Dear Faculty, Staff, Alumni and Friends,
Every year, generally in the Fall, I take out some time to visit classes. In the five years since I joined Clemson as a dean, I have probably visited between 60 and 70 classes, giving me insight into teaching in every subject at every level.
Ethical Thinking
I’d like to describe a small selection of my experiences this semester to give you a taste of what’s on offer for our students. In our Department of Philosophy, I visited Senior Lecturer Edyta Kuzian’s “Introduction to Ethics,” where the topic at hand was Aristotle’s thoughts on the freedom, or lack thereof, of making choices. After the class reviewed the relevant passages from the Nicomachean Ethics, Dr. Kuzian presented them with a test case and split them up into three groups to argue specific approaches to the question. I could see how it was mind-blowing for the students to digest that there might be as many as three different ways of approaching an ethical issue, and not just the standard two.
Cultural Understanding
Next up was Senior Lecturer Olga Volkova’s class on Contemporary Russian Culture. Our homework assignment was to watch a 2021 Russian film set in 1938 during the Stalinist Terror. Class discussion centered around the ways in which a police state operates and creates a climate of fear and hopelessness, and how the film went about portraying the terror. The students had clearly done their homework and contributed energetically to the analysis.
Performance Skills
Then there was Associate Professor Kerrie Seymour’s theater class on acting. After warming up the students with a series of breathing, vocal, and diction exercises, students improvised moving through spaces with imaginary hurdles and impediments: waist deep with mud, a dense forest, floor covered in honey, etc. Class ended with a student’s breathtaking performance of a monologue she had been preparing, which Dr. Seymour and the class critiqued.
Supporting K-12
I was engrossed watching Associate Professor Stephen Fitzmaurice teach an ASL (American Sign Language) class at our Greenville location that focused on training elementary school interpreters. This was a high-pressure class, where students were presented sight-unseen with video recordings of an elementary school class period and expected to perform and self-record an ASL interpretation in real time.
In-depth Analysis
In a vastly different vein, I observed Associate Professor and Chair Ben White lead his Religious Studies class on “Koine Greek of the New Testament.” It challenged students with a mixture of intense language instruction in ancient Greek grammar and vocabulary, combined with sophisticated Biblical exegesis, comparing different translations of the Bible and the ways they had approached interpreting the Greek original. I was shocked at how many students were taking this class and blown away by their linguistic and interpretive mastery.
Clemson’s reputation for engineering, business, and agriculture belies the breadth and depth of our Arts and Humanities curriculum. I wish more people could witness the variety and level of our offerings. These are classes that prepare students for a full and informed life, enriching what they will bring to the workplace, their families, and their communities.
It is always thrilling to watch our faculty in action, doing what they are passionately driven and exceptionally qualified to do. It is equally thrilling to see our students – bright, eager, attentive as they are – lighting up as they get drawn into the material and the classroom dynamic. This is what College is supposed to be about, and having the privilege of sitting in and observing is definitely one of the best parts of my job.
Go Tigers!
Nicholas Vazsonyi, Dean
College of Arts and Humanities
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