In Praise of Great Teachers
“And if I were a good teacher, who would know?”
Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
It’s often easier to complain than praise. Even so, this essay is about the great profs I’ve known, the rare ones who have challenged me to become a better student and a better professor, those who have inspired me personally and professionally. It is offered as thanks to those in academe who keep it alive and thriving.
Perhaps the best professor I have ever known is Dr. Charles Nelson from my days at Sacramento State University where I completed my MA in English. SSU was my launching pad. I did well in my MA work, well enough to voice aloud my desire to earn a PhD and teach at the college level. The MA gave me the ability to teach in the California two-year system with its good pay and multitude of opportunities since the state boasts of so many campuses from the Sierras to the Pacific.
But Charles stirred me on to the next level. I am forever indebted to him. (As an aside, one of my worst profs at the time urged me to stay at Lucky’s, a supermarket chain where I used to work. “You’ll make more as a store manager than a high school teacher or a professor,” he explained. Not exactly a Christa McAuliffe comment.)
Originally from Oklahoma, in his office Charles spoke with a relaxed twang of the Sooner State. He’d
drop a few Twain-like words, including that colloquial A-word ain’t when we spoke about my next project with him. For instance: “I ain’t too sure Hamlet’s crazy.” Besides that ain’t, his crazy seemed stretched out by the addition of several letters: crraazzzy. But, get Professor Nelson in the classroom lecturing and he held his own intellectually, bar none, with never an ain’t or other grammatical slip.
Any yet, he did something that few adults do when seriously talking about any subject. He broke into laughter about the whole situation—genuine, often self-effacing, always playful, never cynical, pure fun-loving laughter at the absurdity of the situation. (“What? Killing your brother and marrying his widow for the crown of Denmark? You crraasssy?”) More than once he pulled my academic career out of the recycle bin.
I was a bit of a lost puppy at the time. I did a start-and-stop MA. I started at Hayward State near Oakland, ran out of money, didn’t finish, and transferred to Sac State in my hometown. I needed to regroup, then my father got very sick, and here I was stacking groceries all night at Lucky’s, trying to
finish my MA, searching for something professionally. Dr. Nelson helped me when I applied to the Catholic Diocesan system where I taught (sometimes full-, sometimes part-time) for the next four years. Over the course of one grueling year,
he guided me through my final MA project while I was teaching and while my Father was growing sicker.
To finally graduate, I wrote a series of essays in lieu of a single thesis. It was probably more
challenging than a thesis since it had to be passed in pieces, and Charles was no slouch about scholarship. I remember he wrote things like, “Why are you quoting all this outside material if you don’t use it in your essay?” I learned to temper my enthusiasm for long quotes that seemed more like
padding than serious research. It’s a story I still tell my students every time I teach composition. I want my writing students to have the same skills Dr. Nelson taught me.
Two men pointed me toward Notre Dame, my Father (who was a “Subway Alum” always wanting one of his sons to attend ND) and Charles. When I was accepted, I was also accepted at several other schools, but only ND offered me four years of teaching so I could teach part-time to pay my way through the program. Dr. Nelson assured me that ND wasn’t just a football school. The rest is history.
Years later at Notre Dame, in order to finish my dissertation, I worked closely with another gem of a professor, Dr. Donald Sniegowski. He made sure that my work was edited well, and he scrupulously went over every detail with me even under adverse circumstances. (This was actually the job of my thesis director, but Don did it instead; that tells you something right there.) One Saturday, we were to meet, but he called to cancel since he was going to
the hospital with phlebitis. He had limped into the English office that morning to put his completed evaluation in my mailbox so that even though we weren’t meeting, I would have his notes about my next chapter.
Twenty-some years later, when our daughter asked her own professor to work on a paper dealing with African literature, her prof told her that she
needed to work with Professor Sniegowski, a noted specialist on that topic. She called, made an appointment, and met with him. When she entered his office, Don had a copy of my dissertation open and asked her if she was related to its author. He hadn’t forgotten although the phlebitis had long since cleared up.
The first department chair I worked with was Dr. Ed Uehling at Valpo U near Chicago but located in Valparaiso, Indiana. Good school. I faced a rocky year, but Ed helped me so much. He was a genuine man and a stabilizing influence on me. I had high school classroom know-how, a PhD in hand, administrative and university-level teaching experience, yet I was not getting any traction on the
job search. Ed kept up the encouragement. When I contemplated other academic careers or different professional tracks altogether (like being a tech-writer for an engineering firm in Michigan), Ed counseled me to stay with our profession. I did, he worked with me, and I moved along to another campus in a tenure-track situation.
