Spring 2019 | Issue #12

From the Dean

When he lectured words fell out like fruit each shapely syllable locked into the next, his lips stitched with certainty and even the roots of his tiny beard were crisped with context. What we heard we respected, but the hole in his sock made us love him.
- Carol Shields, “Professor”

Education is what is left over after all that has been learnt is forgotten.
- James Bryant Conant

I trust everyone had a good holiday break and have returned refreshed. This promises to be an exciting term as we have now taken possession of the Science and Academic Building and prepare to host our first classes in the fall of 2019. This term I am teaching my Law and Justice in Ancient Athens, and so have turn my thoughts to idea of doing my craft better.

I have just started re-reading Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Teachers Do (Cambridge MA, 2004). The book is a study of outstanding teachers and what can be learned from their success. All the professors who made the grade for that study, “achieved remarkable success in helping their students learn in ways that made a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how students think, act and feel” (5). That is a tall order, which I have found hard to fill. Their teaching methods varied: some engaged in dazzling lectures, others in lively discussion; others in problem-based exercises and still others in popular field projects, but what seems to have been a common attribute was their ability to reach their students intellectually and educationally, leaving their students wanting more (7). The courses that students took with these outstanding teachers transformed their lives; the students spoke less about learning the material and more about developing an understanding (9). As the author notes, they were professors who could “make a silk purse out of what others might regard as a sow’s ears, who constantly help their students do far better than anyone else expects” (8). Some taught at elite schools, where only the best and brightest attend; others at lower ranked institutions where more marginal students attended. Success did not, it seems, depend on the composition of the student body.

1) According to Bain, outstanding teachers know their subject extremely well. They themselves are active scholars; some have long, impressive publication records; others more modest ones. But what they share in common is that they follow the intellectual developments within their field; do research; have original thoughts; read extensively in other fields and take a keen interest in the broader issues of their discipline, precisely what we expect of our own students. As Bain notes, these outstanding teachers think meta-cognitively and it is that capacity to think meta-cognitively that drives their approach to teaching (16).

2) Outstanding teachers treat their teaching as a serious intellectual endeavour, which is as intellectually demanding and important as their research and scholarship. These outstanding teachers always begin their preparations for teaching “with questions about student learning objectives rather than about what the teacher will do” (17).

3) Outstanding teachers expect more of their students, which does not mean simply piling it on. They stimulate high achievement in their students by avoiding “objectives that are arbitrarily tied to the course and favor those that embody the kind of thinking and acting expected for life” (17-18).

4) Outstanding teachers try to create a “natural critical learning environment”. In this kind of environment students confront “intriguing, beautiful, or important problems, authentic tasks that will challenge them to grapple with ideas, rethink their assumptions, and examine their mental models of reality” (18). This is what I have called sophistic education and what Greek sophists tried to do.

5) Outstanding teachers trust their students and assume they want to learn and can learn. They are open with their students, communicating enthusiastically their own sense of awe about life, talking openly and freely about their own intellectual journey, their successes and failures, and so by example teach their students to be self-reflective and honest (18).

6) Finally, highly successful teachers have some kind of systematic program of assessing their own teaching to make appropriate changes; “because they are checking their own efforts when they evaluate students, they avoid judging them on arbitrary standards. Rather assessment of students flows from primary learning objectives” (19). Never do they blame the students for difficulties which they may have encountered in a particular course; rather they are willing to confront their own shortcomings and failures. It is that humility which Bain suggests leads in part to their success as teachers. This approach contrasts sharply with one which begins with the refrain, “students are not nearly as well prepared as they once were”; “students do not know how to sit through a lecture”; “students do not come prepared for class”. How many of us have voiced such complaints.

These complaints, however, deflect from a critical assessment of our teaching and from asking the questions: what can I do better, what appropriate changes can I make, where can I improve. These are the questions which I need to ask of myself.

