Joseph Veth, Ph.D.

• Freshmen and Senior Humanities Seminars (HU 113, 114, and 399)
• Educational Philosophy Seminars (ED 212 and 501)

I have been very fortunate to have had some wonderful teachers; I can think of three or four people who, despite the incredible volume of material they mastered, seemed always to try to learn something from everyone they met. Their curiosity and thirst to learn made me want to learn more as well. Their curiosity drew me to the profession; there's so much I don't know or understand and teaching, well, is there a better job? I get to read, think about what I've read, talk about what I've read with colleagues and students, and then think about that dialogue.

I do not see teaching in the humanities and education as a monologue; that is I do not want to tell anyone what they should think. I see teaching as a dialogical process. Being a teacher means giving other people the tools to make better decisions; I can't live another person's life. I can't tell them what to do but I can provide them with some strategies for locating information, processing and putting that information in context, and then using the fruits of that effort to better their lives.

I think that my joys and motivations in the classroom are the same for most teachers in the short term it's when you see the light go on in someone's eyes when that individual suddenly sees the application or the meaning of a concept in the long term it's when you meet someone one, two, ten, or twenty years later and he/she speaks of how the learning experience changed that person's perspective on how to approach life.