When I think of the best professors I’ve ever had, the ones who I connected with or learned from most fruitfully, a pattern quickly reveals itself. Those who see themselves as students make the best professors. Nobody falls more definitively in this category than Professor Alexander Steele, a new member of the Honors College who is just finishing his second year here with us. Having had the opportunity to take my Thesis Continuation course with him, I was offered insight into how he relates to his students, creating comfortable spaces for conversation that prioritize connection and sharing, ensuring that each student can push the limits of their comfort zone and relish in the vulnerability of being academically challenged. His genuine joy in learning, in seeing himself as a student, is what has brought him to our community which has embraced him.
Growing up “in the sticks” of rural Oregon and being a first generation college student, he didn’t have close ties to the world of academia, but he did have a passion for reading and talking about reading that propelled him toward his future of teaching. He actually received his undergraduate degree in English from PSU, which is largely the reason he was later drawn to work at his alma mater after earning a Master’s from the University of South Carolina and a PhD from the University of Oregon. If you had asked him in high school what he wanted to do for a living, he would have told you “If I can be paid to talk about books, I’m going to try that.” That love of books sharpened into an interest in representations of disability in modernist literature, the subject of his dissertation, as well as speculative literature, the subject of his current Honors seminar. He also teaches thesis sections like Continuation, transfer courses, and the Urban Humanities 202 course.
It’s the design of the Honors curriculum that really pulled him in as he explored the interdisciplinary nature of the faculty and courses that explore various disciplines and methodologies through a united framework and shared drive. Of that commonality, he said, “There's something infectious, and it's when that sense of passion comes through from the instructor. Even if it's something that I may not be immediately interested in, there's a kind of animating quality to seeing someone else's passion come through that.” He appreciates the kind of self-aware analysis and critical thinking that this program tries to embrace in this approach, or as he described, “thinking about thinking” and asking questions like “What is knowledge? Where does it come from? What is its value? How is it produced? What are the power implications that are often kind of packed into it?”
Not only are courses animated by this energy, but the broader Honors community is brought to life in a way that Dr. Steele finds unique in his experience. Not only has he found an encouraging and supportive community in his new colleagues, but he feels the students are inspiring as well. He said, “The students in the Honors college just have such a hunger to learn, and you can tell they want to be here. They're eager. They have this kind of zest and this curiosity and this willingness to engage in ideas that may be unfamiliar to them, and they push themselves.” Reflecting on his role in the classroom and the community, he continuously expresses his delight in the opportunity to learn right alongside his students and from his students, especially in supporting students through the thesis process and celebrating their work when it is finally completed. Because he values the role and identity of a student so deeply, he embodies his role as a professor in a unique way that decenters the hierarchy of traditional academic spaces and privileges the creativity and wonder that comes from learning. It is through this odyssey of studenthood that he finds a home in the Honors College.
The students in the Honors college just have such a hunger to learn, and you can tell they want to be here. They're eager. They have this kind of zest and this curiosity and this willingness to engage in ideas that may be unfamiliar to them, and they push themselves.