FRANCES BOTTENBERG
The lessons David Curry taught me on how to be a positive role model and mentor to college students were so deeply inspiring that, a quarter century later, it’s hard for me to think of my life and career without their influence…
Reflecting on those lessons, here’s the shortlist:
Bring your whole self to the classroom
Invest personally in students
Be enthusiastic about the act of thinking together
Don’t hide out in the Tower
Bring your whole self to the classroom. At this point, I’ve experienced close to 40 philosophers trying to teach me things in their classrooms and scores more trying to teach me things at professional conferences and workshops. David is one of the few, I realize in reflection, who seems comfortable just being himself and sharing with students his personality, interests, and biography outside of academia. He never dons a persona seemingly designed to make students aware of Teacher’s superior cleverness, nor does he play the Cheerleader who applauds and praises half-baked statements from students who could do much more. I will never forget the Metaphysics Seminar at Curry’s house I took with 4 other majors my senior semester (Spring 2002). We met at 51 Leroy Street each Wednesday night, talked philosophy, and ate together. This is such a beautiful way to conduct a seminar. I’ve sought out opportunities to offer my own students such experiences, most recently ending a course on food ethics with a sustainably sourced meal the 15 of us procured, prepped and enjoyed together. And in all of my interactions with students, I strive first and foremost to be my whole self.
Invest personally in students. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro students I have the pleasure to educate are a diverse lot in every sense of the word. In terms of their ability to discipline their minds for philosophizing and express themselves in writing and orally, some come with high aptitude and skill levels to my classroom, leaving one with little to do but nudge along the right channels. Others arrive with goodwill and hopes for a high grade, but struggle with thinking consequently for more then a second or capturing what they think in clear communication. From David I learned how to see each student as an individual with their own storyline—and each cohort as having its own particular character and proclivities. Give them sincere encouragement and skillful direction, and most students respond by growing in mental discipline and in their ability to honestly assess their own status as learners. It is one of the most beautiful processes to watch unfold in another human.
Be enthusiastic about the act of thinking together. I remember David posing interpretive questions to the class and giving us time to form our responses. I remember his posture in those moments—leaning forward into the room, pacing energetically at the front of the room, looking at us, offering an encouraging reformulation of the question, maybe doing that half-chuckle of his, pausing—all with a kind of lighthearted, “we are in this thing together” bearing. A new experience for many and surely intimidating to some… but made human, social, and inviting through the felt enthusiasm and personality David brings to the space of communal discussion. I try to emulate that enthusiastic, supportive, and expectant orientation in every class I lead.
Don’t hide out in the Tower. Being master and commander in one’s fiefdom *uh* classroom is well and good, as is announcing to whichever faculty or staff colleagues will listen that summers are “my time to get my own work done”. But from David I learned that these can be limited and limiting forms of membership in a campus community. Administration is an automatic Boo word only for those who haven’t stepped into it to try to make things better. Like all human institutions, the committees, councils, task forces, executive boards, etc. that make decisions that affect budgets, academic spirit, and future of a college can run off-course or even aground because of pettiness, greed, jealousy, narrow-mindedness, incompetence and disorganization. BUT—it’s still important to engage in the campus beyond the classroom and beyond the academic term. David was the first faculty member (apart from my parents) who showed he had a proud, meaningful role to play as a faculty member taking part in college-level decision-making—and that it was indeed a responsibility for faculty to take on, at least for a time in a career on a campus, no matter how frustrating.
I wish David nothing but the best for his retirement. He has had an indelible effect on me and on so many others.