Phi Beta Kappa Teacher of the Year
Associate Professor of the Practice David DiPasquale, a member of the Political Science Department whose research and teaching focus on the relationship between Islam and the West, is the winner of the 2024 Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, presented by Boston College students in the prestigious honor society.
Each year, Phi Beta Kappa students submit nominations for outstanding teachers who have positively influenced their experiences at BC, either inside or outside the classroom. Faculty are selected for the award based on the cumulative nominations from students over multiple years.
DiPasquale, who earned a master’s degree in political science from BC in 1992 and has taught in the department since 2009, is associate director and director of graduate studies for the Islamic Civilization and Societies Program. He also directs the Political Science Department’s John Marshall Project—named for the 19th-century United States Supreme Court chief justice who advocated for civic education of the young—which promotes a focused study of “the citizenship and statesmanship needed by a democratic and constitutional republic” through a variety of activities and resources, including the Undergraduate Marshall Fellows Program.
Being selected for the teaching award is “easily the highest honor I have ever received” since joining the department, said DiPasquale, and filled him with “heartfelt and sincere gratitude” toward the Phi Beta Kappa students who had nominated him.
“When I was invited to join the Political Science faculty, I was told that the department and wider University took teaching very seriously indeed, and that BC students were properly focused on separating the wheat from the chaff,” said DiPasquale, who holds a doctorate from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. “As a result, I have said to my classes that there is an implicit contract by which we will abide if they choose to enroll in one of my courses: Namely, that I expect quite a bit from them, just as they should be rigorous in demanding as much from me. In such an atmosphere real learning can take place, and it’s been terribly heartening to witness how many times my classes have come together as one to embrace such a challenge.
“Instead of finding resistance to my in-class challenges,” he said, “I sensed from the beginning of my career here a desire for more—an even unquenchable desire for greater and greater challenges.”
“I have said to my classes that there is an implicit contract by which we will abide if they choose to enroll in one of my courses: Namely, that I expect quite a bit from them, just as they should be rigorous in demanding as much from me. In such an atmosphere real learning can take place, and it’s been terribly heartening to witness how many times my classes have come together as one to embrace such a challenge. ”
Students who nominated DiPasquale cited his care for students’ success and wellbeing as well as his efforts to make his classes engaging and intellectually challenging.
“His meticulous preparation for each class and his ability to incorporate each student into a critical reading of each text is remarkable and motivates his students to take seriously the work of his classes,” wrote one student nominator. “Professor DiPasquale brings a decorum to our work and makes us struggle with each text we treat, forcing us not to jump too quickly and to return to specific passages to lay the foundation of his lectures. Never have I seen students so flawlessly incorporated into a lecture, allowing us to toil and unearth each building block of the lectures foundation and helping us piece them together.”
Another student wrote: “He makes class discussions extremely interesting and manages to make classes of 35-plus students feel personal. His assignments are intellectually demanding, but he makes sure to recognize and reward hard work and dedication to difficult subjects.”
“Brilliant scholar and very kind pedagogue," summed up another Phi Beta Kappa member.
The Architecture of Power, a class DiPasquale recently introduced, drew praise from a student who said DiPasquale had done “a tremendous amount of work” to make it appealing and interesting.
DiPasquale explained that the course arose from his interest in teaching the tradition of modern political philosophy through the prism of the history of architecture and civic planning. At the same time, he wanted students to contemplate the importance of beauty in their lives and the need to “cultivate a sense of taste or discernment,” he said.
“I wanted to use the power of images in the classroom and adopt a variety of novel pedagogical techniques to remind students of the need to reflect on their everyday world and ask a few tough questions about it, such as: Is our modern world beautiful? Are we at home in it? Do we possess the vocabulary with which to discuss our response to it? So, we do field trips to Cambridge and the Frederick Law Olmsted home office in Brookline and I ask them to take pictures of, and discuss, parts of their own world. The world out there is more interesting than you think is a premise of the class.”
In fact, DiPasquale added, an important facet of the class is a consideration of the BC campus, specifically its Collegiate Gothic origins and various framings of its architectural future. Early on, he asked the students to ponder whether O’Neill Library was beautiful—perhaps even more so than Bapst Library. The resulting discussions were lively, even emotional, DiPasquale said, and for him indicated that students enjoy opportunities to reflect deeply and converse freely.
“The point of the course is not to tell students how to think but to give them the tools with which to think for themselves,” he said. “I say this about every course I teach, but this one is unique to the extent to which I ask them to reflect not just on the ideas but on the spaces—some mundane, others elevated—that surround them and which impact them in a more tangible way every waking moment of their lives.”