This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Monday, November 29, 2004

THIS MAN IS LIVING UD'S DREAM.


UD has long wanted to attend and even try teaching at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. The article below, from this morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, doesn't make clear how odd St. John's is, with its Great Books curriculum and small classes. In fact UD wouldn't be allowed to teach at St. John's, because every faculty member is expected to be able to teach all of the courses in the curriculum, including, well, math. So the article doesn't make clear that President Martin isn't returning to just any college. He's returning to arguably the most serious liberal arts college in the country.

Martin seems to be there more to observe "the freshman experience" than to refresh his understanding of philosophy. UD wants the philosophy.





" ... Martin, the president of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., is the oldest freshman at St. John's - by four decades. Some on the faculty are young enough to have been his students back when he was a history professor.

Martin went back to school this year because he wanted to study the freshman experience in a way that would be impossible from the president's office. So he took a semester-long sabbatical from the top of the academic food chain to dwell at the bottom.

Martin didn't hide his identity from the students and faculty at St. John's. He and college administrators agreed that Martin would attend classes and events but would live off campus, with his wife and dog. He would take notes in class, but he wouldn't speak.

Martin, a lifelong educator trained to lecture, worried he might upset the balance of St. John's painstakingly egalitarian seminars if he spoke.

'He wanted to see the freshmen up close, and kind of be in the milieu, and see what effect reading and studying those things has on the way they talk with each other and the way they think about life,' St. John's Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft said.

Thus far, Martin said he has found his fellow freshmen to be strikingly focused, keen to study, averse to drugs, loyal to their parents and quite serious about politics and faith.

And he seems to fit in well with other students.

The oldest freshman sits and chats about crew practice with fellow rowers until class starts. Then, he sits and listens.

'He pretty much immediately fit in,' said David Miranda, 19, a St. John's freshman who rowed with Martin. 'Sometimes we'd talk about Plato, and sometimes we'd just talk about things that are going on day to day.'"