Dr. Paul Doerksen | 2025 Kay and Lorne Dick Teaching Excellence Award recipient (video)
Dr. Paul Doerksen, Associate Professor of Theology and Anabaptist Studies and P.M. Friesen Co-Chair in Biblical and Theological Studies, has worked at CMU since 2011. He and Verna Wiebe, Teaching Assistant Professor of Music, are co-recipients of the 2025 Kay and Lorne Dick Teaching Excellence Award.
The award, established in 2022, is granted annually to two faculty members who best exemplify CMU's commitment to excellent teaching.
How would you describe your teaching philosophy? How has it evolved over the years?
A lot of what I think about teaching was shaped before I came here, because I taught high school for close to 20 years. There are some ways in which I think more of a theology of teaching rather than a philosophy of teaching. It's true that there's something about the person-to-person process of developing heart and mind that's at the core of teaching, but there's also a Christian dimension to that, that I don't want to get lost. What I want to be involved in with students is a mutual pursuit of understanding, a faithful way of being in this world that God has given us. Gerald O'Collins says, "Theology is watching our language in the presence of God." I think about that a lot, actually. There's some way in which education, especially Christian education, has to do with coming to understand and describe the world in which we find ourselves accurately. That means we have to take into account the work of God in this world and our place in it and pursue education as if God actually matters.
Dr. Paul Doerksen: "...there's something about the person-to-person process of developing heart and mind that's at the core of teaching, but there's also a Christian dimension to that, that I don't want to get lost"What strategies do you use to engage and inspire your students?
What I try to do is to take students seriously. If students recognize they're being taken seriously, that calls on something from them. I was reading this teacher reflecting on his teaching and he said, and I like this a lot, "What I try to do is show smart, young people that other smart people take these texts we're reading together seriously." We're together embarking on this enterprise of engaging with texts that are important, and it's not only us that have decided that. To know there's hundreds of years of reflection by all kinds of people on this text in meaningful ways and now here we are trying to do the same thing... I think that should engage and inspire students.
What impact do you hope to leave on your students?
I hope I've been able to contribute in some way to the practice of attentiveness. That's a portable practice, you can take it into wherever you go, and it's also a practice that the cultivation of which is never-ending. There's always ways of paying closer attention or paying attention in a different way. There's another thing I hope to pass along and that is, I take this from theologian John Webster, what he calls "A refusal of anonymity." That is, you don't think about things in generic ways. He wants to push the idea that we have to recognize when we're talking about ethics as Christians that we're entering a field that already exists and that God made it. One shorthand way of thinking about this is the question, "What's Christian about that?" I really hope my students ask that question as they carry on, as they confront all kinds of decisions, issues, and experiences.
Is there a specific moment in your teaching career that stands out as especially rewarding?
If I meet a former student who is flourishing in some way, and they refer back to something that happened when we were in class together and say that thinking about the discussion we had has stuck with them and in some way helped to shape what has become, there's something about that. From time to time, it happens, and when it does, it's really quite wonderful. The other thing I have enjoyed is when a former student becomes a colleague and friend.
Is there a favorite quote or principle you live by as a teacher?
This one that you see in my quilt here: "Fides quaerens intellectum." That's from Anselm, it's "Faith seeking understanding." It's kind of a description of my personal faith and my job and in many ways, at its best, CMU.
Previous recipients of the Kay and Lorne Dick Teaching Excellence Award:
2024
- Lynda Loewen, Teaching Assistant Professor of Psychology
- Dr. John Brubacher, Associate Professor of Biology
2023
- Dr. Jodi Dueck-Read, Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution Studies and Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies
- Dr. Candice Viddal, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics
2022
- David Balzer, Associate Professor of Communications and Media
- Karen Ridd, Teaching Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies and of Conflict Resolution Studies