As a department chair myself now, I often think about how Dr. Uehling would do things. His calm and thoughtful demeanor managed many a situation (a mess I created or other issues). Well-respected, Ed helped on many levels at Valpo campus-wide. I wouldn’t be here if not for him. Even now, I wish at times that my hot Italian temper could be as cool and controlled under fire as Ed’s.
The saddest story to relate in this blog is about Dr. Bob Alexander. He was nearing the end of his exemplary career at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where I taught for two years after Valpo. This campus and I were not a fit. We should have been: small, Catholic liberal arts college so like my alma mater from California, my own PhD from ND where the priests of King’s were trained, and the list goes on. But, it never worked out between us. It went from bad to worse.
Bob was an inspiration, however. He was the professor who used to enter the classroom each day a few minutes late on purpose. His explanation: if on time, you looked cowed by the administration; if too late, you seemed to disrespect the students. His trick was to come in consistently a few minutes late to show his students he was his own boss. Having taught high school, I never broke with that routine of being “ahead of the bell,” but I loved Bob for his
wise, idiosyncratic attitude.
His heart gave out while he was fighting severe influenza our last winter in Pennsylvania. He was within a year or so of retirement. It was the saddest blow since he had been such an advocate of mine at a time when my life at King’s had grown so deplorable. His wife, Gracie, told me later that Bob’s one regret was that he had never written while teaching. I remember that every time I write now; Bob didn’t write and it haunted his widow and cast a shadow over his fine career.
Every career is filled with mentors and colleagues who rise up at precisely the needed moment. We all
could fill pages with anecdotes of colleagues or teachers who inspired us, helped us, kicked us out of our complacency, encouraged us at just the right
moment.
It’s not about their published books or their impressive resumes, although many of these scholars are widely published. It’s about their humanity in the face of so many obstacles in academe today, their humanity and their love of teaching which they shared with me and so many others. They cared about their students, embraced our profession as a vocation not an occupation, and did their best.
At this time of Thanksgiving past and Christmas ahead, holidays steeped in gratefulness, it’s important to remember all those inspiring men and women from our past. Colleagues and mentors like these point our way to the future.
“And if I were a good teacher, who would know?”
Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
It’s often easier to complain than praise. Even so, this essay is about the great profs I’ve known, the rare ones who have challenged me to become a better student and a better professor, those who have inspired me personally and professionally. It is offered as thanks to those in academe who keep it alive and thriving.
Perhaps the best professor I have ever known is Dr. Charles Nelson from my days at Sacramento State University where I completed my MA in English. SSU was my launching pad. I did well in my MA work, well enough to voice aloud my desire to earn a PhD and teach at the college level. The MA gave me the ability to teach in the California two-year system with its good pay and multitude of opportunities since the state boasts of so many campuses from the Sierras to the Pacific.
But Charles stirred me on to the next level. I am forever indebted to him. (As an aside, one of my worst profs at the time urged me to stay at Lucky’s, a supermarket chain where I used to work. “You’ll make more as a store manager than a high school teacher or a professor,” he explained. Not exactly a Christa McAuliffe comment.)
Originally from Oklahoma, in his office Charles spoke with a relaxed twang of the Sooner State. He’d
drop a few Twain-like words, including that colloquial A-word ain’t when we spoke about my next project with him. For instance: “I ain’t too sure Hamlet’s crazy.” Besides that ain’t, his crazy seemed stretched out by the addition of several letters: crraazzzy. But, get Professor Nelson in the classroom lecturing and he held his own intellectually, bar none, with never an ain’t or other grammatical slip.
Any yet, he did something that few adults do when seriously talking about any subject. He broke into laughter about the whole situation—genuine, often self-effacing, always playful, never cynical, pure fun-loving laughter at the absurdity of the situation. (“What? Killing your brother and marrying his widow for the crown of Denmark? You crraasssy?”) More than once he pulled my academic career out of the recycle bin.
I was a bit of a lost puppy at the time. I did a start-and-stop MA. I started at Hayward State near Oakland, ran out of money, didn’t finish, and transferred to Sac State in my hometown. I needed to regroup, then my father got very sick, and here I was stacking groceries all night at Lucky’s, trying to
finish my MA, searching for something professionally. Dr. Nelson helped me when I applied to the Catholic Diocesan system where I taught (sometimes full-, sometimes part-time) for the next four years. Over the course of one grueling year,
he guided me through my final MA project while I was teaching and while my Father was growing sicker.
