Anyone who has had the opportunity to take a class with Dr. Doug Julien, Chair of the Humanities Division, knows that it is not an experience they will likely soon forget. With his unorthodox teaching methods and his penchant for sentence enhancing language, Doug has a different philosophy than some about teaching. His reason for teaching? He says, “It’s that idea that I can still learn shit from people.” 

As a professor of the humanities, Julien doesn’t deal in absolutes and hard skills. However, he places a high value on the “quantum soft skills” that the humanities can teach. Rather than hiding behind a long reading list, piles of homework and multiple-choice tests, Julien believes in giving students a path towards success by letting his students forge their own way. As he says, “Let me show you how to deal with that shit, so that you can go out and find your own shit and use these tools to deal with it.”

Julien states that the real issue with humanities is that “too often the humanities are seen as only in service of everything else.” While he believes in the importance of a well-rounded education, he also sees the humanities as foundational to the human experience. Rather than an education in humanities being in service of getting a nursing, biology or engineering degree, they provide their own value. Julien says, “Humanities help you critically think. The humanities help you communicate… Humanities help you understand human nature and all these things.”

According to Julien, the humanities aren’t just about life skills either. Without the humanities, he believes that we would be left without the little things that make life enjoyable.  He says, “There’s also just simply a fundamental joy in the act of reading.

There’s joy in listening to a song, right?” 

The important lesson that Julien wants his students to remember is that “reading is reading” Whether it is instruction manuals, trashy romance (which he would tell you is not trash at all) or crusty old philosophers, it is all the same transaction. He will tell you that there is “a lot of value in supposedly low-culture stuff” and that sometimes, as he says, you just “need to have taco bell.”

For Allison Wade, it all began in a little one-hallway elementary school in Malta, TX. Here she would find her passion for English, and in turn, her love for teaching. Even as a grade school student, Allison found herself in the position to help her fellow students who found themselves struggling with the lessons. She says, “I’m very thankful that I had that experience because one of my old classmates saw me and said, ‘You know, I couldn’t have done that class without you.’ … That helped drive me to where I am today knowing that I have a passion for teaching that started early on.” This ignited her desire to continue helping students, especially those who find school challenging.

Having always been academically driven, wrapping her self-worth up in her grades, Allison has found the experience of attending TAMUT has changed her perspective on what is important in school and life. Where insignificant test scores once drove her, Allison says, in her new university setting, “I just learned it is just like a blip in my whole life about what grade I’m making on this singular assignment. And it doesn’t define anything. So, I had to grow and change where my value was found.” So, she began finding her worth in the relationships and community she developed attending TAMUT. “Because if you surround yourself with fun, good people, you don’t really search for validation as much as you would if you didn’t feel like you belonged anywhere.”

Allison feels that her experience student teaching while at TAMUT has made her much more serious about her future role as an educator. What started with confidence, Allison has learned spending time in the classroom is far different than she ancticipated. She says, “It’s nothing compared to actually being in the moment… But it is so much more than I could have ever imagined.”

To deal with these new and exciting challenges of becoming a future educator, Allison relies on her faith to get her through the difficult times. She keeps a photo of her younger self on her mirror to remind her that we are all God’s creations and to follow the golden rule. Her faith and her church have been a large part of what motivates her to be a good teacher. Her driving force boils down to this: “What little mustard seed of faith I can put in people’s life, and it all came from the experiences I had.”