“I believe students should be actively engaged with their subject matter. I’ve found clean hands and dry feet are huge impediments to learning. What’s more, I teach in the Honors program because I am totally Attention Deficient Disordered and my other classes started to bore me.” - Dr. Terrence Farrell, Biology Honors 2 Instructor Our teachers come from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, but they are all distinguished by their commitment to collaborating with exceptional students. Honors faculty participate in the program because they enjoy teaching challenging students, they find interdisciplinary approaches to their subjects satisfying, and they value the excitement of team-teaching to engaged and serious students. The Honors program typically employs only full-time faculty members with a significant amount of teaching experience. Most are senior members of their department and have taught int he program for years. In fact, many of our teachers are former directors of the program! Read Dr. Wayne Dickson’s statement on why he teaches below, and you’ll see the sort of dedication and energy our faculty bring to the program!

The Love of Teaching

Dr. Wayne Dickson

Teacher is not just what I do, but who I am-for better or worse. "Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." That's how Chaucer described his "Clerk of Oxenford" (that is, his Oxford University tutor), and that's my aspiration. The great passions of my life are learning, sharing what I've learned, and-most important-inspiring these same passions in my students.

I think it was Leonardo da Vinci whom Vasari quoted as saying, "It's a poor master whose apprentice cannot surpass him." In my judgment that's a goal every teacher should try to realize. I for one would never want my students to be limited by my knowledge, skill, understanding, compassion, empathy. To the contrary, I want to be able to applaud as I watch them achieving successes I myself could never dream of. That may be why I enjoy Honors students so much, because they're the ones most likely to make it happen.

To shift the perspective, among many apt metaphors for what happens in a classroom is that of an orchestra and its conductor. No matter how good the conductor, she or he will never elicit a great performance from a group of inept, undisciplined, uncaring musicians. Likewise, no matter how good the musicians, they will never be at their best if they are having to compensate for the ineptness of their conductor. But if you can put together a good conductor with a company of talented and well-trained musicians, magic can happen.

Anyone who has ever felt the elation of a great concert will realize that. And anyone who has ever felt the elation of a great class will realize it's the same with a teacher and his or her students. I don't know how good a teacher I am, but I do know that I am a better teacher than I would have been if I hadn't been inspired by so many terrific Honors students (and Honors colleagues) through the decades.

So the last word is "Thanks!" Thanks to the Honors Program, and thanks to the wonderful students past and present whom I've met through my association with the program. As Emerson says in his poem Each and All: "All are needed by each one;/ Nothing is fair or good alone."

 

Why Teach Honors?
(by the amazing Dr. Toni Blum)

I’m not going to lie about it: the course preparation takes up an incredible amount of my time, the extra contact hours wreak havoc with the scheduling of my courses, the team-teaching involves working with a cast of characters that don’t always see things the way I do, and the students have unreasonable expectations that no mere human can possibly meet.  One would, it seems, need to be either a fool or a masochist to choose to teach an Honors course! Although it may be up for debate, I don’t think I qualify as either one of those. The fact is, teaching in Honors is exciting, enriching, educational, exasperating, energizing, exhausting, and exhilarating (don’t you love assonance?). I love teaching Honors Program courses for the same reason I love riding roller coasters – I never know what is over the next hill, but I know it will be a fun ride. I love working with Honors Program students for the same reason I love teaching itself – the opportunity to work closely with bright young adults who have a passion for learning.

In the academic world, it easy (and often necessary) to become more and more isolated in the world of your own specialty area. The depth of knowledge you must have to remain current in your subfield often precludes much contact with fields beyond that scope. Many of the best and brightest scholars become increasingly narrower in their breadth of knowledge, as they progress. Teaching in the Honors Program breaks that inward spiral. Over the past several years, I have taught with a philosopher, a microbiologist, a humanities scholar, an ecologist, and a chemist. I’ve returned to asking some of the big questions about life (do we have free will?), not just the small ones (does semantic priming facilitate letter detection?). I’ve read novels, poems, historical texts, philosophical essays, biographies, creeds, letters, research reports, and all manner of journal articles, from disciplines too varied to count. I’ve often explored the same question (how did the plague affect medieval society) from multiple points of view (biology, religion, history, psychology). I’ve matched wits with some of the keenest minds at Stetson, including students and instructors. In short, it has been a learning experience – every day.

My answer to the “why teach it?” question is really basic.  Anyone with a passion for learning would agree with me: it’s a blast!

Respectfully submitted,

Dr. Blum