Image: Owl of Athena.
Teaching Statement
To teach is to learn twice.
- Joubert, Pensees, 1842.
Using the links in the sidebar, you can select downloadable pdfs of my teaching statement, course policies, current syllabi, and teaching evaluations.
If you are a professor (or soon will be), I hope these documents will prove helpful to you in your own teaching practice. If you come across a teaching practice you think I should know about, please don't hesitate to contact me. I'm always open to new ideas and techniques. If you are a student of mine (or are thinking about it), I hope this section maps out what its like to be in one of my courses. And if you have suggestions about the syllabi or course policies, please do share them with me. Each year I make substantive improvements to my courses based on the feedback I recieve from colleagues and students.
I do have a personal story that lies at the heart of why I take teaching so seriously...and enjoy it so much!
My little scandal is that I dropped out of the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate. I was a messed up kid working through family issues, and I did not make my education a priority. Afterwards, I puttered around with finishing but never made a commitment. And then something remarkable happened. A professor I admired had kept an eye out for me. One day, he pulled me aside as we passed on the compass bridge crossing the Mississippi. He said, 'Come back. The world needs committed people with talent'.
Now I was a tad shocked. Dropping out is not much of a confidence builder. Yet here was one of the world's most admired scholars, and he saw something more.
So I became one of many kids without prospects whose life was redirected by the dedication of a few professors. It was Mulford Sibley (Political Science) who first helped me put my academic life in order. He was followed by other professors who had an equally profound impact on me –- Robert Ross (Religious Studies), Terry Ball (Political Science), Roger Miller, Eric Sheppard, Helga Leitner and Fred Lukerman (all in Geography), and Mary Midgley (Philosophy).
One of their many influences was their dedication to teaching. And here I mean teaching broadly understood, as both instructing and mentoring. They modeled excellence, and through their example taught me the value of teaching. As importantly, they did not pit teaching against research, but concieved of them as mutually reinforcing. They went far beyond the facts of a topic, and taught with theoretical and methodological rigour, weaving together the strands of research and teaching into whole cloth.
What my professors' shared was the practice of academic coaching. They demanded the highest standards of scholarship, and combined that with supportive guidance on how to be a scholar. I could not have been more fortunate.