Religion Professor Ronald Green:

"The hour or two spent with students in class is usually too precious to waste on lectures."

IF YOU NEVER took one of Religion Professor Ronald Green's courses, you haven't missed your chance. Green, recipient of Dartmouth's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1980, is a regular on the consulting circuit at such firms as Ogilvy & Mather, North American Philips, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. "Issues and cases I pick up on these occasions often come right back into my teaching and writing," says the wandering prof.

In addition to his courses on theoretical and applied ethics—including medical ethics—Green has been teaching business ethics since first teaming up with the Tuck School's John Hennessey in the mid-1980s. "I regard my years teaching with John as my second Ph.D.," says Green. "I learned from him the demanding art of case teaching. John taught me that a class's moments of silence during a discussion are not necessarily a sign of boredom or lack of preparation.

They can be times when members of the class are thinking and gathering energies for a new wave of tearing into the case. The hour or two spent with students in class is usually too precious to waste on lectures that I could easily photocopy and hand out. Students must teach and learn from one another. I'm the catalyst."

The Harvard trained Green originally wandered into the academic field of religion to see what was in the ancient traditions—"to look at them as real treasures, not just the ancient past." He is now writing a textbook on business ethics {The EthicalManager, Macmillan) with one of his former students,

Wharton professor Robbin Derry '75. But Green is also keeping up with more traditional philosophical areas. "When I become overwhelmed by the complexity of real-world decision-making, it's nice to retreat into the moral and religious certainties of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," he says. His latest retreat produced Kierkegaard and Kant: The HiddenDebt (SUNY Press, 1992). It may sound like just another academic tome, but, hey, this is Ron Green. The book reads like a philosophical mystery. Unravelling the philosophers' cryptic clues, Green spins out the intrigue of their lives and ideas.