The Edgar M. Carlson Award for innovative teaching was established by the Board of Trustees of Gustavus Adolphus College to honor the long and outstanding period of leadership that Dr. Carlson gave the college. Each year the award is given to a member of the faculty in recognition of outstanding teaching on this campus. The Carlson Award is made possible by an annual grant of $1,500 from trustee and benefactor, Arnold J. Ryden.
This year the award goes to Professor Jack L. Clark of the Department of Religion.
Jack Clark’s abilities as an academician became evident in his own collegiate years. Following a period of service in the United States Army, he enrolled at Gustavus, graduating in 1952 – summa cum laude. For those of us who do not share Jack’s proficiency in the classics, I looked up summa cum laude, and it means “Pretty Darn Good.” He continued his education at Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary, and again led his class. Jack holds the degree of Master of Arts from the University of Minnesota in Classics, a second Master of Arts degree from Yale University in Judaic and Hellenistic studies, and the Doctor of Philosophy degree from Yale in biblical studies. Following teaching assignments at Northwestern Seminary, the University of Minnesota and Yale University, Jack joined the Gustavus faculty in 1962.
Jack Clark has served this college in many ways, but he is honored today primarily for his contributions as a teacher. He is a demanding person. He is demanding where his colleagues are concerned and has difficulty disguising his feelings when confronted with fuzzy thinking or a poorly developed argument. He is demanding where his students are concerned, and will use all kinds of devices to get them to do their very best. But most of all, he is demanding of himself. His lectures are honed to a fine edge. His writing is precise, carefully drawn, and reflects his intimate knowledge of the latest scholarship.
Jack Clark is broadly competent. As a professor of religion, his courses range over a wide area. He is equally at home in the classics, and in recent years has taught courses in Greek. His interests carry him into the works of Darwin and Huxley, Marx and Freud, Kierkegaard and Chardin.
Finally, Jack Clark has new ideas, and these ideas show up in his classroom. In his course entitled Pervasive Images of Man, he explores with the students the structure and possibilities of human life as viewed both within popular culture and from the vantage points of evolutionary theory, economics, psychology, existentialist philosophy, political science and theology. And then there is his course titled Jesus: Redeemer and Revolutionary. Who is this Jesus anyway? Son of God and Superstar, zealot and existentialist. Who was He in the minds of the early believers, and who is He for us today? It is into this kind of adventure that Jack Clark leads his students.
Jack -it is my pleasure to present to you the 1974 Edgar M. Carlson Award for innovative teaching.
Presented by John Kendall
Professor of Psychology
1973 Recipient of the Edgar M. Carlson Award
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