Meet KPU: Petti (Peg) Fong
Fong, an applied communications instructor, wants students to know they are not alone
Petti (Peg) Fong is an instructor in the applied communications department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. She has experience working as a journalist at the Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and the CBC. She currently writes for The Economist. At KPU, she has taught various communications classes including introduction to professional communications, oral communications, and fundamentals of business communication.
Fong has also been recognized for her work in exploring loneliness and what can be done about it in her podcast Alone Together. It can be found in multiple languages across various listening platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If listeners don’t have access to the streaming platforms, they can reach out to Fong directly to listen to the podcast.
In March, she published Alone Together: A Curious Exploration of Loneliness, a book dedicated to Fong’s students that dives into what can be taken away from loneliness. The book can be found on Orca Book Publishers’ website, a B.C. based publisher.
When did you join the KPU community and why?
I’ve been an applied communications instructor at KPU since 2016. It was unplanned. I was teaching at Langara College and I was the assistant chair of the journalism program at that time. One of two journalism programs at Langara is the diploma program. Students get journalism skills, but they’re also doing academically transferable courses. They could get a diploma in journalism in two years, and then they could transfer the courses to another institution and perhaps get a bachelor’s degree.
In 2016, I talked to a number of different institutions about our journalism students. It was at that time I talked to the dean of KPU’s School of Business, now the Melville School of Business, that there was a lot of interest in people coming to post-secondary schools in Canada. It was really the beginning of a lot more international students coming in. I was asked in that meeting whether some of the skills we had been teaching in journalism, such as good, clear writing and concise communication, could be of use to students at KPU. So that was how I started teaching at the Melville School of Business. It was really about teaching students how to write clearly and be able to communicate effectively in the workplace.
My first class, CMNS 3000 (Advanced Professional Business Communications), I had to think about what it was that the students needed in order to be able to go into a KPU program and be able to find work afterwards. For many of them at that time, it was their first experience coming into a post-secondary institution in Canada. I’ve actually taught every term since then. I’ve never taken a summer off. I have to say it has been one of the most enriching experiences of my professional life to meet so many students from different backgrounds who want to learn how to communicate clearly.
What is your favourite story of your time at KPU?
One of the great things about teaching communications alongside my truly amazing colleagues at the CMNS department is that in the beginning, you might think ‘I know how to communicate. I know how to talk, how to listen.’ But what I have learned from students is that we need to be conscious of the way that we are communicating and the way we are listening.
I think about stories I have learned from my students. Some of them are when there is miscommunication. I’ve had one student tell me that she sent an email saying that she couldn’t go to her shift. Her employer told her, after her next paycheck, that he wasn’t going to pay her because she didn’t send in her request to take a day off in the right channel, which is illegal. They can’t punish you for using the wrong communication channel. But many times, students don’t know that.
Some of the stories I remember the most are students who have been taken advantage of because they haven’t been able to communicate in certain situations, such as telling employers that they are engaging in practices that aren’t right. I’ve had students who have been injured on the job because they’ve been afraid to speak up, who have lost damaged deposits because they haven’t been able to communicate what they need to be able to communicate.
They haven’t all been these kinds of stories. In my classes I make students do informational interviews, and that has led to jobs for students. They’re just trying to understand what positions are like and what it’s like to be in the workplace. But the fact that they’ve been able to communicate, ask questions well, and listen, has led to employment opportunities. Those are the stories that keep me going.
What is something you’d like to say to people new to KPU?
You’re reading The Runner, you’re reading everything around you — the bulletin boards where people are posting job opportunities or, ‘Does anyone want to buy textbooks?’ You’re always taking in information around you. Don’t be overwhelmed by that, but try to put together all that information that you’re getting in your first few months as a student. The best way we can, as a community, help each other, is by sharing information.
In my oral communications class, I have students say ‘What would you tell the first-year you?’ For example, there is the peer learning resource, you can get computer loans that will help you, there are other people who might have resources that you can share. So often we think that we are alone as we start these journeys into our education. But there are other people who have the same questions, who have the same ‘I’ve gotta figure this out on my own’ mentality. And you don’t, there are people around you.
What are you working on right now?
We did two seasons of Alone Together in English, and we just started the second season in the Spanish version, Juntos en Soledad. It’s done well in South America, Europe, and Mexico.
We also had people asking to put it other languages. Someone that I talked to recently asked if I would be open to them doing the podcast in Hindi, in Punjabi, and I would love that. We’re also planning to do a Korean language version of the podcast coming up later in the year. The topic of loneliness has a lot of material that we want to be able to explore and continue to explore together.
What is something you’d like people to know about you?
One of my big beliefs is that we all have a voice and we should all be willing, able, and take time to reach out. While we may feel that we are alone, if we reach out to others, there is something that is gained in our community here at KPU.
If you are reading this article, or you are hearing it, reach out because there are probably people who are just as scared, and just as afraid and concerned that ‘Oh, they can’t speak up,’ as you are. So, if we can all, as a community, listen to each other, be able to help each other, and be kind to each other, that is something that will help us as a community to grow and to continue growing as individuals.
