The Chronicle

Issue date: 8/29/07 Section: Columns
Last update: 8/29/07 at 8:29 AM EST

Jordan Everson

Please note your job title. It is not expert, not researcher, not congressional testifier, not future Nobel winner. It is professor, maybe associate or assistant, but still professor.

So then profess! Enlighten your students with the marvelous task you have undertaken, the ideas that inspired you, that you have dedicated your life to studying.

I know, I know, you spent years researching for that Ph.D., and before arriving here your main concern has probably been research.

There is little for you to gain from professing; Research, not teaching, determines your career advancement. Only disastrously bad student evaluations will hinder your upward mobility, an easily avoidable fate so long you reserve low grades only for the truly indolent and hand out evaluations during the last day of classes.

Still, as professors you have an obligation to teach us, your students.

In the past, the university has been a sacred place of learning; it has served to introduce students to the great thoughts of mankind. The timeless style in which our university was constructed speaks to the lofty goals of the place: rooted in tradition, hoping towards tomorrow.

Today I believe that holiness is gone. A university degree simply states that the graduate can study and pass tests. It implies little or nothing about lasting knowledge. We, the students, have certainly failed to uphold the ideals of education, but you professors must lead us and the university back to its original intent.

The sanctity of the university resembles that of the family. Professors, we come to you as a child comes to his parents, with little to return for the much that is given and relying on a natural sense of duty to drive your charitable actions. As parents give attention, support and understanding and too often receive little in return, except the sight of their children growing into adulthood, so I beg that you earnestly give your knowledge and support to usher your students into their own manifestation of the educated mind.

I would think that you would be compelled to commit yourselves towards teaching. Some of us are the children of success, even more of us are bound for it ourselves. Are you comfortable knowing that you had the chance to guide future leaders, and gave it a tenth of your strength?

How can you be so devoted to the study of a discipline and be satisfied with giving your students only fleeting knowledge of your life's work?

Continued...

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