By Mehninehn Smith
Veena Parboteeah, associate professor of Information Systems, has been teaching at Eastern New Mexico University for seven years. She is influenced by what she calls “natural progression” because her parents and older brother have all enjoyed teaching careers.
The most significant items in Parboteeah’s office are her pictures of palm trees.
“Being from an island, it keeps me grounded,” she said.
Parboteeah said she experiences moments of being homesick during the holidays and special celebrations, so she makes trips to Morocco in West Africa every year and spends most of her time close to the beach when she is home.
When in the U.S., Parboteeah still does a lot of traveling—she often drives to Albuquerque to visit her husband.
Despite occasional homesickness and its definitive lack of palm trees, Parboteeah has enjoyed her time at ENMU.
“Eastern has been good,” she said, adding that she would not have had some of the opportunities she has been given if she was teaching at a larger institution.
Parboteeah researches impulse buying and tries to understand how it affects people when it is their only form of shopping.
She also uses her work to better understand online teaching.
Parboteeah asks herself, “What can be done to make classes better, and what can be done differently so that students are learning?”
Parboteeah advises students to become proficient in the field of Information Systems.
“This can be a rewarding field, and computers are not going anywhere,” she said.
The field, according to Parboteeah, allows more interaction with people and involves computer science, which is often like a puzzle because a problem is presented to you and then you have to take the time to figure it out.
It is a perfect field for students who are detail oriented, Parboteeah said.