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Fowler wraps up 35 years of influence at UW
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by Erin Aagesen
Thursday, May 9, 2002
In any other situation, 400 strangers might not be so compliant with a request for the entire group to stand up and hold hands.
But this is Professor Booth Fowler’s domain, so his students simply laugh and reach for each other’s hands while listening to a lecture on Rousseau’s conception of community in a crowded basement lecture hall.
After all, they are used to this sort of thing.
Fowler, whom many cite as one of the most beloved professors on campus, is giving his final lecture today, concluding 35 years of influence at UW-Madison. Fowler currently teaches Western Social Economic and Political Thought I and II, courses in the Integrated Liberal Studies department, which he has served as chairman of for three years.
His mode of teaching ILS is, at the very least, unique. Each lecture, Fowler portrays a different thinker, such as Plato or Freud. Pacing up and down the lecture hall’s aisles, he speaks animatedly, using hand gestures and vocal inflections to create a convincing argument. Often, he addresses students or teaching assistants and attempts to get them involved in a dialogue with a particular thinker.
Fowler has been role-playing in this way for the past five years. He says he feels students are more likely to interact and challenge the views he is presenting if he actually takes on the persona of the thinker he is teaching. Also, he said he can stay enthused about a particular thinker if he presents himself as that person, rather than letting his personal views seep into the classroom.
“He puts a twist on what he teaches. Like a great performer, he sells a show, but we go home with philosophy,” said Andy Malingowski, a sophomore in Fowler’s ILS 206 course.
Though Fowler has a performance persona inside the classroom, his teaching assistants this spring — Andrea Moore, Patty Strach, Chris Stangl and John Evans — insist he is a modest man who shuns the spotlight in his personal life. Indeed, a chat with him in his office is more soothing and quiet than a seat in his lecture hall, where one is confronted with a passionate man who touts a booming voice and an authoritative demeanor as often as he speaks to the class in a gentle, conversational tone.
Fowler’s approach is to get the students so involved in a thinker that they can’t just dismiss that person’s ideas.
“There is a tendency to view everything from the outside,” he said. “I want my students to think about what each of these thinkers represent.”
To help illustrate his points, Fowler integrates alternative methods of teaching in his lectures. He uses dialogues, in which he and a teaching assistant each play a different thinker and argue about their beliefs to help students process the similarities and differences between ways of thought. He also has held lectures based on contemporary music selected by his students, presenting a particular aspect of Western thought. He interacts constantly with his students, both in and out of class.
Fowler’s last lecture, at 12:05 in B-10 Ingraham Hall, is expected to be packed with Fowler’s colleagues, former students, local media and scholars from around the country.
The teaching assistants said they all agree Fowler’s enthusiasm, specifically for individual people, is what makes him such a popular personality on campus.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as interested in people as he is,” Stangl said.
“He’s terribly fond of undergraduates.”
Fowler said one of the most enjoyable aspects of his career has been interacting with people around him, particularly students. After retirement, the 62-year-old says he believes contact with students is what he will miss most.
“I generally enjoy talking with students. I find that as a whole, students are open.” Fowler said. “Their lives are different from mine. I like learning from other people.”
And his students learn from him.
“He has an outlook of students as whole people. They’re not just students taking his classes,” said Strach.
