Yesterday was Honors Convocation at Carthage- a 90 minute ceremony in which various scholarship and competition winners are recognized. There are some exciting and moving moments, but after sitting through all of those names being read off and “holding our applause” until all of the recipients have been announced, etc. it’s mighty hard not to zzzzzzzzz. . .
But not yesterday. A bit of unexpected excitement gave me quite a jolt of adrenalin. It occurred when the student playing organ for the event, Sean Knudsen, came over to where I was sitting with the faculty and whispered that Kristen Barnes, the senior who had been selected to lead the singing of the alma mater at the end of the ceremony, was nowhere to be found. Eventually, Sean thought of text-messaging her and she replied a few minutes later that (I believe) she was in Minnesota. (I’m not sure if she realized that she had been asked to sing the alma mater or not; asking her was not my responsibility.) This was about 15 minutes or so before the alma mater was to be sung – 15 minutes before Dean Piepenburg would be announcing her name and expecting her to come forward. So I did some quick scanning of the audience and finally spotted Michael DeFrang, one of our very best singers. (He was the only senior singer I spotted in the whole place.) I circled over to where he was seated, but just as I was about to tap him on the shoulder, his name was announced! That very instant! So I had to step back and let him pass so he could walk up to the podium and receive whatever it was that they were giving out at that moment. Eventually, he made his way back to his seat where I was waiting with the invitation for him to lead the alma mater. Thanks, he replied, but I’m afraid I don’t know the alma mater. (They only had the lyrics in the program – not the music – so Michael couldn’t have even sight-read it if he had wanted to.) So. . . . I had to lead the alma mater myself and fortunately we were able to pass a note to Dean Piepenburg just in time for him to make an amended announcement. All’s well that ends well.
Just ahead of the alma mater being sung, President Campbell announced the name of the Distinguished Teaching Award, which is essentially Carthage’s teacher of the year. It’s an honor bestowed by a committee of both students and faculty- and the announcement itself is a suspenseful affair in which information is given out little by little until it eventually becomes clear who the recipient is. This year it went to one of my very favorite colleagues, a psychology prof named Bob Maleske. Bob is such an energetic, kind-hearted, and joyous person – and the kind of teacher that students adore. One thing said in the introductory remarks about him is that he’s probably one of the only professors on campus who not only carefully reads the negative comments from students that occasionally come his way in student evaluations, but also reads those critical comments out loud to his classes and asks for suggestions on how he might address those shortcomings. Amazing. One of my favorite things about Bob is that a few years back – when he was in his mid to late 40s – he decided to start taking piano lessons. . . as an absolute beginner. He did it in part in order to study the experience of being a middle aged beginning piano student . . . but it very quickly became a wonderful musical adventure for him. (He and his wife have at least one daughter who is a superbly skilled violinist, and I think Bob was anxious to get at least a little taste of what it means to be a musician.) Very very very few people are willing to put themselves in that humbling position of Absolute Beginner – but it’s one of the best things Bob ever did. And maybe his example will inspire me someday to learn how to throw a football.
By the way, there have been 40 recipients of this award over the last 40 years. . . and of those 40, only two of them have been from the Fine Arts Division – one music professor and one theater professor. I’m no math major, but that sure doesn’t sound right to me. But if one of my fine arts colleagues wasn’t going to be this year’s recipient, I could not be happier that it went to Bob Maleske.
pictured: Bob Maleske, having just received the Distinguished Teaching Award, tells the assembled masses that the platform on which he ran for the honor was “number one- reducing tuition! And number two- increasing faculty salaries! “ Clearly, Bob is not a member of the business department – nor the accounting department !