Hankering to Teach

His is a well-known name -- more readily associated with starring roles in Hollywood blockbusters than with the works of Chaucer or Sir Thomas Malory. And he is the only Baylor professor who has a drink named for him at a campus coffee shop. But for scores of students through almost three decades, it's not by moniker or mocha that Tom Hanks is best known -- it's for his teaching excellence, recognized again this spring with the inaugural Cornelia Marschall Smith Professor of the Year Award. D. Thomas Hanks Jr., professor of English at Baylor since 1976, received the honor in April during the annual Honors Convocation at Armstrong Browning Library. Presented to a faculty member who makes a superlative contribution to the learning environment at Baylor, the award's criteria include teaching, research and service. As the recipient, Hanks, a scholar in Medieval English literature, will receive $20,000 and will present a public lecture on an academic topic of his choosing during the fall semester. Baylor Magazine asked Hanks to share his thoughts about the award and the profession of teaching.

Q: What did it mean to you to receive this award? 

A: This is the first chance that my faculty colleagues have had to combine with students and say, "Yeah, we think you're doing the right thing, and we think you're doing it well." That's two-thirds of my world -- students and colleagues -- so they feel good about my teaching and that makes me feel good about being here.

Q: Of all the teaching awards you've won, which has meant the most? 

A: Probably this one. For one thing, it's the most recent so it shores up my self-image again, and I'm always happy to have that happen. As a teacher, I depend a lot on my students responding to things, and I may sort of carry that over to where I depend a lot on other people's response.

Q: Why do you teach? 

A: A long time ago, when I was a TA at Washington University, I wondered if this wasn't somehow a godly thing to do because you're helping people think better. And then, in the last three or four years ... I've learned better ways to help a class form a unit, a community. I think it's godly to help people be community, and I think it's godly to help them think better. I also teach because it's just so much fun. You are constantly having at least a part of your mind that's interacting with youth, and that means a part of you continues to feel young. And I don't want to lose that, it's just so pleasant a feeling.

Q: Was there one student who taught you something in an unexpected way? 

A: There was a holy moment in one of my classes, it was a 3311 class two years ago. We had just read May Swenson's poem "Women." It begins, "Women should be pedestals / moving pedestals / pedestals moving / to the motions of men ..." One of the guys said, "OK, I understand this poem, I understand it's saying that women in 1970, when this poem was written, weren't treated very well by men ... but that's just not true any more. Women and men are equal today." There was a pause, and then one young woman turned to him and said, "I know that you mean that, and I'm sure that you treat women well, but I can't tell you how tiring it is never to know when someone is going to say, 'You're a girl, you can't understand this,' and someone always does." There was a long silence, and then the guy -- and I will love him forever for this -- the guy said, "You're right. I'm wrong. I feel like crap." I learned from [her] that not only does a soft answer turn away wrath, but that there are particularly effective ways of saying things to people that help them see truth more clearly. When it happens in a group like that, it can just be holy, and it really was.

Q: If you could choose only one book, only one poem, to share with a student, what would it be? 

A: I think it would be e.e. cummings' poem -- in fact, I'm sure it would be -- "If everything happens that can't be done." It says there is something beyond books, it is interaction between human beings. The last line is "we're wonderful one times one." It's the interaction with other humans that seems to be at the heart of everything I do as a teacher, as a Sunday School teacher ... it's even better than books, and books are awfully darn good.

Q: What one thing do you want students to know when they leave Baylor? 

A: I would like for them to realize how nearly unlimited their personal possibilities are. I so often see our students limiting themselves with the fatalism of the multitude: "What can one person do? I'm not smart enough or capable enough." And they almost always are. I think college helps people see that they can fulfill almost any possibility.

Hanks' honors & accolades

• Inaugural Cornelia Marschall Smith Professor of the Year 2003-04
• Mortar Board Distinguished Professor 2001 and 2002
• Student Congress Outstanding Faculty Member 2000-01
• Centennial Professor 1998-99
• Collins Outstanding Professor 1997-98
• Mortar Board's 'Circle of Achievement' Award in 1983 and 1998
• One of 10 'Distinguished Professors' named in 1983
• A double cappuccino in a 16-ounce cup

A 1918 Baylor biology graduate, Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith earned a master's degree from the University of Chicago and her doctorate from Johns Hopkins. She was a Baylor professor of biology from 1940-67, chair of the biology department from 1943-67 and director of Strecker Museum from 1943-67. In 1980, Baylor honored Smith with an endowed chair known as the Cornelia Marschall Smith Professorship in Biology. She died Aug. 27, 1997, at the age of 101.