Just look up Professor Lee Bowie on ratemyprofessor.com, and you will get a good idea of his professorial prowess. Though his courses are repeatedly described as the hardest classes in MHC, he is also repeatedly described as one of the best professors here due to his contagious enthusiasm and love of logic and his ability to push his students to succeed in extremely challenging subjects. His students report a consistently desire to attend lectures and describe a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment at the end of each semester. The mark he’s left on this school is not limited to the classroom. Professor Bowie has improved the lives of students as founding co-director of the Weissman Center; founding director of the Speaking, Arguing and Writing Program; Dean of the College; chair of the Philosophy Department. In this, his final year, Professor Bowie was honored with the Mount Holyoke College Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her Campus MHC sat down with Lee Bowie to look back at his time at Mount Holyoke College, and find out what’s next for this beloved professor.
So you joined Mt Holyoke in 1975, what do you think has changed most during your time here?
Let me respond to that a little differently. You hear faculty across education talk about the decline of student skills and how students in the “golden years” were better prepared for college and knew more and were harder working. That has not been my experience. I’ve found that students are just as hard working, maybe even more hardworking and are still well prepared and focused. SO I think overall the quality of the students have been quite high and not changing so much over the course of my time.
What has changed? I guess there’s less of a bubble now than there was in 1975. The college, for better or for worse, is more permeable, and has more connections to the community and outside world. The flipside is that it probably doesn’t feel as safe as it did back then. But students are less insulated. When I first came here there were dining halls in all the residence halls and students had to eat with the same group of people every day. And that was very different; there were advantages and disadvantages. There was more rigidity in student social groups.
Another thing that’s changed enormously is diversity on campus, both international and domestic. That’s been a really phenomenal change.
You have contributed so much to campus while you were here. You co-founded the SAW center as the Weisman center. What do you feel is your proudest achievement while here?
Oh, this is going to sound so hackneyed. Those are really good, I’m really proud of those. Not just that the Speaking, Arguing and Writing Program is still around, but that it still embodies the original ideals. I think that’s pretty cool and I still believe strongly in what that’s about.
I think it’s the individual students. You get an individual student once in a while that wakes up and sees her potential and starts to work hard and do amazing work and I think those are the best moments actually.
Do you have anything you’ll miss the most from here?
I’ll miss colleagues and students, though probably not in that order. [chuckle] Not that I’m going to be gone. I’m still going to be around and be doing a lot of the things that I’ve been doing.
Looking forward, what are your plans for retirement?
My main plan is not to make a plan. You get a lot of people saying, “what are your plans” and I think I want to give myself some space to figure out who I’m going to become. So I’m trying to resist making plans.
Do you have any words of wisdom to leave your students—or colleagues?
I’m not much of a believer in words of wisdom. I guess if I were to have words of wisdom, it would be the same to colleagues and students. Namely, Care about what you’re doing, which requires some work sometimes. That’s going to apply differently in those cases.