Continuing her family’s legacy of teaching, Cynthia Vavasseur, assistant professor of teacher education, brings modern insight on teaching to the Nicholls community.

Family pictures adorn every piece of furniture in Vavasseur’s small office in Polk Hall.

Vavasseur lives in Baton Rouge, where she graduated from Louisiana State University.

“I was at LSU for a decade,” Vavasseur said. “I graduated in 2000 for undergrad, 2001 for my master’s and 2006 for my doctorate.”

Vavasseur was raised around the world of teaching. Her mother was a high school English teacher.

“We always joke that it is a genetic defect that all the girls in our family will become teachers,” she said. “I always knew that I was going to be a teacher.”

Vavasseur started her career teaching middle school. After she received her doctorate, she decided to become teach at Nicholls.

“Being around my mom all those years, helping her wash her boards and decorating her bulletin boards, entrenched teaching in me as a child,” she said.

When growing up, Vavasseur’s mother wanted her to pursue other interests outside of teaching.

“She used to joke that she wasn’t serious about her not wanting me to be a teacher,” she said. “She also joked that she was not going to pay for college if I was going to be a teacher because she wanted me to do something else. She did help me pay for school, and now she is very proud of my career.”

In her earlier years as a teacher, Vavasseur was a third grade student teacher at Bernard Terrace in Baton Rouge.

“Getting to know those students in a very high-poverty student body, I really enjoyed teaching them,” she said. “After teaching them, I realized I didn’t want to teach younger kids because I already have three small children.”

Vavasseur teaches undergraduate technology courses, and she runs a master’s program in educational technology.

Instead of using her Windows computer in her office, Vavasseur occasionally checks her blue-covered Macbook Pro.

“I am the ‘techie’ person,” she said. “I am the one who trains all the faculty with our new computers and Smart Boards.”

Vavasseur is working on a new project called “Story Time with the Colonels,” where students will read and act out stories once a week to pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes through Skype, a free video-chat program available online.

“In education, you can’t stop learning–especially in technology,” she said. “Every year, my classes have to change because the material changes. I tell my students to never stop learning and never stop trying to better yourself.”

Outside of school, Vavasseur is a mother of three children between the ages of 16 months to six years old.

“I play with my kids and go to dance practice, gymnastics practice and soccer practice,” she said. “We are one active, little family.”

Dale Norris, associate professor of education, said Vavasseur is called the “12-year-old professor,” because she is easily mistaken as a student.

“In class, we talk about that one teacher that was very inspiring and great, and that one teacher that we never want to teach like,” she said. “We try to think about both of those, and we build characteristics we want to go toward.”