A Model Professor

As an Associate Dean of my college I am on a 12-month contract, so the academic calendar doesn’t impact my work schedule as much as it does many faculty. All the same, I am a very different figure on campus during the semester than I am when most of the students have gone home. During the long terms I wear a suit and tie every day, along with a button-down oxford shirt (white or blue) and black leather shoes. Between semesters, however, I might revert to polo shirts and even let the beard grow out a little. Like most faculty I think, I much prefer the more relaxed attire, but as long as I have students in the classroom my pedagogical goals take precedence over my creature comforts.

Most of the classes I teach are in the College of Business, and one of the contributions I feel called to make to my students is to model what a professional business person might look like. I tell them that if they show up at a job fair or for their first day at the office dressing like I do every day, they will at least not be embarrassed. They can always tone it down later if the workplace culture allows it. It’s not just about clothing, either. In the classroom, I refer to all my students by their last name. It sounds formal just like I want it to sound. I put professional behavioral expectations on them and refer to our class sessions as “meetings.” Of course, we focus on teaching them professional quality skills of all sorts but I also want them to feel at home when they move on into their careers.

I suspect there are analogs to my practice in other disciplines. Maybe chemistry professors show their students how and when to wear their white lab coats. Certainly, exercise science professors must demonstrate how to behave on the field of competition to be taken seriously by one’s counterparts. In a compilation of research on professors’ abilities to impact college students in the International Journal of Studies in Nursing, Ami Rokach noted that professors can demonstrate to students how to live as responsible adults as well as professionals.¹

For Christian faculty, however, modeling the professional life for our students must go beyond clothes and naming conventions. We are called to model professional behavior that is also Christian and that can be harder than it sounds. Sometimes, Biblical commandments and professional normative behavior come into conflict. I spent 13 years as a finance lawyer and the common communication of many Wall Street traders would never satisfy Ephesians 4:29. Preparing students to serve in those contexts while maintaining their faith commitments can be a challenge. All the more reason for Christian professors to model behaviors that will satisfy the competing demands of Scripture and the workplace.

The concerning part about modeling professional behavior for our students is that it goes much deeper than acclimating them to their future workplace. It allows us to change their way of thinking, and sometimes their way of living. Christian philosopher René Girard conceptualized the force of mimetic desire whereby people come to desire things, not because they perceive an inherent desirability about those things, but because they see others desiring them.² This is a critical tool in the hands of college professors because students often fail to appreciate the value, not just of our academic content, but of our professional approach to it. I routinely teach classes in Business Law to undergraduate business students, none of whom aspire to be lawyers. Every term there will be one who asks me why they are obliged to take the class, notwithstanding that every accredited business program in America requires it. Students have to be trained to appreciate the value of what they receive but, once they begin to value the person and views of their professors, that training becomes much easier. When teachers model values to their students, mimetic desire can take hold and the students will ascribe to those same values and thereby change their trajectory both as future professionals and as people.

Girard’s philosophy is not modern in practice. Jewish rabbis are famous for their “talmidim” eventually taking on many of their teacher’s characteristics. In their popular discipleship book, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg describe modern Jewish disciples in Israel who took on their rabbi’s personal traits, even affecting his peculiar gait as they walked behind him in a line.³ In Biblical times, the dynamic was the same. “There are even ancient stories that say disciples followed so closely they were covered by the dust of their rabbi’s feet.”⁴ In Matthew 9 John the Baptist’s disciples came to Jesus wondering why their rabbi taught them to fast regularly, but Jesus had not trained His disciples in the same discipline. In the next chapter, Jesus grants authority over demons and disease to His disciples before sending them out to mimic what they had seen Him doing. He assigns to them the goal, “It is enough for the disciple that he may become like his teacher….”⁵

Of course, this capacity that professors have to influence the values and practices of their students can work in the negative as well. There is a popular notion that professors may move their students to the political left; a prospect those on the right find unappealing. Despite the fact that university professors as a whole tend to lean left, research indicates students tend to end their first year of college with a higher view of people on both sides of that spectrum.⁶ Broadly speaking, Generation Z has less trust in higher education than their predecessors. While some of that mistrust may be questioning the value proposition of a college degree, the fear of indoctrination may also be driving that apprehension.⁷ This is not an unrealistic fear on some students’ part. Even when the values professors try to convey are unappealing to students, the power differential between students and professors can influence students to take on the values modeled by their professors.⁸ This may be part of why St. James advises that not many people should become teachers. We may all be judged by a stricter standard.⁹

Knowing that we may be mimicked by our students, not just in how we look but in how we act and in what we believe, how can we approach our work as professors so that we satisfy both their needs and the Lord’s demands? How does a teacher become worthy of his or her students? Certainly, making sacrifices to demonstrate to them how they should look, speak, and act in the professional context must be part of it, albeit the easy part. For me, the harder part may be to tend to my internal makeup. Are we forgiving those who hurt us without delay? Are we compassionate but also disciplined in our expectations of students and in our interactions with everyone else we encounter on campus? Are we faithful to our commitments to Christ, the communities we serve, and the families we love? It is more an exercise in 1 Corinthians 13 than in Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Perfection is not in my immediate future, but the easiest way to improve myself as a Christian professor is to follow Christ and His example. Just as my students mimic me, I can mimic the behavior, mindset, and commitments of Jesus as revealed in the gospels. I can adopt His willingness to suffer for the sake of others. I can copy His commitment to the truth. I can take on His devotion to prayer, teaching, and discipleship. The more I come to look like Him the better prepared I will be to stand in front of my students and expect their imitation.

We are all of us model professors, my friends. For good or for ill. Let’s make the absolute most of the opportunity we have been granted to help students succeed in both their professional work and their Christian walk. Tending to our own lives first, we can live out the instruction that the Apostle Paul provided to Timothy, to follow him in following Christ.¹⁰

1. Ami Rokach, “The Impact Professors Have on College Students,” (2016), International Journal of Studies in Nursing, 1(1):9, http://dx.doi.org/10.20849/ijsn.v1i1.80.
2. Gabriel Andrade, “Rene Girard,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (n.d.), https://iep.utm.edu/girard/.
3. Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, 2018, Zondervan, p.68.
4. Jurell Sison, “Covered by the Dust of the Lord’s Feet,” (n.d.), IgnatiaSpirituality.com, Loyola Press, https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/covered-by-the-dust-of-the-lords-feet/.
5. Matthew 10:24a, NASB.
6. Scott Jaschik, “Liberal Indoctrination? Not So Much,” (2018), Insider Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/05/research-suggests-colleges-broaden-students-political-views.
7. Katherine Knott, “Gen Z’s Distrust in Higher Ed a ‘Red Flag,’” (2022), Inside Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/08/12/survey-highlights-gen-zs-distrust-higher-ed.
8. Glory Emmanuel and Harold Delaney, “Professors’ Influence on Students’ Beliefs, Values, and Attitudes in the Classroom,” Journal of College and Character, vol. 15, no. 4, (2014), pp. 245-258. https://doi.org/10.1515/jcc-2014-0029
9. James 3:1.
10. 2 Timothy 1:13.