Telia Williams is an Assistant Professor in the College of Law. Professor Williams taught an Honors Seminar titled “Creative Destruction: Business, Law, and Literature in American Enterprise” during the fall 2023 semester.
Why were you attracted to offering an Honors Seminar?
I was really attracted to offering an Honors Seminar because I was excited by seeing all of the energetic undergraduates on campus when I came to teach at the College of Law here, and they just had this excitement about them. For various reasons, I ended up having to spend a lot of time at Holmes Hall in my first year here, and because of that, I was around undergraduates all the time, and I even got to know some of them. I love teaching my law students, but they usually lack that joy of learning by the time I get them in their second semester of their “1L” year. I thought that it would be very gratifying to help form students at this stage in their academic, learning careers, where they are sophisticated enough to understand the concepts that I have to teach about law, business, and society, but also still have a sense of wonder and openness, and an innocent (in the best sense of that word) engagement with new material. And I was right!
How do you teach your subject or specialty to an interdisciplinary group of Honors students?
I teach my subject by really leaning into the idea of the seminar. Rather than making the course rigid or fixed, or an impartation of knowledge from on high (where I theoretically sit as the professor), I aim to treat the class setting as a seed bed, where I am sowing intellectual seeds. That is the original idea of a “seminar,” after all, and contains the root word of “the seed” in it, as well. Sowing seeds, in my mind, means intently sharing distinct and discernible concepts and ideas in discussion, and in the readings and assignments, and in giving active listening to my students. But sowing seeds also means allowing the students to grow and assimilate what they need from the academic elements that I provide, on their own. You cannot “grow” someone; we all grow on our own. It would be tantamount to saying that you can “learn” someone, when you can only teach them. But we immensely benefit by having someone with patience and skill helping to cultivate us. The meeting of a committed teacher with a committed student can produce magic. The kind of miraculous “magic” that is akin to an acorn turning into a mighty oak tree. And that is what I hope to do, though I recognize that one does not always see the fruit in a single semester. Often, growth begins below ground, as it were, and does not rise to the surface until the time is ripe (which could be on another teacher’s watch – which is fine!) But I was fortunate to see a rich and delightful growth in my students this semester. Many really grew in confidence, in analytical ability, in oratorical skills, and in enthusiasm for tackling difficult readings that they had not encountered before. It was fun.
What are some of your tricks of the trade to engage students in the course materials?
To be honest, the biggest trick of the trade, which I had forgotten, and only re-learned again by accident this semester, is one of architecture, for lack of a better word. When we first began meeting, it was in a somber, but stately room at the law school, where we sat around a very long, senatorial, imposing, dark wood, conference table, with stone walls and musty law books. I struggled to get anyone to talk more than a modicum of words, and it was getting perplexing. It just so happened that we then changed rooms, before mid-semester. A very esteemed group of inspectors from the American Bar Association were doing their decennial visit to the law school and required our normal room. We found ourselves in a smaller room, with an informal set of tables where we sat almost in the round, facing each other, with a bright window. Suddenly, discussion just flowed. It was like night and day. I was no longer at the “head” of a long table, but in a round table setting, and the students all around me, and each other, and it truly started to feel like a seminar with seriously engaged and lively, interesting dialogue. I really have to remember to try to change the architecture of any classroom I am in, particularly for a seminar, in order to better achieve this effect again!
What’s the best thing about teaching Honors students?
The best thing about teaching Honors students is how prepared and open-minded they are. These Honors students actually do the readings! And they do not complain about the length of them! That is amazing! By the time you have law students in their second and third years (if not sooner), you usually feel the constraint of burdening students with too much, who are almost blinded by anxiety about their performance, with fear of failure. And you come up against – often – a kind of existential ennui. Law students often just want to “get through it,” not actually learn. Or if they want to learn, they often want it to be immediately translatable into practical skills, when the learning process does not always lend itself to such immediate goals. And frequently, if law students do not see the relevance of an assignment, or if it is too challenging, they express frustration, or just as lamentably, simply don’t do it. This was not the case with my Honors students. Not only did they seem to put aside a fear of failure or inordinate desire to “get a good grade,” it was evident that they took the generous amount of work that I gave them as a challenge, and not a punishment. They were not flummoxed when the point of a particular reading or other medium (such as film, or video that I assigned) was not immediately apparent. They also saw things in a way that I had not considered before, and it was edifying to re-discover material that I have known or taught for years, through their eyes. I also think that the Honors students helped to inspire my couple of law students who also took the seminar.
