By Gordon Brown
Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2003
Let's talk about teaching. James A. Garfield famously defined the ideal
American college as a log with Williams College president and professor Mark
Hopkins on one end and a student
on the other — a simple truth succinctly expressed: at the heart of a
great college is great teaching.
But what is “great teaching”? Perhaps the best way to find out is to ask the most experienced consumers — former students. A recent survey by the research firm Hardwick Day, titled “What Matters in College After College,” asked alumni of institutions in the Annapolis Group of leading liberal arts colleges, including Lawrence, what qualities of their college experience they now regard as most important, most meaningful, and longest-lasting.
Under the heading “opportunities to interact with faculty,” 73 percent of the alumni said that a high-quality, teaching-oriented faculty was “extremely important” to them as they looked back at their time in college. Other characteristics, such as having professors who challenged, but helped you meet those challenges; personal interaction with professors; and classes with fewer than 20 students, were ranked as “extremely important” by 60 percent or more of the alumni interviewed.
In his
final words to each Lawrence graduating class, President Richard Warch
reminds them of what he told them on their first day as freshmen: “Your
business is to learn.” Likewise,
the business of a college is to teach. In its literature, this college
makes that clear: “Lawrence is, first and foremost, an undergraduate
teaching institution, and excellence in teaching is therefore the paramount
objective
of our faculty members.”
To touch lives
Teaching is a highly individual, often deeply personal, human undertaking,
and there surely are as many ways of meeting that “paramount objective” as
there are teachers. Realizing this, we asked members of the Lawrence faculty
to share their answers to the question, “Why teach?” Not surprisingly,
for many, the answer is that they prize close interaction with their students — and
a sense of shared learning — as much
as their students do.
“The selfish answer,” says Peter Peregrine, associate professor of anthropology, “is that I teach in order to learn. The only way you can really come to know any subject, I think, is to teach it.
“The less selfish answer is that I teach in order to have an impact on the world. I love my research, and there is nothing I would rather be doing, but, when it comes right down to it, nobody really cares that much about world prehistory, and if I stopped doing research tomorrow, nothing in the world would change very much.
“Teaching is completely different. Through teaching I touch lives every day. If I stopped teaching tomorrow, Lawrence, and the lives of my students, would change dramatically (perhaps that’s just hubris talking, but it is the way I feel). Teaching allows me to impact the world, to make a difference, to change students’ lives,” Peregrine adds.
Dominique-René de Lerma, visiting professor of music, says, “I teach because I am quietly thrilled to see my students find that their education gives sharper focus to the career interests they had on entering Lawrence or stimulates them to respond to potentials they did not know have become theirs.
“Teaching is not an activity of lecturing to an audience,” de Lerma says. “It is a personal relationship between individuals, a joy of shared discoveries, conducted within a totally supportive atmosphere.”
Joy Jordan, assistant professor of statistics, notes, “I teach both because I’m excited by the interesting, applicable discipline of statistics and because I’m allowed to have meaningful, positive interactions with students. It may be hard for some to believe, but the field of statistics is filled with fascinating examples and applications; I thoroughly enjoy sharing these applications in my classroom.
“Furthermore,” Jordan says, “I am energized when working with students, whether I’m helping them understand a difficult statistical concept or talking with them about recent activities in their personal lives. Teaching is a way to positively affect the lives of college students, and I can think of no better way to spend my career.”
Minoo Adenwalla, professor emeritus of government, recognizes in himself a variety of motivations:
“I would like to say that I teach to transmit a valuable cultural and political tradition to young minds; to help develop their critical skills to succeed in life; to be content in a profession where material rewards, in comparison to professions that demand as many, or fewer, years of preparation, are low; because I am altruistic. I hope these things do happen, but to be honest, that is not why I teach.
“I teach and write because I find it intellectually and emotionally satisfying. It has given my life some sense of direction. The challenge, even the tension, continues to keep the mind alert.”
Because my subject
needs to be taught
Some professors teach out of a profound conviction that their
discipline is important and worthy of the effort to teach
it and to learn
it.
Alan Parks, professor of mathematics, comments:
“I teach because people really do need to learn and use mathematics in a variety of contexts, and there is a need for someone to explain it to them and because my subject is timeless and unaffected by the current fads of cultural politics.”
