Medieval historian
Dr. Michael Martin
will try (almost)
anything to engage
and motivate students
Dr, Michael Martin
Dr. Michael Martin’s career at Fort Lewis College began in a whirlwind in the summer of 2004. Within the matter of one week, he was offered a job, found an apartment in Durango online, got in touch with the professor he was replacing, packed up his entire life and got on the road.
After arriving in Durango, it didn’t take long for Dr. Martin, a medieval history scholar trained at Western Michigan University, to realize that fate had served him well. “I knew right away that I wanted to be at Fort Lewis for a long time,” he says. “I was impressed with the emphasis on teaching—it’s what I really love to do.”
Since then, Dr. Martin has taken every opportunity to connect with students both in and outside the classroom. In 2005, he convinced his new colleagues to allow him to take a group of students to a 12th century medieval monastery in southern France to study monastic customs and architecture and perform excavation work—a program he’d been part of at Western Michigan (the university started the field school in 1994). He has since hosted the Innovative Month two other times. In the summers of 2007 and 2008, Dr. Martin took a group of students to Greece to study the country’s history, culture and archaeology.
In 2007, Dr. Martin also became the faculty coordinator of the Fort Lewis Honors program. “I wanted to get involved with Honors because of the classes they wanted to offer—they really wanted to push the envelope, and I liked that,” says Dr. Martin, who soon taught an original new class on Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ “Also, I think many of the honors students here plan to go on to graduate school, and I hope I can help them feel more prepared for that next step.”
Since taking over the Honors program, Dr. Martin has worked with administrators to develop a new minor for honors students, Rhetoric of Inquiry. The minor emulates ancient times, when the study of rhetoric emphasized the importance of persuasive speaking, but also drew on the importance of the other liberal arts. “Honors students must bring multiple disciplines together, thereby learning how to ‘talk the talk’ of their own discipline. We demand a lot of them.”
But it isn’t just honors students who are held to a high standard, says Dr. Martin. The rigorous history program makes Fort Lewis an excellent choice for high achieving history students. “We always say that we’re not just training students to graduate with a history degree, we’re training them to be historians,” he says. In fact, all history majors must complete an in-depth research thesis as part of their senior seminar course, presenting their findings to a public audience of faculty, peers and community members—and the expectations are high. “We place a lot of emphasis on the importance of using primary sources in research. We expect our students to write well and deliver tight arguments. It is not an easy program, but I think students appreciate the challenge.”
He may push his students, but Dr. Martin certainly likes to have fun with them, too. “I try to learn about my students as human beings, just as I want them to do with me,” he says. Though he’s certainly known for his willingness to help students even after they’ve finished his classes and for the big bowl of candy he keeps full in his office, it is Dr. Martin’s growing tie collection that makes him notorious around campus. What’s the tally? “I’m at 445 and counting,” he laughs, adding that he never repeats a tie in an academic year— though students are always trying to catch him in a slip-up. Dr. Martin has two colleagues to thank for helping add to the collection. History professor Dr. Ellen Paul and English professor Dr. Nancy Cardona often snatch up interesting ties at thrift stores on his behalf.
From Monty Python movies in class to digging in France, Dr. Martin says he’s constantly trying to find new and entertaining ways to engage and motivate students. “I try to guide my students to come up with their own ideas and theories and solutions,” he says. “When they start prompting me, rather than me prompting them, that’s when I know they’re thinking…that they get it. And I think that’s the most rewarding moment any teacher can have.”
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