Keeping Alive the White Whale

English Professor Don Pease's expertise in American literature and drama is known nationally. Academics have praised his book on Melville and Hawthorne. And he is a regular speaker on the alumni-club circuit. Pease believes that a great teacher possesses three related qualities. The first is to have a great teacher in mind and then to aspire to that standard. (Colleague Jim Cox is Pease's model.) The second is "to communicate to students in a way that all that I know can be all that they can learn." Finally, he believes a great teacher is aware that he is a link between scholarship past and future.

For Pease, there is no question that the researcher belongs at Dartmouth. In fact, he is incredulous that "there are faculty members who haven't put a pen to paper in ten years."