Meet Dr. Jennifer Chernega, this week’s Her Campus Celebrity. A sociology professor here at Winona State, Jennifer is a passionate and lively woman who strives to educate many audiences on social inequalities, including gender and class, as well as welfare reform and qualitative methodology. Recently back this semester after teaching in Norway and giving a TEDx Talk, Jennifer is happy to be back home with her experiences and opportunities from Norway as a great souvenir.
Her Campus (HC): Let’s get to know you. Tell me about yourself!
Dr. Jennifer Chernega (JC): Well, I am a professor in sociology, and I’ve been at Winona State for 8 years now. I grew up in Minnesota, and then went to Chicago to do my graduate work. I then came back to Winona, because even though I didn’t grow up in this part of the state rather I grew up near the twin cities, we wanted to be closer to family. So coming back to Winona was really nice and I really like it here. I’ve got a husband and two boys, ages 10 and 5. They definitely keep me busy. My husband works here as well. He is an adjunct in English and teaches first year composition.
HC: So tell me a little about your schooling.
JC: Originally I wanted to be a journalist, and so I went and did my undergraduate up at Concordia Moorhead. While I was there, I took a sociology class for Gen Eds, and it really was something that I hadn’t really heard before. It was sort of eye-opening to me that there was a discipline, an academic area, that really encompassed all the stuff I was interested in. I had been interested in journalism because of the social justices stuff, equal rights for both men and women, racial equality, you know things like that, and here was this discipline, this academic area that covered all that so I thought, well this is interesting, so I minored in it, and then I majored in it.
Near the end of my time there my advisor said, “You should think about graduate school”, so I sort of reluctantly applied to graduate school. When I got in, she said, “Now you have to go!” I’m really glad I went though, because I really developed a love for teaching when I was there.
HC: So you had the opportunity to do a TEDx talk in Norway. How did that come about?
JC: I was in Norway because I had a Fulbright award to go teach at the University of Oslo, so that’s where I was last semester. I was on sabbatical and I spent 7 months living in Norway with my family. I taught mostly at the University of Oslo and I did some guest lectures around the country.
It was at one of those presentations I was giving that someone saw me speak. That person was affiliated with the TED program in Trondheim, which is a city on the western coast of Norway. She contacted me and said, “Would you ever be interested in doing a TEDx talk, if you are we can put together an idea and we can submit it to TEDxTrondheim.” So I kind of worked with her to figure out what they were looking for and then I submitted an idea. They go through a screening process where they get together as a committee and decide who they want to ask for an actual talk script then from people. They asked me to submit a talk script so I did that, and then that second round; you finally get accepted to do it. I wrote, I don’t know how many drafts of it, and went back and forth because they have these coaches who work with you and make sure that the talk fits into the time frame and is compelling. So they worked with me on 9 or 10 different drafts of this talk until they really felt like it was just right. The challenging thing for me is you have to memorize it. Usually when I lecture, I come in with notes, and I know what I want to say and we eventually get through it all. Whereas there, you have to memorize the talk as you wrote it so that they know what to expect.
HC: What was it like to be up there on stage? How did it go?
JC: So I had to memorize this talk and you get up there and there’s lights and it was nerve-wracking! Then there were rehearsals the night before and the morning of, and then that afternoon, they brought the audience in and there were about 150 people in the audience, which was a good size. They got my mics on, and they had four cameras I think going and they record it. It went really well, there was a part in the center where I kind of forgot what I was supposed to say and there was this really long pause, but they edited it out when they put it up online. But yeah, it was super exciting and I was really nervous but it worked out really well and the best part was afterwards; everyone was so enthusiastic and they were like “You did it!” and they were high-fiving me as I got off the stage. And one thing that was interesting was its probably not the same kind of talk I would have given here in the United States because here, the idea of race is much more common, but in Norway they don’t talk about race, like this was not something they were used to so it was rewarding to give that talk to them.
HC: Do you see yourself doing a talk like this in the future?
JC: You know, if people were interested, I’d be happy to do it. Since coming back to Winona, I have given talks around Winona. I did a class lecture last month on campus, there’s a group in Winona called the Learning Club that is made up of retired faculty and staff from the university and they invited me to go in and talk about the TEDx talk there a little bit and showed it to them since most of them hadn’t seen it. I’m a member of the Unitarian Universalist group in Winona and so I went and did a talk for them, too, so yeah, locally there have been some things, but if the opportunity ever came up again, I’d love it, I mean it was fun and exciting.
From a mother of two, to giving a TEDx talk in front of an audience in Norway, this professor is definitely a talented and passionate woman in life. Want to see her TEDx talk? Press play below to watch!