Spring 2008 Newsletter Front Page

Mitchell Green, Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professor

The Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professorship was established in 1991 to recognize an eminent scholar for outstanding teaching of undergraduates. In addition to receiving a summer salary, Cavaliers’ DTPs teach University Seminars (USEM) and work with the Teaching Resource Center to promote the general enhancement of teaching at the University.Teaching Concerns highlights this year’s winner, Mitchell Green of the Department of Philosophy.

Mitch writes, “teaching is inquiry, not my inquiry. In building a syllabus, my focus is not ‘What do students need to know about this topic?’ Rather, it is ‘What questions about this field shall we pursue that are most likely to make us all obsessed with finding answers?’” These motivating questions encourage collaboration and moments of constructive criticism as students begin to refine their thinking through classroom interactions. Grappling with such fundamental problems as the relationship between right and wrong or between mind and body pushes students to consider their own judgments more carefully. The “serendipity of collaborative inquiry” begets mutual benefit—Mitch and the students learn in the process. Students learn to ask, “Why do I think that?” as they move beyond opinion to knowledge. Alternately, Mitch finds, student questions often inspire new research projects, such as a recent article he published in answer to a student’s question whether bee dances count as “language.”

The strategy works. Student and faculty recommenders alike rave about Mitch’s interactive lectures, his accessibility, and student engagement, in classes on some of the most technically difficult subjects in contemporary analytic philosophy.