About this year’s Carlson Award winner, students sometimes tell only half the story. One freshman says this instructor is “always demanding, requiring us to work to our potential.” A sophomore says: “knows what questions to ask in order to make you think…tough, but well worth it.” Hearing this alone, we might conclude that this instructor may not be forbidding, but can Look it.
Other students tell the other half. “Encouraged us to trust our own ideas and to take a creative approach to the suggested topic,” one student said. Or, I “enjoyed the enthusiasm and felt comfortable talking with” this instructor, whose “creativity and humor made class discussions a pleasure.” This instructor is said to be “available to students at any hour. especially as the due date for papers neared.” Hearing this alone, we might conclude that this instructor verges on paternalism without actually committing it.
But students do get around to the whole story, which i complex. “Commanded respect and definitely has an air of authority but never (became) unapproachable or seemed inhuman,” one student properly equivocates. Another adds qualification to qualification: this instructor “is very intelligent and is completely in control of the classroom atmosphere. Yet… is not impersonable, but has a wonderful, dry sense of humor.”
Complexity would seem to be the lesson this instructor teaches-not only in class but in person.
A faculty colleague contends that this year’s Carlson Award winner explodes “the myth that fine scholars have little interest in being fine teachers as well.” Not only has this instructor offered courses in Curriculum 11, in Women ‘s Studies, in the “historical perspective” and in language, but also is a previous winner of the faculty research award. Writing half a dozen articles (some on research, some on pedagogy), giving invited lectures in this country and abroad, offering papers at national conventions, this instructor runs new laps on ancient courses. As a journalist, this instructor brings humor to The Chronicle of Higher Education and world news to the Twin Cities Star Tribune.
Also and finally, traveling as winner of the Mellon Rome Prize Fellowship, as senior associate member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, or simply as a regular summer researcher in Athens or Rome, this instructor, each June, requires Greek and Italian customs officers to read silently from a passport the name that we now, in these proceedings, do publicly pronounce, Marleen Flory.
Presented by William Dean
Professor of Religion
1990 Recipient of the Edgar M. Carlson Award
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