Hardy Named Top Teacher at Calvin

February 8, 2007 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: Calvin College philosophy professor Lee Hardy is the 2007 winner of Calvin's Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching. He is the 15th winner of Calvin's top teaching honor - dating back to the award’s inception in 1993 - and will receive a one-of-a-kind medallion and a significant financial stipend from the George B. and Margaret K. Tinholt Endowment Fund.

For the full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/hardy-award.htm
For a pic of Hardy and Prince Charles see http://www.calvin.edu/news/photos/faculty/hardy_prince.jpg
For the story behind the pic of Hardy and the Prince see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2003_04/hardy.htm

Calvin College philosophy professor Lee Hardy learned some valuable lessons as a young boy, working for his dad in Fullerton, California, at the family-owned drugstore.

"I got to see how my father related to people," he recalls, "and I saw the real sense of connection between him and his customers."

He adds with a wry smile: "I also learned what it means to work hard."

Those traits mark Hardy's work today as a Calvin professor. And they are, in no small part, why he is the college's 2007 recipient of the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching.

Hardy is the 15th winner of Calvin's top teaching honor - dating back to the award’s inception in 1993 - and will receive a one-of-a-kind medallion and a significant financial stipend from the George B. and Margaret K. Tinholt Endowment Fund, established at Calvin by a donor in honor of George Tinholt, a former member of the Calvin board of trustees.

For Hardy it's been a long and interesting journey from Fullerton to Grand Rapids, one with twists and turns along the way that he never would have predicted.

But, he says, he's found a home at Calvin, and in Grand Rapids, and while he feels undeserving of Calvin's top teaching honor, he admits it also is validating.

"I never expected to win (the award) and I don't particularly think of myself as a great teacher by nature," he says. "I'm pretty introverted, so I've had to work hard on teaching. In grad school you're trained to be a researcher, but then you're hired as a teacher. You don't take classes on pedagogy. But I've always tried to be good at what I do, to do the best I can. And I've tried to connect with my students. I think I learned those two things a long time ago and they're still a part of me."

Hardy notes too that his influence as a teacher on Calvin's campus might go a little beyond his classroom thanks to his work in the late 1990s on the Calvin Core Curriculum Revision Committee, a task which consumed countless hours of his time.

One of the biggest changes with the new core curriculum was an entire section on what Calvin calls core virtues, traits such as diligence, honesty, courage, charity, justice, faith and wisdom.

This idea, says Hardy, is critical to a Calvin education and has been a strong influence on his own teaching.

"From its very inception in the Greco-Roman period," he says, "liberal arts education has sought not only to equip students with knowledge and skill, but also to shape their character. Our new core curriculum was actually a return to some very ancient ideas about what education is intended to achieve."

For the full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/hardy-award.htm
Received on Thu Feb 8 17:55:31 2007