At a research university like Rutgers, professors are expected to combine solid teaching with scholarly research and publication. The Scholar-Teacher Award honors those faculty members who form a vital link between their research and their work in the classroom, inspiring students to work at the edges of current understanding.
We are proud to announce that Rutgers English Department Chair Richard
E. Miller received the Faculty Scholar-Teacher Award for 2006, making
him the second Rutgers English professor to receive this honor since
its inception in 2000. Professor Miller has achieved a national
reputation for his work in the fields of pedagogy and composition
studies, and for his critical work bridging personal experience and
academic labor. He is also a past recipient of the FAS Award for
Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education, and the co-chair
of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education’s Core Curriculum
Committee. He is known throughout the Rutgers community for his
longstanding commitment to intellectual rigor, and for pedagogical
innovation in both graduate and undergraduate courses.
In As If Learning Mattered,
his first book, Professor Miller explores the dynamics of reform in
higher education, paying particular attention to the gap between
official statements of educational commitments and actual classroom
practices. With The New Humanities Reader,
now in its second edition, Professor Miller and his co-editor, fellow
Rutgers English Professor Kurt Spellmeyer, give entry-level students a
selection of some of the most vibrant and compelling current nonfiction
writing on a wide range of contemporary topics in many different
fields. Over the past five years, The New Humanities Reader has become a standard text in first-year writing courses across the nation.
In his most recent book, Writing at the End of the World,
Professor Miller considers the future of higher education and the
allure of apocalypticism. Professor Miller unites discussions of
current events with personal recollections, interpretations of literary
texts, and responses to educational theory, all to explore the
questions “Why go on writing in a world where no one reads? Why go on
reading in a world awash with violence?” Writing at the End of the World
reveals Professor Miller’s thoughts about the important role the
humanities should play, providing both the intellectual tools and the
resources for hope required to remain committed to building a better
world.
In the classroom, Professor Miller’s confidence and ability to step
back from his authoritative position create a learning environment
where students always feel comfortable participating. Through a
pedagogy based on “questioning and connecting,” Professor Miller
combines the academic with the personal, encouraging students to
develop their own intellectual values and commitments. Whether he is
teaching the first-year writing course or a dissertation writing
seminar for advanced graduate students, Professor Miller’s goal is to
get students to write and to think at the edge, making it possible for
students to transform their sense of themselves in the process.
The Faculty Scholar-Teacher Award is a testament to Professor Miller’s
ability to bridge the intellectual gap between scholars and students,
between academic professionals working to make the humanities matter
and students who are trying to do the same thing, on a personal level,
through their education. As he describes it in the conclusion to Writing at the End of the World:
“The practice of the humanities, so defined, is not about admiration or
greatness or appreciation or depth of knowledge or scholarly
achievement; it’s about the movement between worlds, arms out,
balancing; it’s about making the connections that count.”
