Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990 TAG: 9004250115
SECTION: FOUNDERS DAY '90 PAGE: VT12 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
These words crystallize the philosophy of James D. ("Sean") Arthur, winner of one of Virginia Tech's 1990 Alumni Teaching Awards.
Two Alumni Teaching Awards of $1,000 a piece are presented each year to outstanding faculty members, who are elected by the Academy of Teaching Excellence from among the 60 recipients of the Certificates of Teaching Excellence identified over the past three years.
Arthur, an associate professor who joined the Department of Computer Science in 1983, has been awarded such certificates twice by the College of Arts and Sciences (in 1987 and 1990). He has also won his department's Teaching Award three times (in 1985, 1988 and 1989).
Boundless energy and a love of computer programming brought Arthur to his present position. While pursuing an undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of North Carolina, he discovered computers by way of a FORTRAN course.
"I loved it," he said. Arthur took all the courses in computers that he could find even though his school did not offer a computer-science major. He taught his first senior programming class while obtaining a M.S. in math, which Arthur says is when he discovered what he wanted to do with his life.
"I realized how much you learn when you teach," he said. "And you never know just how much you're going to learn until the students ask you questions and you don't know the answers. If I don't know something, I tell them I'll find out. And then I do. Hey, where else can you get a job where somebody pays you to learn?"
Since two math degrees left Arthur's computer-science education incomplete, he decided to take a job in data processing. This eventually led him back to college, where he earned two master's degrees in computer science as well as a Ph.D. from Purdue. He now teaches classes, from the sophomore to the graduate level, in Assemblers, Operating Systems, Compilers and Formal Languages. And, he says, he enjoys them all.
But Arthur is, in his own words, uncompromising with his students. "I demand 110 percent - I tell them that up front - because I put that much into my classes," he said. He adds that he never requires anything of his students that he hasn't done himself. It gives him great pleasure, he says, when he is able to apply results from his technical research to his lectures.
"Teaching and research complement each other well," he said. "When you pull something from your research into teaching, that's when you put your students on the cutting edge."
by CNB