To finally graduate, I wrote a series of essays in lieu of a single thesis. It was probably more
challenging than a thesis since it had to be passed in pieces, and Charles was no slouch about scholarship. I remember he wrote things like, “Why are you quoting all this outside material if you don’t use it in your essay?” I learned to temper my enthusiasm for long quotes that seemed more like
padding than serious research. It’s a story I still tell my students every time I teach composition. I want my writing students to have the same skills Dr. Nelson taught me.
Two men pointed me toward Notre Dame, my Father (who was a “Subway Alum” always wanting one of his sons to attend ND) and Charles. When I was accepted, I was also accepted at several other schools, but only ND offered me four years of teaching so I could teach part-time to pay my way through the program. Dr. Nelson assured me that ND wasn’t just a football school. The rest is history.
Years later at Notre Dame, in order to finish my dissertation, I worked closely with another gem of a professor, Dr. Donald Sniegowski. He made sure that my work was edited well, and he scrupulously went over every detail with me even under adverse circumstances. (This was actually the job of my thesis director, but Don did it instead; that tells you something right there.) One Saturday, we were to meet, but he called to cancel since he was going to
the hospital with phlebitis. He had limped into the English office that morning to put his completed evaluation in my mailbox so that even though we weren’t meeting, I would have his notes about my next chapter.
Twenty-some years later, when our daughter asked her own professor to work on a paper dealing with African literature, her prof told her that she
needed to work with Professor Sniegowski, a noted specialist on that topic. She called, made an appointment, and met with him. When she entered his office, Don had a copy of my dissertation open and asked her if she was related to its author. He hadn’t forgotten although the phlebitis had long since cleared up.
The first department chair I worked with was Dr. Ed Uehling at Valpo U near Chicago but located in Valparaiso, Indiana. Good school. I faced a rocky year, but Ed helped me so much. He was a genuine man and a stabilizing influence on me. I had high school classroom know-how, a PhD in hand, administrative and university-level teaching experience, yet I was not getting any traction on the
job search. Ed kept up the encouragement. When I contemplated other academic careers or different professional tracks altogether (like being a tech-writer for an engineering firm in Michigan), Ed counseled me to stay with our profession. I did, he worked with me, and I moved along to another campus in a tenure-track situation.
As a department chair myself now, I often think about how Dr. Uehling would do things. His calm and thoughtful demeanor managed many a situation (a mess I created or other issues). Well-respected, Ed helped on many levels at Valpo campus-wide. I wouldn’t be here if not for him. Even now, I wish at times that my hot Italian temper could be as cool and controlled under fire as Ed’s.
The saddest story to relate in this blog is about Dr. Bob Alexander. He was nearing the end of his exemplary career at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where I taught for two years after Valpo. This campus and I were not a fit. We should have been: small, Catholic liberal arts college so like my alma mater from California, my own PhD from ND where the priests of King’s were trained, and the list goes on. But, it never worked out between us. It went from bad to worse.
Bob was an inspiration, however. He was the professor who used to enter the classroom each day a few minutes late on purpose. His explanation: if on time, you looked cowed by the administration; if too late, you seemed to disrespect the students. His trick was to come in consistently a few minutes late to show his students he was his own boss. Having taught high school, I never broke with that routine of being “ahead of the bell,” but I loved Bob for his
wise, idiosyncratic attitude.
His heart gave out while he was fighting severe influenza our last winter in Pennsylvania. He was within a year or so of retirement. It was the saddest blow since he had been such an advocate of mine at a time when my life at King’s had grown so deplorable. His wife, Gracie, told me later that Bob’s one regret was that he had never written while teaching. I remember that every time I write now; Bob didn’t write and it haunted his widow and cast a shadow over his fine career.
Every career is filled with mentors and colleagues who rise up at precisely the needed moment. We all
could fill pages with anecdotes of colleagues or teachers who inspired us, helped us, kicked us out of our complacency, encouraged us at just the right
moment.
It’s not about their published books or their impressive resumes, although many of these scholars are widely published. It’s about their humanity in the face of so many obstacles in academe today, their humanity and their love of teaching which they shared with me and so many others. They cared about their students, embraced our profession as a vocation not an occupation, and did their best.
At this time of Thanksgiving past and Christmas ahead, holidays steeped in gratefulness, it’s important to remember all those inspiring men and women from our past. Colleagues and mentors like these point our way to the future.
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