Jacksonville University Faculty: Power to Change Lives

These faculty members were memorable to me then – and I am sure to many of my colleagues and peers who also took their courses. They taught many different subjects, but left lasting impressions and influences on our lives.

At first glance, they did not appear to have much in common. However, there was a reason I had remembered them all these years.

The word faculty implies an inherent power or ability – a skill. By extension that term applies to those learned individuals at a college or university who have acquired their power through their ability to do something at an advanced level of mastery. In turn, the etymology of our word faculty, winds its way back through Middle English, to Latin where the term facultas, meant power. The Romans had adopted that word from an Indo-European term meaning to set or put, to do or make. Throughout its distinguished history, the meaning of faculty has been connected to acquiring personal power through enhanced abilities.

Remembering these teachers with this etymology in mind, I came to better understand why these particular faculty members at JU are memorable – why they above most of the others in my personal experience remain so vivid and so important in my memory.
They shared three essential core values that remain as relevant today as they were then as both characteristics and requirements for the faculty of any great University.

They knew their subjects. Not all of them had earned PhD’s at that point in their careers. However, they were deeply knowledgeable about their subjects, and were continuing to learn themselves even as they were sharing their knowledge with us. They left us with a commitment to lifelong learning as a key to our own personal freedoms.

They were passionate. Their teaching time with us was highlighted by their enthusiasm and excitement about their subjects and how happy they were to be able to share this wonderful body of knowledge with their students. In turn, we responded to their enthusiasm with interest and greatly increased motivation to learn more about it.

They were interested in us, they respected us, they cared about our learning experiences and the extent to which we had gained the knowledge they had hoped to impart. Classroom discourse was mutually respectful. Students were addressed as Miss or Mr. as appropriate. As we might say using today’s management terminology, they were customer focused.

At the time, JU might not have had many buildings…or even a paved parking lot…but it had already established the heart and soul of a great university— dedicated faculty members exemplifying Knowledge, Passion, and Respect.

In so many important ways, I have tried to follow those examples and core values in my own life. Jacksonville University has followed those examples and core values to this day. Such values have served as the vital foundations on which this great university stands and grows.

© Copyright 2018 BelleAire Press, LLC