client population at Atascadero includes those persons declared incompetent to stand trial, inmates convicted of felonies and sent to a regular prison who have developed significant mental health problems, persons found not guilty by reason of insanity and individuals who have been civilly committed but are too dangerous to be housed in other facilities. Atascadero was also home to SOTEP (Sex Offender Treatment Evaluation Program) a decade long multimillion dollar project to determine if (and under what circumstances) sex offenders are treatable. Some of you may recognize Atascadero as the inspiration for the fictional mental health facility that Sarah Conner was committed to in the second Terminator movie (the actual hospital is nothing like it's fictional counterpart).
    After completing my internship I was hired in 1990 by a hospital in Sioux Falls to create, design and run the sex offender treatment program at the state prison. After creating and establishing the STOP (Special Treatment of Perpetrators) program I became the intake interviewer for the prison; that job required that I interview and prepare a report on every adult male offender entering the South Dakota prison system. During my tenure at the prison I interviewed thousands of inmates convicted of everything from DWI to rape to serial killing (yes, we have serial killers in South Dakota). I left the prison in 2001 after accepting full-time employment as a professor at CTU-Sioux Falls campus.
    I began teaching college courses as an adjunct in 1990 and while working as an adjunct taught for a variety of universities and technical institutes in eastern South Dakota. In 2000 I was hired as a full time instructor at CTU-Sioux Falls (between 2000 and 2001 I worked part-time at the same prison while they searched for a successor).
    I have taught history (especially Western civilization), general psychology, social psychology, abnormal psychology, forensic psychology and introduction to criminal profiling. I was also the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for three online courses: social psychology, criminal profiling and crime lab management.
    I married in 1985 and my wife is currently a vice president at CitiBank (and she had nothing to do with CitiBank's ten billion dollar losses). We live (along with our two beloved Basenjis, Nala and Hercules) in Sioux Falls.

Activity

William Huet

Discussion Comment

The most important skill a student can learn...

...is how to take tests, especially standardized tests. All professions require the completion of a huge comprehensive exam in order to be admitted into that profession. The Bar exam is a good example: it doesn't matter what your GPA was in law school or how many times you were on the Dean's List, if you can't pass the Bar, you can't be a lawyer, period. Teaching students how to prepare for and take tests will be a skill that they will thank you for (later).

William Huet

Discussion Comment

Understanding field requirements or crushing hopes and dreams

Students often do not understand the requirements necessary to enter certain fields or job areas; assignments that acquaint them when those requirements can be very "educational"in a variety of ways. For example, it is not uncommon to encounter students who want to enter highly competitive fields like law enforcement to have little or no understanding of how difficult those jobs are to land (frequently there are hundreds of applicants per position) or that becoming an FBI agent requires graduate education in law, accounting, languages, computer science or some other advanced degree that the FBI happens to need and be age… >>>

William Huet

Discussion Comment

Role playing as a aid to questioning

Giving the students a role (like a reporter, detective or researcher) can help them by providing a context for creating and asking questions, especially when coupled with a scenario that they have to "solve". For example, presenting them with a "crime scene" and "suspects" (role played by the instructor and having different personalities and characteristics to keep it interesting) and then asking them to create the questions they need to ask to solve the crime is a very useful critical thinking that students find both interesting and engaging. This method is also helpful if you are a frustrated actor and… >>>

William Huet

Discussion Comment

Reality does not follow theory

Learning styles is an interesting idea and has become something of a "sacred cow" in education but the awful reality is that most businesses (and for that matter, professional schools) couldn't give a hot damn about what of learner you are; the message in those environments is typically "our way or the highway. In both law school and graduate school (in clinical psychology) you were expected to conform to the style being used, not the other way around. I also never had an employer ever ask me (or seem to care) what my learning style was--what they cared about was… >>>

William Huet

Discussion Comment

Five commandments for effective teaching

1. Thou shall be interesting. It doesn't matter how well you know the material if nobody is listening. Bore your students and they won't be learning from you. 2. Thou shall be excited about thy subject. If you aren't excited about the subject matter, your students sure as certain aren't going to be. 3. Thou shall be fair and unbiased. Remember how you felt about "teacher's pets" when you were in school? No more need be said. 4. Thou shall be strict but fair. Students need structure and expect you to provide it. Students need standards and need you to… >>>

William Huet

Discussion Comment

Information to include

As part of the materials delivered to students, instructors should break up course materials into separate components and hand each out along with an explanation of the material. Combining all handouts into a single "block" may be more efficient but does not facilitate students' understanding of the material.

William Huet

Discussion Comment

Understanding student motivation

Adult learners generally have significantly different motives from traditional students. They are typically much more career focused and want to learn practical, application-based skills instead of theory and general information. They also do not suffer fools gladly--their instructor needs to know what they are doing or they can expect to hear about it. Finally, adult learners want to know how to apply what they have learned to the real world. It is particularly helpful to have instructors who have actual real-world experience and degrees in professional fields. Educators who have not worked outside the classroom often have difficulty reaching adult… >>>

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