Called to Teach. Группа авторов
commitment.
In one phrase, I would sum up the intellectual heritage I encountered as a young student at Baylor: the moral requirement for reasoned commitment in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty.
Influenced by the language of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, I would say that to teach students to live the critical life of the mind without being paralyzed by doubt; to teach students to acknowledge ambiguity without being overwhelmed by uncertainty; to teach them to live with an open and tolerant spirit without sacrificing personal commitment to what one believes, after careful reflection, to be true and good and beautiful just is Baylor’s intellectual heritage.2
Three Vignettes
And now let me turn to brief vignettes, impressionistic vignettes, of some contributors to this intellectual heritage. In these three vignettes we encounter a citizen of the world, a passionate poet, and a musical conductor who undoubtedly arrived at Baylor because of the Nazi horror in Europe.
James Vardaman (1928–2018),
Emeritus Professor of History and Master Teacher
Like so many Baylor students, faculty, alumni, and others, I traveled with Jim on the overnight train from London to Edinburg and the overnight boat from Wales to Ireland. Like so many, I cruised with him on the Danube River and the Baltic Sea. I explored cemeteries with him from Paris to Vienna and museums from Prague, the Czech Republic, to St. Petersburg, Russia. To travel with Jim was to be introduced to a culture and its history by one who spent his professional life immersing himself in cultures plural. There he is teaching for a year in a university in South China. There he is traversing the USSR on the Trans-Siberian railway from Beijing to Moscow. There he is lecturing at universities in Russia, in Serbia, in Egypt. There he is establishing the Baylor-European Study Program in Maastricht, the Netherlands. There he is traveling multiple times in every country in Europe, and the point: traveling almost always with students in tow—students working hard (sometimes literally) to keep up with him.
Jim was constantly teaching all along the way—teaching that included political events and the significance of geography to be sure, but teaching that also included literature, music, and the visual arts, teaching that brought laughter and, I can assure you, at times, tears. The breadth and depth of his knowledge was staggering.
If I were to try to capture Jim’s contribution to Baylor in a sentence, here it is: Throughout his thirty-three years on the Baylor faculty, he was fundamentally concerned to take Baylor students to the world, to open their minds to new horizons and their hearts to new levels of compassion.
And if they could not travel with him abroad, he would bring the world to them, as he did for years chairing the most prestigious lecture series at Baylor: the Beall-Russell Lectures in the Humanities. As a result of his determination, he brought to Baylor individuals ranging from Edward Said to Carlos Fuentes, from Bill Moyers to Maya Angelou, from Czeslaw Milosz to Michael Mayne, Dean of Westminster Abbey.
And thinking of the Abbey, in 2000, Westminster Abbey honored Baylor Professor James Vardaman in recognition of his years of service to Westminster School, to Baylor University, and in recognition of his role in international education. I know of no Baylor faculty member who has had a greater influence on students than Jim. Unless it just might be that professor profiled in our second vignette.
Ann Vardaman Miller (1926–2006)
Emerita Professor of English and Master Teacher
Yes, there is a thread here. Ann and Jim: brother and sister. And yes, she too was a Master Teacher, one of the first two at Baylor to be so named. Ann loved poetry. She wrote poetry. Her life was an exuberant poem.
Ann Miller! A Baylor Icon if ever there was one. A more devoted following among Baylor alumni it would be hard to find. Here are reminiscences from three of her students:
Professor Miller was, of course, always dazzling. But one day she actually undid me. She said she wanted to teach us something about poetic rhythm, so without any fanfare she started to recite Blake’s “The Tyger” from memory. Slowly, at first, the words shaped in that gorgeous, sophisticated, Southern-tinged accent, so far from Blake, but so right. As she went on, she started to hammer out the rhythm on her desk, louder and louder with each stanza. By the third, she was standing up and pounding the desk with her fist. Declaiming the poem. No, orating it. Her fist against the hard wood with every pulse.
She finished, a soft sweat lining her forehead and cheekbones. Out of breath, too. (We, stunned.) She sank into her chair, lowered her head into her hands, and dismissed the class. “Leave,” she said—and then she mumbled, “Go and do what comes naturally.”
I did. I left, went to Pat Neff Hall, and changed my major to English. My parents thought I was nuts.
(Mark Scarbrough, class of 1980, former literature professor, author of 26 books and a forthcoming memoir entitled Bookmarked.)
And another:
I remember being a shy, self-conscious freshman in Ann Miller’s class. The first day she went through the class roster and asked each of us to quote a line of poetry. By the time she came to me my mouth was dry and my heart was pounding, but I was able to remember, “I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.” Relief swept through me as I thought my job was done.
But then she asked if I knew who wrote the line and the poem. I died a thousand deaths as I replied in a squeaky voice that it was my father’s standard reply to “Are we there yet?” on long trips.
Instead of the reprimand I expected, she said, “Wonderful,” and launched into a discourse about how literature can enrich our lives. I don’t really remember what she said after “wonderful”, I just wanted to hear her say it again and again.
(Susan Sneed Alexander, Class of 1982, Master of Science in Speech Pathology)3
One more:
When I was a student at Baylor, and first getting to know Ann Miller, I had occasion to walk across Founders Mall with her one day. It was a gorgeous spring afternoon. The grounds crew had just planted several million daffodils, and all was right with the world.
I’m not sure where we were headed—or why—but on the way Ann spotted, at a distance of thirty or forty yards, two students she knew, sitting on a bench. They were closely entwined, very much minding their own business, which seemed to be each other. As we strode toward the romantic couple, Ann began rather loudly declaiming those immortal lines of Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall.”
“In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove; / In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”By the time we arrived at the bench and were standing behind the pink-faced couple, Ann made a smooth segue from the 19th to the 20th century. Turning her attention to the pretty, young blonde sitting there, Ann placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder, shook her head sadly and quoted Yeats[’s poem “For Anne Gregory,” which ends insisting that only God] “Could love you for yourself alone / and not your yellow hair.”
The couples’ response was a marvelous combination of embarrassment and sheer delight.
If I hadn’t understood before, I understood then that I was in the presence of a different kind of teacher—different in relation to her students, different in relation to her work—someone so in love with poetry, with what the written and spoken word can convey, that the language of books [through her] was constantly escaping the page.
(Gayla McGlamery, Professor of English Literature, Loyola University Maryland)4
Daniel Sternberg (1913–2000),
Emeritus Dean of the School of Music
And now a most improbable tale of the intersection of a Polish Jew and a Texas Baptist University.
He was born in Poland, this magnificent Daniel Sternberg, but early in his life the family moved to Vienna where he eventually attended the Vienna State Academy of Music as a student of conducting.