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Living to Learn
MHCC instructor applies lifelong love of education to the classroom
Christina Hammett
The Advocate
Satish Palshikar reaches to experiment with the knob on a large Bridgeport tool-making machine. He examines the various buttons and components through protective glasses and tilts his head in deep concentration.
“If I do not know how to work these machines, how can I expect my students to know how to use them?” he asks.
A machine tool technology instructor at Mt. Hood Community College, Palshikar will be the first to admit he does not know everything he wants to yet, but he also says life can and should be a constant learning experience.
“I’m dying to learn,” he said. “It’s the goal of my life.”
In fact, Palshikar is not only teaching his students how to work with the machines in the Industrial Technology lab on campus, but he is also learning how to actually become a teacher. After decades of working in the machine tool industry at various companies, Palshikar became a part-time instructor at Mt. Hood during the 2007-2008 academic year. Last fall, he became a full-time instructor working in the Industrial Technology Department.
“Satish is learning to be a teacher,” said Industrial Technology Department chair and fellow instructor Tim Polly. “He has an industrial background (and sometimes) it’s hard to get adjusted to the academic world. It’s just part of the process.”
At the moment, Palshikar teaches many classes including some introductory CNC (Computer Numerical Controlled) courses, theory courses and the VESL (Vocational English as a Second Language) course, a comprehensive 10-week program that helps English as a Second Language students gain knowledge in welding and machine tool technology. “He has a heavy class load this term. It’s a lot of work,” said Polly. “The students have no basis of comprehension and it can be very difficult to back up to the basics. It’s so difficult to come back to people with no background. It’s always a challenge.”
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But Palshikar says he enjoys a good challenge. A challenge is what led him to acquire his master’s degree last spring and is also what pushes him to move even further with his education. When his son graduated with a doctorate from the University of Chicago, he said to his father, “If I can do it, you can do it,” and since then, the instructor has had his eye on working toward his Ph.D. “It’s been bugging me, and I can take a challenge. At least I will try. I’m not timid, but I’m not going to hurry. Education and learning is a lifetime journey,” he said.
This specific way of thinking about education and this particular phrase were instilled in Palshikar at a very young age. His father, a teacher, told him, “Learning is a lifetime journey. If you stop, someone else may come up and pass you by.” This notion triggered what became a lifelong love for learning in the young man.
Born into poverty in the city of Pune in the southwestern portion of India, Palshikar grew up knowing that he had much bigger things in store for himself than what his economic status allowed.
Growing up with three brothers and two sisters, there were times when his family could not afford to eat, let alone buy basic necessities. For some time, Palshikar had to attend school in bare feet because his family could not afford shoes.
To get by, his family received aid from local charities in India and on one particular occasion, Palshikar recalled receiving a jacket he had desperately needed. He wondered why the buttons were on the left side of the lapel, but quickly dismissed the unusual positioning. Later, he found out the coat was actually a girl’s jacket.
To honor the help his family received throughout his childhood, Palshikar and his wife Arlene have given back over the years in any way they can. The duo provide donations to various charities on a regular basis, and Palshikar also began a scholarship program in India dedicated to the memory of his mother and father’s goal for the education of their children, following their deaths in 1998 and 2001, respectively. “My parents taught me lots of things (regarding education,)” he said. “Education is the key to improving your life, so I started a charity. I wanted to help.”
Palshikar began his own educational journey when he was still in Pune. After high school, he went to visit his brother in Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal and more than 500 miles away from his hometown. While in Agra, he began his secondary education, attending college for one year and majoring in pre-engineering. He then returned to Pune and won his first apprenticeship in a local machine shop.
His first task on the job involved starting on the bottom rung — sweeping the floors. He told the other workers, “But I want to be a machinist.” They told him he had to begin somewhere and “slowly, slowly, slowly, I learned and began to gain experience,” he said.
Palshikar enjoyed the learning involved with his work, but he began feeling restless. “My dream was to educate myself. I began looking for other educational opportunities.”
In 1972, he married his “strongest supporter,” Arlene, a Peace Corps worker born in Moscow, Idaho, in a ceremonial house in Pune and he began a new chapter in his life.
Palshikar went back to college in Walla Walla, Wash., eventually moved to Oregon and worked toward his bachelor’s degree – at times working 70 hours a week at night, going to school during the day and spending time with his family in between. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he decided to go after his masters in engineering and manufacturing.
According to Polly, receiving the master’s degree was just the icing on the cake for Palshikar. “That degree is couched in all this work experience, which is invaluable.”
But Palshikar will see to it that his story does not end with just a master’s degree. “Someday, I don’t know when, but I’ve got my eye on that Ph.D. I will continue my schooling and education. I will not quit,” he said. Palshikar applies this same rigor to the classroom everyday. “I tell all my students, don’t just depend on a two-year degree, get a four-year degree, go to OIT, etc.,” he said.
Due to his intense feelings for education, some of his students may think he can be a difficult instructor at times, but Palshikar thinks all of his students should possess the drive and ambition necessary to get ahead in life.
In the instructor’s industrial safety class on Wednesday, a student in the back row of the classroom asked which page of the textbook their assignment was on. Palshikar answered, “You have to know. You’re the student. I don’t have to know any of that.”
His wife Arlene said he can seem difficult sometimes but it is only because he cares so much for his students.
“He doesn’t expect unreal things from them. He tries to give them his dream and his love of learning by encouraging them. I think he sees things in them that they don’t quite see in themselves yet,” she said.
She went on to describe a tradition of planting flower bulbs that Palshikar participates in every year. “This year it was particularly meaningful because he bought dozens of bulbs. I asked him, ‘Are you thinking of your students when you’re planting these bulbs?’ They’re so small and so young and they will be so beautiful when they grow up. He didn’t say yes, but I could tell it meant a lot to him.”
Hours before his first class begins, Palshikar mills about the machine tool technology lab, eyeing each machine and glancing at instructional booklets. He will never quit learning. “I’m the loser. Technology keeps changing and I am behind. If we’re not going to make changes, we’re not going to survive,” he says as he peers behind the glass partition of a tool-manufacturing machine.
“I spend as much time down here as I can,” he said. “It’s beneficial to my students, myself, and the college. I feel joy in that I learned something new today.”