In May, three longtime and beloved Denison faculty members retired after a combined 90-plus years of teaching at the college. They have spent that time working with students and encouraging them to think critically about the world around them in each of their disciplines—anthropology, religion, and history—but they’ve also encouraged those students to leave the Hill and become lifelong learners. As they themselves leave campus (at least in a professional sense; we kind of hope they hang around or visit often), we asked them what lessons they will take with them into retirement.
In a recent New York Times essay, Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath explore the reasons why so many people hate work. In general, they conclude that employees are most happy in the workplace when they have the ability to recharge; when they feel valued; when they are able to focus; and when they feel as if they are spiritually fulfilled through a connection to a higher purpose.
What I learned at Denison is that I loved my work. Other Americans, no doubt, would envy faculty members’ occasional sabbaticals and slightly more leisurely summers and winter breaks to recharge physically. Conversations with students and graduates (and parents) have reinforced my own feelings of being “valued and appreciated for (my) contributions” to their lives. Teaching and focused reading and writing in my discipline have been tremendously absorbing and enriching.
But I think that what I have most learned about myself at Denison—and for which I am most grateful—is that my spiritual need to feel “connected to a higher purpose at work” has been met here on the Hill. It has been a wonderful privilege to be a part of a rite of passage through which young people pass from high school graduation to full participation in the adult world, many of them with a far greater and more profound sense of their own humanity. And in a world where college indebtedness commands the attention of the president of the United States, and where higher education in general is contributing not so much to upward mobility as to growing inequality, I am profoundly grateful to have been able to teach at a place like Denison, which has made such a significant investment in an education that does provide access to a higher quality of life for our graduates. There are still colleges in the United States that challenge the growing inequality in our society and offer a bridge to a more just society, and I have loved being a part of that mission at Denison.
—Harold Van Broekhoven
Associate Professor Emeritus of Religion