Timothy Crowley is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, with Renaissance English
Literature as his focus. This fall, he taught, “Ideas and Ideals in Classical Epic Poetry: Homer and Virgil.”
Why were you attracted to offering an Honors seminar?
“I love meeting and working with this cross-section of students from across the campus.”
How do you teach your subject or specialty to an interdisciplinary group of Honors students?
“I choose course topics that I think will hold appeal across disciplinary boundaries, aim to keep our reading and discussion at a reasonable pace, and structure each class period to launch with student-generated discussion questions in line with their own sites of intrigue.”
What are some of your tricks of the trade to engage students in the course materials?
“That structure for class discussion aims for direct engagement, and I post/update a cumulative list of those prompts from each class period in the online course page, for the sake of extended comparison across the semester (also reference points for studying). I also assign material for which I feel a perennial passion in reading and teaching, hoping that my energy will complement theirs and vice-versa.”
What’s the best thing about teaching Honors students?
“These students’ collective degree of engagement with assigned material, as well as with each other’s ideas, lends itself to dynamic class discussions: the energy factor noted above!”
