Professor Profile- Ross Sloan from Caroline Hicks on Vimeo.

Professor Ross Sloan has been inspiring and making lasting relationships with students as an English teacher at SMU for the past six years.

“My favorite part about teaching is the students, which probably sounds like a tired answer and the answer that teachers everywhere give, but I think especially for me especially the last four or five years the SMU students have fulfilled my expectations, have fulfilled my life in ways I never expected,” Sloan said.

“Sloan goes above being a teacher,” said former student Brooke Bonner. “For me he’s a mentor, a friend and someone I can definitely see being a part of my life for the long run.”

In addition to being a teacher, Sloan is also a husband and father to seven children between the ages of 3 months and 12 years old.

“I balance family life and teaching the best I can,” he explained. “It’s always a negotiation, but I have a happy home life, I have a happy work life.”

His students can attest to his amazing ability to balance everything he does.

“If he assigns a paper he will be at Fondren until maybe 4 a.m. just incase someone has a question,” Bonner said. “And you know he still has to go home to his family of 7 children.”

Sloan has a conversational style of teaching and hopes students will gain valuable, lifelong skills.

“Literature is a lens on the world,” Sloan said. “I want them to be capable writers, more than that I want them to be great writers.”

Sloan was voted best teacher in 2014 by The Daily Campus, and he loves the job just as much as his students love him.

“Other than my wife agreeing to marry me, teaching at SMU has really been the honor of my life,” he said.