September 9, 2001: Volume 53, Number 1

Stillman winner Nichols enjoys teaching 'the art of thinking'

Byron Nichols, winner of this year's Stillman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, reached an intellectual and emotional epiphany in his first couple of years in Union's political science department thanks to a simple definition in a little-known book about the virtues of a liberal arts education.

Embers of the World, published as Nichols arrived at Union in 1968, was a tribute to the terminally-ill Scott Buchanan, a dean at St. John's College in Maryland, who said, "The liberal arts are the arts of thinking."

Buchanan's book "captured why I had come to Union," he says, "And I was teaching the arts of thinking about politics in the midst of the century's most political epoch.

"It was the first time I had heard that conceptualization, and it resonated immediately," recalls Nichols. "It spoke directly to my own undergraduate experience … and the excitement it produced for a young, rural Oregonian thrust down in the midst of a buzzing Los Angeles campus (Occidental)."

Buchanan's formulation also spoke to Nichols' first year of teaching, where his students publicly challenged their 25-year-old professor — at least once with profanity — to defend his classes as "relevant" to Vietnam, Civil Rights and the threat of nuclear holocaust.

"It was a breathtaking beginning to a teaching career," he recalls.

"My primary objective is to make students think," says Nichols, who makes students "think out loud" in class by drawing names at random from index cards.

"By asking questions myself, I want students to acquire for themselves the intellectual skill of asking questions and the intellectual character of being curious," he says.

"Thinking is a kind of 'high' that occurs naturally from our personal mingling of spirit, manners and toughness," he says. "But more importantly, nothing is so stimulating as helping someone else to think rigorously and systematically. Sharing the power of thinking is the ultimate intellectual high in a liberal arts setting. To teach — to share the arts of thinking — is simultaneously to nurture, to challenge, and to dignify."

"Students comment … enthusiastically about Prof. Nichols work with them out of class, says Christie Sorum, dean of faculty. "He takes them to the Egg for performances, encourages them to apply for Watsons (in his role as director of graduate honors and fellowships), and holds discussion dinners.

"His reputation for being a tough grader made him almost intimidating," wrote one student, "but by the second class I knew that he was genuinely concerned about us as students. (He) challenged us to think for ourselves, to have strong opinions, and most importantly to be able to back them up."

Nichols received his A.B. from Occidental, and his master's and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. His area is developing countries with an emphasis on Latin America.

He is the seventh recipient of the Stillman Prize, which is based on student nominations, screened by the Committee on Teaching, and considered by the dean of faculty. Other recipients were Mary Carroll, chemistry, 1995; John Garver, geology, 1996; Ashraf Ghaly, civil engineering, 1997; Alan Taylor, mathematics, 1998; Bonney MacDonald, English, 1999; and Peter Heinegg, English, 2000. Other nominees this year were Charles Batson, modern languages; Ted Gilman, political science; and Scott Scullion, classics.

The prize was established by David Stillman '72, Abbott Stillman '69, and Allan Stillman in honor of Abraham Stillman, father and grandfather.

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