Coach

“Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man” David Hume

If you were to ask a class of fifty “Introduction to Logic” students if they knew their professor’s dissertation topic, how many hands do you think would go up? I pondered this question as I sat in my seat, awaiting the arrival of the professor. My mind raced. My stomach churned. I felt as if I was back in my junior year of college and I could not wait to see Coach. Someone has already left him a cup of coffee on the desk, a sign of respect. Students around me are quietly chatting about the trips they took over the recent break. My hands get clammy. Five minutes behind, as always, Coach comes bursting through the door, like he’s been through a tornado on his way to class. He points out a student, whom is usually late to class and says, “You even beat me here?” After this the class continues and without missing a beat Coach manages to teach the class all of the important tricks of conditional proof and that bright lighting is really bad for balding men.

After class, I followed Coach over to his office in the Philosophy and Religion Department. As I sat on the couch in his office getting myself together to begin the interview, a student came in to speak with him regarding the Hume seminar later that he is teaching later on that day. His answers are informative, but are also questions themselves. I laugh to myself, remembering the torture of not ever getting an answer from Coach without working it out on your own. The student leaves and we begin discussing his dissertation. “My dissertation? I remember it all. My topic was “Hume and Volition”. He continues, “It took me four years to write it. Not because it tedious or extreme in length, but because I decided like an idiot I needed to start earning money and left CU before it was finished to take a full time teaching job at the UM.” While at UM, he hoped to have more time to write. “I severely underestimated how hard it would be to teach and work on my dissertation”.

After two years of teaching at UM, Coach moved back to the east coast and took a job in the Philosophy Department at NU. After about a year, the department chair at the time really pushed him to finish his writing. According to Coach, the writing of his dissertation seemed much more daunting than the actual defense process. Four well known philosophers working at CU at the time were on his dissertation committee and when asked he was able to name all four members and tell me what each of one was doing now. Each committee member was charge with reading and approving his paper. Afterwards, Coach had to orally defend his findings. “In fact, the committee chair told me before the oral interview that my dissertation was the second best anyone in my year had written and that the defense was more a formality. I’ll never forget that”. After the interview, which took about an hour, they made him sit outside of the room for about 10 minutes before they came outside and congratulated him on a successful defense.

Coach’s dissertation has made him an expert on Hume. He uses his research from the dissertation in many courses that he has taught throughout the years, including Modern Philosophy and a seminar dedicated to the interpretations of the writings of David Hume. When asked about his current research and how it relates to his dissertation, he laughed. “Well I just finished writing a book on Wittgenstein. In my dissertation I wrote a chapter on Wittgenstein and his interpretation of the Private Language Argument in relationship to Hume’s interpretation. So I guess you can say it’s a marginal connection”.

In a lot of my own personal readings on the topic of tenure and faculty, I have come across more arguments against tenure because it protects faculty that are ineffective teachers. While earning their PhD’s they picked up the bad habits of professors they were working with, and therefore continued the cycle. It was exciting for to hear my former professor, whom I greatly admire talk about his experiences as a student. “I learned to teach by watching my most effective Undergraduate and Graduate professors. However if I had to say one person, I would say Nelson Pike (Prof. Emeritus UC-Irvine)”. Coach described that Pike was a brilliant lecturer, but was also able to work well with small groups of students. However for the most part he believes that all new professors learn the most from trial and error. They must try out their skills and tweak them to create a successful method for teaching students.

When asked why he chose to teach philosophy to college students, Coach gave credit to all of the inspiring philosophy professors that he had as an undergraduate. “They were such admirable people, and I wanted to be like them”. As a former student, I believe that he succeeded. His teaching method really is all his own. With every interaction that I have ever had with the man he challenged me and I would argue that most of his students over the 34 years that he has taught will agree. Coach finished our interview with a very interesting statement, “We live in an incredibly corrupt world, where any of the jobs you take you are apt to do a great deal of harm. Philosophers don’t do much harm”.