Reflecting on life's quirks, Professor Jim Underwood-retiring after forty years-says
he enjoys teaching more now than when he was younger.
“When you're a young faculty member, you think you have to keep a certain distance from your students,” he says. “But I'm a lot more playful in the classroom now.”
Not that Underwood has adopted a Henny Youngman persona. “It's just that I'm willing to make a spontaneous play on words or a comment on politics. When I first started, I thought that if you let that kind of thing show, students wouldn't think you were serious. And I believe now, as I did then, that the first duty of a faculty member is to indicate to students that they are fully committed to teaching. Students can't be fully committed to learning until they know that.”
There's little doubt that in his forty years in the College's Department of Political Science, Underwood has earned his students' respect. His Rolodex bulges with the names of former students, a number of whom have gone on to distinguished careers in law, politics, and diplomacy; visitors drop in continually; and he has taught half a dozen children of former students. All happily recall Underwood's habits-the notes about things to do that he sticks in his pockets, his hiking across campus lugging two shopping bags full of books and papers, his sneakers and floppy hats.
A native of Irwin, Pennsylvania, Underwood graduated from Franklin and Marshall College and earned his M.P.A. and Ph.D. from Syracuse
University, where he was a Maxwell Fellow. It was while he was finishing his Ph.D. that he heard that Union was hiring, and he joined the faculty in 1963 (he retires as the longest-serving current faculty member). Over the years, he has served the College in a number of capacities, including dean of the faculty, chair of the Political Science Department, chair of the Social Sciences Division, and director of the General Education program. Now the Chauncey H. Winters Professor of Political Science, he is the co-author of Governor Rockefeller in New York: The Apex of Pragmatic Liberalism in the United States, and has published articles in Polity and Congress and the Presidency. He also has written and lectured extensively about former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
With his long perspective on Union, Underwood has accumulated lots of opinions. For example, students are better now, he says.
“The quality of the kids we're recruiting now-no doubt it's better,” he says. “They're better prepared, and they do better work. Oh, we had a lot of bright kids in the '60s and '70s, but they didn't work as hard, and they weren't pushed as hard by faculty. I had a seminar recently where many students spent fifteen hours a week outside class-this just on one course.
“Just take a look at a couple of areas where we excel,” he continues. “In study abroad, there's been a great expansion over the years, and we now have more than two dozen programs throughout the world. In undergraduate research, the majority of departments now have some kind of demanding senior thesis or project. We are ahead of most institutions in both of these areas, and we have a better curriculum, with a general education program that goes beyond what most institutions require.
“No question it's a better place than it was forty years ago.”
Underwood acknowledges that he will miss the day-to-day contact with students. “It was always energizing,” he says. “If I went into a classroom not feeling well, nine out of ten times I came out feeling better. Obviously, I'll miss that.”
The contact won't disappear entirely-he plans to teach one course next winter-but much of his energy now will go into his writing, such as an essay he's working on about forty years of teaching. He's even toyed with the idea of writing fiction, and he plans to do some oral history projects with Union people.
He will carry with him a memory of Union as “a very warm place. That's a great thing. There's not a lot of pretense, and I think our applicants sense that.
“It's also a place of high energy levels. Give me students with high energy, and I'll get them to perform in the classroom. There's nothing like a student who becomes a convert to learning, and there's nothing better than seeing a student respond.”