Olá! I'm Luana from Brasília, the capital of Brazil. A couple of years ago I was, just like you, looking through this blog hoping to get to know Dartmouth. But now, I get to tell you why I love being a Dartmouth student! From the academic opportunities to the community, I'll show you how grateful I am to have chosen the College on the Hill. So, consider this an invitation to accompany me as this blog becomes your looking glass into life in Hanover.
As a bookworm who loved dissecting and analyzing novels or philosophical works, a writing class focused on classical literature with weekly discussions was the right fit for me. Between reading Sophocles, Nietzsche, and Rawls, I had the opportunity to reassess my approach to reading, deepen my interpretations, and improve my public speaking skills while broadening my recognition of the significance of critical thinking.
I'll be honest: Physics has never been my favorite subject, until now. This term I am taking Introduction to Physics, a course that has shown me new horizons of what science can do. This class wasn't about calculating the movements of falling objects, it was about mathematically comprehending natural phenomena. The grandeur of that became evident as my professor, an accomplished experimental physicist, would passionately lecture on kinematics, waves, thermodynamics, and more.
I went into the woods and explored the fantastical worlds of the Brothers Grimm tales. It was definitely a thrilling and meaningful experience to analyse Snow White's virtues and Little Red Riding Hood's morals as important pieces of European culture. In other words, I got to study my childhood fairy tales, journeying through their real-world impact on a sociological, psychological, anthropological, and historical perspective.
For this summer, I decided to go home! Along with enjoying family and friends, I had the opportunity to learn a great deal during an internship at one of Brazil's top financial services institutions. There, I supported strategic growth and market positioning initiatives, delivered analysis and recommendations directly to senior stakeholders, and designed and executed internal engagement strategies to enhance organizational alignment and employee experience across business units. I also used this time to travel a little bit, exploring some of Japan. All in all, it's been a wonderful summer!
Q: What motivated you to become a professor in the first place?
Are we still using the word geek? Well, I am a geek and I absolutely love learning! I am infinitely curious. I'm especially curious about the literary and the historical. I've been studying it for a long time, and I'm still discovering things! But with scholarship, it's not just about having curiosity and conversations with yourself, others have to be a part of that. So, with research, we're having a conversation that is mediated by the page. To communicate thoughts and to connect, that to me is what I think is the value of scholarship and the value of teaching. The scholarship itself is already a way of being deeply taught by others.
Q: That is wonderful to hear. Well, at Dartmouth, the sense of scholarship is really strong, especially considering that all scholars must also be teachers. It seems that the institution really thrives on the teacher-scholar model. What is your experience with it, and how does it resonate with you?
Speaking about Dartmouth and its teacher-scholar model, scholarship is active questioning. It's an active engagement with the thoughts of others. And it's constantly changing. I think about the Dartmouth model as getting to participate in that actively because the institution thinks about the scholarship connecting to the teaching, the teaching connecting to the scholarship. We don't just communicate knowledge, we actively participate in creating new knowledge, in understanding knowledge of the past, and our relationship to that. Those are all active engagements, and the classroom is a space for that active engagement. I really appreciate the teacher-scholar model, which values both parts of that holistic organic enterprise of thinking together.
Q: I find it so incredible about Dartmouth that scholars like yourself, who have worked on groundbreaking research, won awards, and so much more, are found teaching introductory courses and engaging with undergraduate students. What about that kind of experience appeals to you?
I appreciate what you're highlighting about Dartmouth, because you're right. Not only do professors teach at all levels of the curriculum, but we're also directly engaged in all aspects of our classes. And the thing that I really love about teaching students who are new to subject matters, it's that opportunity to ask questions again and anew. It's bringing new voices into the conversation and having those new voices also freshen that conversation. I love questions that are about why we do it this way or why we don't do it this way, right? Those questions that sometimes, when we get to a very high level of specialization, we've answered for ourselves in a certain way that we know the answers to, but we no longer articulate those answers to ourselves or to others. Being able to rearticulate those, but as a teaching tool, is why we do this. Also, discovering that there are new ways to do it and new ways to find answers. Or discovering our underlying assumptions.
Q: How did you come to the conclusion that the roles can be balanced, the scholar and the teacher? Do they find an intersection?
There are always times when one is going to take precedence over the other. But because of the quarter system, as professors, we're able to balance that quite nicely. So, going from one teaching-intensive period to being able to have time that the institution creates to focus on one's research, that's a really important part of that balancing act.
There certainly are moments where they overlap greatly. For example, there are classes that allow the scholarship to directly come into the classroom. The other moments are all of the opportunities that also extend outside of the classroom structure. I work with sophomore research fellows for 19th-century research. Something that's not tied to coursework, but it's tied to being in conversation with students who are developing interests that are adjacent to the research interests that professors have, and facilitating a conversation that is already on a specialized project. But also drawing on the resources that we have. Whether it's going to the Hood Museum or Rauner Special Collections, engaging with the materials there and integrating those resources into an individual research project. That also takes the form of students doing a fellowship, doing an independent study, working on an honors thesis, going from one teaching intensive period to being able to have time that the institution creates to focus on one's research, that's a really important part of that balancing act.
Q: That is so insightful! How do you prepare for classes then?
That depends on what I'm teaching. There is always the overarching concern of the context in which we're approaching materials and what the knowledge bases are within that class. With classes like Humanities 2, I take my expertise and put it into a different conversation that involves co-teachers in exploring a shared theme from multiple perspectives. I get to explore alongside students. Every class is a project of discovering and exploring knowledge together, right? And producing knowledge together. So, it depends on what the context is, the parameters that we've set up, what we are asking, and how we are asking those questions.
Q: Absolutely! I have one last question: do you have any advice for prospective or incoming students?
I do. I think figuring out what this place is, what it has to offer, and how that would resonate with you. There are many different ways students, professors, and staff find their place here. Know that if you think there should be a student activity club on whatever it is, we have options for that. We have resources for that. If it doesn't exist, bring it into existence, found it, make it happen. So it's also understanding that this place itself isn't static; this place thrives on the interests and talents that people bring to it. And the structures that we have here are really meant for people to live, develop, and discover those when they're here. So I think that's what I'd say to incoming students.
That is such stellar advice! Thank you so much, Professor Boggs!
