Editor's Note: For stories on other Distingiushed Faculty Award recipients, see the table of contents.
In many of Eastern Michigan University's English courses, students practice their interviewing skills in mock interviews with various University professors. David Geherin, professor of English language and literature, has often been the guinea pig for his colleagues' classes.
As an "interviewee," Geherin is asked all kinds of questions. However, there is one specific question that he is always ready to answer.
"The question I hear most is, 'Where do you think you'll be in five years?'" said Geherin. "My response is always the same. 'I'll be teaching at Eastern.'"
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LEGACY OF LITERATURE: David Geherin, an EMU
professor of English language and literature,
encourages his students to engage imaginatively
when reading literature. Geherin recently was
recipient of the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished
Faculty Teaching II Award. The award is given to
faculty members with five or more years of
teaching experience at EMU.
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Geherin has kept true to his word. He has taught at EMU since 1969, many years before most current college students were even born. Thirty-six years after his start at EMU, he is the 2005 recipient of the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Teaching II Award, given to faculty members with five or more years of teaching experience. The award includes a plaque and a $3,500 honorarium.
"I'm really honored to receive this award," said Geherin. "It's great that EMU gives awards like this. I'm glad that I have a job where I do what I would otherwise do, which is read, and get awarded for doing what I love."
Geherin started his college career at the University of Toronto, where he earned his bachelor's degree in English and philosophy. As a college senior, he still didn't know what he wanted to do for a career. He loved being a student and saw graduate school as a way to prolong his experience.
While working towards his master's degree in English at Purdue University, Geherin was able to teach courses as a graduate assistant. It was there that he began shaping his teaching style to what it is today.
"I'm not a lecturer. My goal is to give the students something that provokes their thinking and gets them engaged in class," Geherin said. "I try to learn all of their names right away and relate to them as adults throughout the duration of the course."
His favorite class to teach, entitled "Rome and America," is a joint effort with foreign language professor James Holoka. The class attempts to draw conclusions about present-day America through the eyes of ancient Rome.
He also participates in teaching abroad with EMU's European Cultural History Tours. Those trips bring students and professors together for 24 hours a day, every day, for an entire 15-week semester. During the tour, Geherin has literally been transported to places he'd only previously read about. He has taught Sophocles' "Antigone" at the foot of the Acropolis where it was first performed 2,500 years ago; Elie Wiesel's "Night" after a sobering visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland; and Juvenal's first-century poem, "Against the City of Rome," while sitting amid the ruins of the Roman Forum.
"Whether I'm teaching Homer's 'The Odyssey' on a ship sailing past Ithaca, Odysseus's destination; or in a cinderblock classroom in Pray-Harrold, I have always tried to follow a few simple rules," Geherin said. "Treat students with respect, encourage them to engage imaginatively with the texts they are reading and ask them questions to inspire their thinking. Above all, I want to help them learn how to transfer words on the page into meaningful experiences that will broaden their knowledge and enhance their lives. That's the magic of literature and the goal of all of my teaching."
Those who nominated him spoke of Geherin's dedication to engaging his students in the classroom.
"Leading discussion, and getting good discussion out of students, is extremely difficult, extremely rare, but David is a master of the technique, as his students and his peers attest," wrote Jeff Duncan, chair of the English department's personnel committee.
"When students speak of Professor Geherin, they address his passion, his intelligence, his warmth and his wit," wrote Martin Shichtman, professor of English language and literature. "But most of all, they address his enormous commitment to the classroom and his deep and profound love for teaching."
"(Geherin) has achieved everything as a scholar and, particularly, as a teacher that defines excellence, and he has done it with humility," wrote Russell Larson, department head of English language and literature. "I can think of no one more deserving of the Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching."
And when asked again where he'll be five years from now — after receiving the highest honor given by EMU to its faculty — Geherin said, with a grin, "I'll be doing what I do now."