Craig Cooper
Dean, Arts and Science

Postscript

I opened this column with two quotes, which you have seen attached either to my email correspondence or my columns. The first, from Carol Shield’s poem, “Professor”, is one that a dear friend and colleague would attach to his university emails. Sometimes in our striving to become the best at what we do, we need to pause and remember those who made our success, even possible: a thoughtful supervisor, who generously gave of their time, a chair who championed us, and a cherished colleague and mentor, who guided us. I was very fortunate to have all three. In 2008, I was able to persuade UofT Press to publish a Festschrift on Epigraphy and Greek History that, I hope, in some small way, was a tribute to my supervisor. My former chair, who modeled for me what servant leadership should look like and worked tirelessly to get my position converted (I had five years of limited terms in the 1990s when there were no jobs to be had), has become a life-long friend, whom we try to visit, whenever we get to Scotland, which is not often enough. Finally, there is my dear friend and colleague, who was my mentor, an internationally renowned scholar in his field, who, despite his success, was the most humble and unassuming individual, full of kindness, with a keen wit and “sweet” sense of humour. His words fell like fruit; his beard was crisp with context, but it was the hole in his sock, literally, which made me love him.

In January of this year I learned he was diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer. The news of his illness got me to reminiscing and oddly found me going through some old files that contain my annual reviews from my time at the University of Winnipeg. Why I still had them is beyond me (other than I enjoy the sad habit, so my wife tells me, of not throwing anything away, which I often, but half-heartily protest, is not completely true). I am glad in this case I still had them. I was reviewing my Annual Evaluation from 2004/05, in which my colleague did the review of Chair (I was Chair of Classics at the time). He stated that I “enjoyed an annus mirabilis, like mantle in ’56 or Yastrzemski in ‘67”. I guess I had a good year, but he was naturally given to hyperbole, and we often talked baseball, but it was his final comments that made me smile and chuckle. In that same year I had taken on the additional responsibility of chairing another department, for all the obvious reasons that anyone chairs an outside department, in his words “so rescuing senior administration from its pusillanimous ineptitude – sorry, that should be hapless cowardice – no, make that craven incompetence”. But that is my colleague and friend. His comments would have been read by my Dean, who is also a friend of mine, and I suspect he laughed, as much as I did when I reread the comments. If you accuse me of pusillanimous ineptitude, hapless cowardice, and craven incompetence, I will smile broadly and perhaps even take the words as a genuine complement. Get well, my dear friend. I owe a lot to you. I hope, I can prove as generous and kind as you.

The University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts & Science
is pleased to announce the honouree for our
2nd Annual Wine & Dine: Arts & Science Scholarship Dinner

Dr. Dennis Connolly 
Mathematics & Computer Science

Dennis is an exemplary scholar and educator whose dedication to teaching excellence has been experienced by over 10,000 students, across more than five decades. In addition, as a lifetime advocate of the University’s sports teams, an enthusiast of the arts and a generous volunteer, he is, quite simply, packed with school spirit.

Please join us in celebrating Dennis, as we raise funds to support student scholarships. Additional details will be released shortly, but for now
SAVE THE DATE: October 17, 2019

PUBlic Professor Series

The PUBlic Professor Series has two talks left this season. We are also pleased to announce the dates and speakers for 2019/2020. The upcoming lectures are sure to be thought-provoking and encourage open conversation. See the lineup below.

May 4-5, 2019
University of Lethbridge

Showcasing undergraduate and masters student research in the humanities and social sciences.

Students are invited to show off the best of their academic work at the first Connections: Humanities and Social Sciences Student Conference at the University of Lethbridge on May 4-5. Proposals for papers from any discipline with the academic fields of the humanities and social sciences are welcome. 

Connect with us on Social Media!

The Faculty of Arts & Science now has almost 1,500 followers on our social media network. This is the best place for us to help share and promote Arts & Science events and stories. If you have something you would like to share, please send an email to alix.redmond@uleth.ca.