T.J. Tomlin, runner-up for the 2007 Donald K. Anderson Award for Teaching Assistants

T.J. developed a passion for history when he began to see it in his daily life.

"I came to a point of realizing that everything has a history," he says. "Like music, for example. R.E.M. is influenced by the Velvet Underground, and so on. I saw how history mattered in things that I found interesting or important. The past has something to teach us."

Now, as a teacher, T.J. is driven to engage his students on that same level, to enable them to develop a fascination for the past. He finds required survey courses the most rewarding to teach because many students begin the semester with little appreciation for the subject.

I really like the challenge of making history interesting, especially for students who don't already like or appreciate it. At the end of the semester, on evaluations, students might say, 'I normally don't like history, but this was fun' or 'this was interesting.' Then I feel like I accomplished something.

During his five years as a doctoral student, T.J. has been a teaching assistant for 27 discussion sections, and he's taught a semester of U.S. History to the Civil War as a professor. He's gained many skills that he puts to use in the classroom—organization, structure and goal-setting, to name a few. But perhaps the most powerful skill he's learned is the ability to be quiet, to outlast an awkward silence.

"Some of the best discussions I've had have been after those periods of silence," T.J. says. "It allows students to have control of a classroom, to guide the discussion, taking it to places I wouldn't have."

T.J. has a BA in history from Kansas State and an MA in history from Gordon Conwell in South Hamilton, Mass. He came to MU because the department offered immediate teaching opportunities and because his adviser, John Wigger, was interested in T.J.'s ideas about religion and popular culture in Colonial America. T.J.'s dissertation analyzes representations of religion in Colonial almanacs, which were the main print publications of the time.

T.J. expects to receive his doctorate in May 2008.

(Story by Summer Foote)