By Desaray Hickombottom, Communication Studies major, Class of 2020
Michael Putnam, a Communication Studies instructor, is retiring after six years at TCU.
During his time at TCU, he taught Communicating Effectively; Organizational Communication; and Interviewing.
Putnam was an instructor at the University of Texas at Arlington for 20 years before coming to TCU.
“Since I was doing the same thing for 20 years, I felt like my tank was running low.”
He said after coming to TCU, he was able to rejuvenate his energy and enthusiasm during his lectures.
“I can leave here saying I feel good about teaching the last six years here,” he said. “I wanted to go out on a high note, and I feel like I was still productive and helpful to the end.”
One of Putnam’s favorite things about TCU is the friendly and professional atmosphere.
“I was always struck by that,” he said. “Here, within the first year I knew more people outside of the department than I knew at UTA in 20 years. It’s just a different culture of genuine people who are good at what they do.”
Putnam also said that he will miss the one-on-one interaction with his students. “Lecturing is fine, but you really make your impact when you work individually with people and TCU gives you the chance to do that because of the class size and nature.”
After his retirement at the end of this semester, Putnam plans on traveling around the United States with his wife.
“We have a short trip in February to Las Vegas and Phoenix,” he said. “Then the first two weeks of June we are going up to Alaska.”
After his time at TCU, Putnam hopes to leave a memorable legacy.
“I hope that my students will feel like in the years to come that they feel like they got something from my class far beyond a letter grade,” he said. “If I can get students to see that it’s beneficial because they can use this knowledge in the real world then I’ve done by job.”