Faculty
Judi O’Brien Anderson
Christopher Hague’s interpretation of Apollinaire exemplifies, to me, the soul of a teacher.
The challenge of an educator is to encourage intellectual curiosity. The challenge of an educator is to liberate students from complacency, from the restraints of ignorance. The challenge of an educator is to teach and model those values that recognize and respect human dignity and diversity.
The journey to the edge is a shared journey full of challenges that educators and students take together. Education is not impersonal; it is not static; it is not a simple matter of information transferal. Education is a journey during which one must overcome limits and never settle for mediocrity. It takes hard work and commitment to make it to the edge. It takes courage to dare to dream, to explore, to discover. It takes faith to leap off the edge, to dare to fly.
My journey as an educator was, I believe, somewhat foretold when, as a senior in high school, I was assigned to write an essay on what I imagined my future would hold. To this day, I remember the opening line of that essay: “When I grow up, I want to be an educated bum and live on an island.” Four years later, I found myself on the island of Guam, not as a bum, but as a teacher in mission schools. It was that experience that taught me that education is an interactive process involving so much more than text learning. It was on Guam that I learned the value of diversity. My students and their families taught me diversity of culture, of family structure, of life style, of religion, politics, ideas, and tradition. I taught students geometry, composition, and poetry; they taught me poetry, beauty, grace, and generosity. The years spent on Guam not only enriched my education; they validated the concept that personal experience can be a master teacher.
When I returned to the states, I married. Earl and I are natives of Wisconsin. We have a beautiful daughter Nicole who grew to share my love for islands and oceans and teaching, and I continued my formal education through doctoral studies. I also found a new family and a new academic home, SCI.
At SCI, we have a strong tradition and history of community. It has been my experience in the academic community that there is a commitment not only to retain, but to revitalize those traditions and values that remain sacred to the individual as a whole, traditions and values that reflect and articulate the fundamental truths and principles of the Ursuline tradition.
When I am asked why I teach at Springfield College, I immediately think of academic freedom.
For most colleges and universities, academic freedom is fundamental, but I believe that freedom is refined by the institution’s mission and that elements of academic freedom for each institution are unique. SCI is committed to enriching the ethical as well as the intellectual and personal development of its students, nurturing a reverence for truth and a desire to search after it.
As an SCI instructor for over thirty years, academic freedom has meant a freedom that is enriched basically by the Ursuline faith, a faith open to all truths that respect the integrity of individuals. Education is the search for truth – many and varied truths. Exercising academic freedom at SCI has meant, for me, the freedom to challenge students to discover truths that take them beyond comfortable truths that take me beyond comfortable truths, and the courage to recognize that others’ truths may not be our truth, but that we can still respect and learn from them. Academic freedom means recognizing the complexity of human issues and daring to understand those issues not only from legal, political, and social perspectives, but also from ethical and religious perspectives. As a private institution, we are free to discuss and recognize the values of church and state and understand that one is not necessarily exclusive of the other.
Although student experiences have changed over the years, and teaching strategies have changed to keep pace with our evolving society, one thing has not changed: I do not expect mediocrity from my students; I do not ask students to settle for “good”. I ask for their best – always, and I have faith that some will dare to fly.
Judi O’Brien Anderson
English Instructor