Professor Nickolas Shizas was my first introduction to a college professor. When I entered his Psychology 101 class for the first time and sat in the back, my mind raced with millions of thoughts. I didn’t know what to expect out of a three-week course.
I was nervous about college in general, but specifically about how this professor would teach. I’d heard horror stories about professors who ran their classes like dictators. It didn’t help that the course was structured so that the other students and I would be in Professor Shizas’s classroom for four and a half hours each day.
But I just needed to focus on getting through that first class.
When Professor Shizas entered the room, he walked up the center row humming cheerfully, making his way to the front of the room. He had a cheerful smile and a level of energy that seemed abnormal for an 8 a.m. class.
About the author
Pawel Mokrzycki is a biology major with plans to attend medical school after Moraine Valley. His fascination with cellular science and the human body has set him on a course to reach his professional goal: becoming a pediatrician.
He told everyone to call him Professor Nick because his last name was hard to pronounce. As he was loading up his Powerpoint, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of reassurance. This was going to be a good course.
When he spoke, moving back and forth, even the students who were glued to their phones looked up at him. He used so many hand gestures that students focused more on grasping the material than how long they’d actually been in his classroom.
Four months after completing my introduction to psychology, I wanted to catch up with Shizas, so I headed to his office in A150 and began asking him about his own story. He said he never envisioned himself as a teacher.
“I grew up with a little bit of poverty,” he said.
He didn’t grow up with the newest sneakers or the latest electronics. His parents immigrated in 1970 from Greece to Chicago, where Shizas was born. His parents made just enough money to survive but nothing more.
Even as a young child, he knew he needed to earn a college degree to better his life. But he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do until the age of 16 and couple of sentences changed his trajectory.
“I was meeting and talking with people, and one lady who I was good friends with told me about some of her problems, and I listened,” he said. “And at the end, she told me that I was a pretty good listener.” She told him he should go into psychology.
All it took was a couple of motivating sentences from a friend, and that was enough to convince Shizas to pursue a higher education in psychology.
College tuition was expensive, and he calculated that he would need at least $80,000 to get a master’s degree in psychology and become a licensed psychologist. So from then on, he made it his mission to start saving up.
“I worked 35-hour weeks at the liquor store,” he said. “They actually paid a lot higher than some of the other neighboring stores.”
When he was 18 years old, as a college freshman, he began his journey toward his goals.
“I took a psychology class as a freshman at Moraine, in the same classrooms that I teach now,” he said. “Every page in my Psych 101 textbook told me an explanation, and you know what? I wanted to go into this field.”
He went on to take more psychology classes at Moraine Valley before transferring to the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology. With each class he took, he became even more intrigued by the subject.
Soon he was on his way to earning his master’s in clinical psychology. But to become a licensed clinical psychologist, he would need to attain about 2,000 hours within a two-year span and pass two rigorous tests. Shizas decided to quit his job at the liquor store and apply for work at a clinic.
During the day, he would work at the clinic, and by night, he would study to pass the two exams that would make or break his career in psychology.
During one of his many cram-study sessions, he stumbled upon an application to become an assistant professor at Moraine Valley. Although it seemed that he would be making a lot of money after getting his master’s in psychology, in reality he was making very little at the clinic and needed to make more on the side to support himself and his family.
Shizas applied to teach Psychology 101, 103, and 104 to incoming freshmen. The courses would also be a really good source of review material for his own exams. Clicking “submit” on his application was the moment his path reached a crossroads–though he didn’t know it then.
Looking across at the far corner of his new classroom in the A building, he saw the same plastic black chairs and rows of dark gray desks neatly arranged into three rows that he’d sat in as a student in Psych 101 six years earlier. He realized new students would come in to learn about the wonderful world of psychology the same way he did as a freshman.
As he steeled himself for what was to come, the first students for his very first class started rolling in. He started up his Powerpoint and started his lecture.
With each hour that passed, Shizas’s energy grew exponentially. His speech and hand gestures gained momentum. Each day when he came into the classroom to teach, his students were already in their seats with their full attention fully on him.
As we were talking, I could easily see how deeply fond he was of this very first class he taught. He said, “That night class was fabulous. They were so good to me, even though it was my first time teaching.”
When the 16-week course ended, the reviews from the students were so impactful that the administration asked him to teach more classes for the next semester. Seeing the smiles, engagement, and most importantly, enthusiasm, of all of his previous students, Shizas agreed. The following year when a position opened, he applied, and was hired here at Moraine Valley.
Instead of pursuing his passion for psychotherapy, decided instead to dedicate his life to changing the lives of all the students who would register for his class–to light a fire of passion in students’ minds and open their eyes to the wonderful world of psychology.
Not even Professor Shizas could have foreseen the impact that he now has on the students who have taken his class. I felt exactly the same as those first-semester students Shizas taught. From the mannerisms he displayed during my three-week course, to his enthusiastic voice, his passion for his career continues to radiate.
After teaching for more than 20 years, Professor Shizas has impacted not just me but so many other students who have been lucky enough to step into his classroom in the A building at Moraine Valley Community College.
Velocity 
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