When I arrived at Wabash as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1998, I was so impressed by the long-serving faculty in my department and across the College. I joined the chemistry faculty with John Zimmerman H’67 and David Phillips H’83, who had been teaching at Wabash for 35 and 30 years, respectively. Rich Dallinger, who was a tenured full professor and our department chair, was the “junior” member of the department. Their ability to meet the needs of students with widely varying backgrounds in science—often within the same class—was amazing to me.
Across the College, I marveled at John Fischer H’70, Melissa Butler H’85, Paul McKinney ’52, and Peter Frederick H’92. All were masters of their craft—teachers who knew how to bring students into the conversation that is the Wabash classroom. They made it look so effortless as they guided students to and through the intellectual struggle that leads to deep, meaningful learning.
It was clear that these teacher-scholars could do things that I could not.
Over time, though, watching my colleagues inspire creative problem solving in their students and seeing how they moved in and out of conversations to allow students the opportunity to ask and answer questions made me a better teacher.
I found my own way to reach students, drawing on the talents of the legends surrounding me, but finding my own authentic ways of teaching. An important part of that style came from working with students conducting research in my lab during summer internships. The give-and-take that so naturally happens in a small research lab—the constant questions being answered through collaborative experimentation—taught me how to be as good of a teacher for students taking chemistry for distribution as I was for those heading to Ph.D. programs.
I was blessed to learn from Professors Zimmerman, Phillips, Dallinger, and McKinney, and it is truly an honor to have extended the legacy of excellence in teaching and mentoring they inspired in me.
I’ve been out of the classroom and lab for a dozen years now, and I miss the many conversations I had with students as they worked through difficult problems and arrived at the “aha” moment that drives everything we do.
I now find myself in a different position, yet I am still in awe that the great teaching tradition is alive and well at Wabash. In fact, the number one question I get when meeting with alumni across the country is this: “Are the faculty as good as they were when I was in school?”
I wholeheartedly respond with a resounding yes when asked. I then delight in telling them about Jeremy Hartnett ’96 taking students to the Bay of Naples to walk among the ruins and how Derek Nelson ’99’s religion students trace the steps taken by Jesus’ apostles in the early days of Christianity.
I am equally impressed with junior faculty like Julian Whitney in English, Sujata Saha in economics, and Warren Campbell in religion.
They arrived on our campus already as serious teacher-scholars who quickly adapted to the unique experience of the Wabash classroom. They benefited greatly from mentoring by faculty in and outside their departments, and most importantly from a faculty culture that has been passed down for generations—just as Dr. Z passed it down to me nearly 30 years ago.
That faculty culture is real. It’s about focused dedication to working with students in and out of the classroom to help them meet their full potential. Our culture includes hosting students in our homes, attending their concerts and plays, cheering on the Little Giants, and having an open-door policy when our young men need encouragement.
When Paul McKinney died, it was one of the great honors of my career to work with Rich Dallinger to help complete and publish Paul’s research—just as Paul had honored his mentor, Lew Salter H’57, by doing the same after his passing.
But Paul was, fundamentally, a teacher, and I am reminded of what he once said: “Every year I’ve taught I have learned something new about my subject. As long as you keep learning, teaching is exciting. We share some things, me and my students. I’m basically a person with a confused mind, so I always try to examine the assumptions inherent in any topic from a new point of view.”
And that’s what makes our younger faculty so perfectly positioned to carry on this remarkable tradition.
They have studied and lived through a generational change unlike any since, perhaps, the baby boomers, and they know far better than I what it takes to motivate and inspire our current generation of students.
Theater Professor Michael Abbott ’85, who will retire this year, led a recent lunch talk about the role of the liberal arts in a world of artificial intelligence. He said something in closing that really struck me, and I hope it inspires your own thinking about the role of a great little liberal arts college in these rapidly changing times:
“There is an old pedagogical idea ... that the hardest and most important thing a teacher does is not to explain but to unsettle. To put the student in a position where their prior certainties are no longer sufficient so that they must think rather than recite.”
As you will read in these pages of Wabash Magazine, that beautiful “unsettling” tradition of great teaching continues to thrive at our College.
Scott Feller
President | fellers@wabash.edu