Departments
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Week of 25 September 1998 |
Vol. II, No. 7 |
Feature
Article
Scholar/Teacher of the Year
CGS prof is happy to take work home with her
By Eric McHenry
Many people experience dorm life for the first time as freshmen in college. Six-year-old Emily McKnight experienced it as a freshman in life.
"My older daughter spent her first three years in Rich Hall," says Natalie McKnight, CGS professor of humanities and rhetoric, who lived a total of four years as faculty-in-residence for BU dorms. "Emily loved having all those big kids around, and the students loved seeing a child every day as well. I think it's a nice situation for a family."
McKnight and her husband, Jamie, a MED assistant professor of biophysics ("We are the arts and sciences," she jokes), traded that situation for a house in Milton when their second daughter, Annie, was born. But McKnight remains committed to mentoring students both in and out of the classroom. BU Chancellor John Silber recognized this when he presented her with the Annual United Methodist Church University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award September 10 at the New Faculty Orientation.
"I went to a very small, private liberal arts college, Washington College on the Eastern Shore of Maryland," says McKnight, "and one of the things that really made my educational experience special was the close student-teacher relationships that could be built in that environment. I got to know my professors outside of the classroom, and that's where a great deal of my learning happened -- in informal conversations."
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Natalie McKnight, CGS
associate professor of humanities and rhetoric,
says that informal conversations are as important
as informed lectures to the education students
receive. Photo by Kalman
Zabarsky
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"I think there are tremendous advantages to a huge urban institution," she says. "But I think for an undergraduate it can present some real challenges, too. You can feel very isolated. And since we get to know students pretty well here at CGS, that's something I've been very aware of. A lot of CGS professors have been faculty-in-residence, I think, and for reasons similar to mine. They sense the need for that kind of faculty-student contact.
"In many ways," says McKnight, "the things I've done as a professor at BU I've done because I wanted to try to give to my students some of what I enjoyed from my education. Being faculty-in-residence was a big part of that."
So is advising the CGS student literary magazine. As an undergraduate, McKnight served on the editorial board of Washington College's creative writing journal, and she remembers with gratitude the contributions of its faculty supervisors. She also spent a year studying at Oxford University in England; now she helps recruit BU students to spend summers there.
Between fulfilling these extra-curricular responsibilities, teaching, writing, and mothering, McKnight has found time to sit on "more committees than anyone would care to hear mentioned." Pressed, she offers a sampling: "Affirmative Action Committee, Curriculum Committee, Writing Across the Curriculum Committee, Retreat Committee, Dean's Advisory Council . . ."
Such broad-based involvement bespeaks an omnivorous intellect; McKnight, a self-described "generalist," feels quite at home in the College of General Studies.
"We are teaching what are basically survey courses: literature, art history, film," she says. "Although I am a specialist in 19th-century literature, and that's where I do most of my research and writing, I have many other interests and I love being able to share them. I would not want to be in a program in which I was forced to teach in one specific area all the time; that would not be a good fit for me. This is a good fit for me."
McKnight holds a master's degree in creative writing (poetry) from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Delaware. She has published two books, both from St. Martin's Press, and numerous articles and conference papers on Victorian-era fiction. Professional and familial obligations crowd her writing, she says, but don't crowd it out.
"I get the bulk of my writing done during the summer, and I put very high demands on my schedule so that my kids don't have to be in day care for too long," she says. "I work every evening after I put them to bed, and have for the last six years, since my first daughter was born. So it works out. A nice thing about the academic schedule is that it's more flexible than some jobs. You can still be a hands-on parent."
And if all else fails, McKnight says, a return to dorm duty is not out of the question.
"It took me an hour and 45 minutes to drive the 8 miles in from Milton this morning," she says. "I just crawled in, with my two-year-old in the backseat. And I thought, 'You know, maybe I should just go back into the dorms.' I'm definitely keeping that option open."