Liking your subject — a lot — and wanting to share it with your students is a definite motivator for many Lawrence professors, including Rex Myers, lecturer in history and Freshman Studies, who says, “I teach history because I enjoy sharing something fun and wonderful. Sooner or later, history ‘gets’ everybody — Anasazi sites, Civil War battlefields, old opera houses, Stephen Foster music, Arthur Miller plays — the list is endless.
“What more can you ask of a profession than an opportunity to help prepare the way for someone’s epiphany?”
Because teaching is what I do
There really are as many reasons to pursue a career
in college teaching as there are dedicated, creative
people who do it.
Daniel J. Taylor, ’63, Hiram A. Jones Professor of Classics, responds partially in Latin:
“Everybody knows ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am), but I have a different version. ‘Ego sum, ergo doceo’ (I am, therefore I teach).
“Somehow it just seems natural, innate, fated.”
For Steven Wulf, assistant professor of government, to teach is to address in powerful ways some key quality-of-life issues:
“Human beings work incessantly to remove obstacles to their living well. Gathering resources, sustaining their bodies, and warding off dangers are potentially endless tasks, but at least they are obvious.
“Actually living well is another matter. Preoccupation with life’s impediments is tempting precisely because it staves off the more challenging question: ‘What do I do now?’
“Liberal education provides more potent antidotes to boredom. Its offerings are acquired tastes (often painfully so); they are also means of acquiring tastes and learning how to enjoy vividly. They help us choose rewarding work, something to do when we are done working, something to think about while standing in line at the supermarket.
“I look back with immense gratitude to the teachers who saved me from the twin drudgeries of boring work and boring leisure. My aim in teaching is to share this happy life of facing too many good choices.”
By invitation
One index of the Lawrence faculty’s firm commitment to teaching is
the fact that more than half the courses taken by Lawrence students are in
the
form of one-on-one tutorials and
independent studies. And, just as not all teaching is done in classes, neither
is it all done in classrooms. Librarians
are teachers, too.
Susan Richards, associate professor and director of the Seeley G. Mudd Library, says, “I teach when I help a student at the library reference desk find just the right source for a research project. I also teach when I share an old book from the Milwaukee-Downer Room with an interested alum.
“I help the teaching process each time I select an addition to our library collection that will aid present and future Lawrentians — and I love doing it as a librarian.”
Gretchen Revie, assistant professor, library, adds:
“I teach by invitation only, but fortunately, there are lots of invitations. I’m invited to teach by the faculty, in classrooms and computer labs, to help meet the goals of specific courses. I’m also invited to teach by the students, although they may not realize they’re extending the invitation; nearly every reference question provides me with a textbook ‘teachable moment.’ In either case, I try to encourage students’ intellectual curiosity as well as show them strategies and tools for finding information.
“Finally, there’s an implied invitation in the nature of liberal education itself. If our core values really are critical thinking and lifelong learning, then the library and librarians are central to Lawrence’s mission. Henry Wriston wrote in The Nature of a Liberal College, ‘Aside from the faculty, the most important single instrument of instruction in the college is its library.’
“That’s an invitation too good to decline.”
Comparatively
speaking
The Hardwick-Day survey also compared the answers obtained from alumni
of Annapolis Group colleges
with those from alumni of other types of higher education institutions.
On the matter of learning from high-quality, teaching-oriented faculty, 45
percent
of private university alumni,
25 percent from the top 50 public universities,
and 29 percent from so-called
national flagship publics said they benefited “very
much.” However, an
impressive 72 percent of
alumni from
the
Lawrence-like
colleges
of the
Annapolis Group
said
they benefited “very
much” from high-quality,
teaching-oriented faculty.
Listening to these Lawrence professors talk about why they teach, it’s easy to see the difference.
A list of Annapolis Group member institutions and the full text of the Hardwick-Day alumni survey are available at www.collegenews.org.
Why teach?
Books first raised me out of the gutter
Of money wars and rank success.
Tolstoi and Pushkin: saint and martyr,
Set limits to bland worldliness.
To pass them on is my delight
No matter how the market seethes.
Their sage, still beauty casts its light
As TV can’t. Why teach? Why breathe?
—
Richard Yatzeck, professor of Russian