July 25, 2023
By Landry Brewer
For SWOSU history professor Sunu Kodumthara, there’s no place like home to teach what she loves.
The Mustang native followed a childhood friend to SWOSU where both had a wonderful undergraduate experience.
Because she loved studying government and politics, Kodumthara began her collegiate career in Weatherford as a political science major. But as a history minor, she was fascinated by delving into the past to explain the present.
So, she became a double major and realized her future was in teaching the past.
She enjoyed her history studies so much, she decided to pursue graduate school and a professorial career teaching the subject.
Kodumthara left SWOSU with a B.A. in history and political science in 2001. Having considered her graduate options, she made the financially prudent decision to move to Stillwater.
“OSU offered me a graduate assistantship, so of course, I went where the money was,” she said.
When she completed her master’s degree in history and wanted to begin doctoral work, she made a similar decision and relocated to Norman. Kodumthara completed another graduate assistantship at OU, but she also had the opportunity to work with a preeminent Western history scholar there.
Kodumthara returned to her higher education home and joined the SWOSU faculty in January 2010.
The joy of the opportunity was, however, tempered by the circumstance that created it—the death of her SWOSU mentor, Dr. Roger Bromert.
Kodumthara finished writing her dissertation—a book that Ph.D. students write to complete the degree—while teaching full time at SWOSU and grieving the influential man whose faculty position she now occupied.
She powered through, however, completed the Ph.D., and became Dr. Kodumthara in 2011.
She’s happy at SWOSU. “When I imagined teaching at the collegiate level, this was the type of environment I had hoped for,” Kodumthara said.
Since she teaches a required U.S. History class, she gets to know all sorts of students pursuing all sorts of majors.
“Teaching them at the freshman level gives me the chance to get them at the very beginning of their collegiate career, introduce them to critical thinking, and reintroduce them to (hopefully) a fresh perspective of U.S. History,” Kodumthara said.
She also relishes working with colleagues, especially those in her department. Whether commiserating over common educational frustrations, talking about favorite tv shows, or just teasing each other, these professional relationships smooth the occasional rough patches and make teaching easier.
Though most history majors become educators themselves—which is a tremendous source of pride for Kodumthara and her fellow history professors—others go on to an interesting assortment of professions. Some become lawyers or librarians, others exhibit designers or insurance investigators.
In more than a decade on the SWOSU faculty, Kodumthara has learned the need to be flexible in the classroom to adjust for a variety of student backgrounds and abilities—where they’re coming from and their individual experiences.
“Do they know how to take notes? Were they ever required to read in their history classes? Those things matter,” she said.
Kodumthara loves history so much that she’d work in the discipline even if she wasn’t a professor. “I like being able to talk to people about why state and local history matters and how the thread of humanity connects us all,” she said.
Like when she and former SWOSU President Dr. Randy Beutler spoke to community members and students at the SWOSU campus in Sayre in 2013 about the Massacre at the Washita.
Whether she’s teaching freshmen in the required general education class or history majors in classes like 20th Century America, Women in American History, or History of Oklahoma, or she’s speaking to the public about local history, Kodumthara loves explaining the importance of the past in creating our present.
And she especially enjoys doing that for the university where this journey started.
Dr. Sunu Kodumthara discovered her love of history at SWOSU and found there’s no place like home to teach it.
Copyright 2023 Paragon Communications. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.
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