It would be difficult to find anyone at UD—indeed, anyone anywhere—who has accomplished more in the first five years of teaching, research, and service at an institution. Indeed, the department and the University as a whole are blessed to have this person as a faculty member. Student buzz makes it clear that this professor is thoroughly practiced and skilled in adapting difficult subject matter to his students. He seems to have a knack for pulling his students into difficult ideas while appealing to both their ordinary experience and higher aspirations. He does an especially good job of blending a concern with contemporary thought together with the wisdom of the ancient, medieval and early modern classics. He is faithful to the intentions of the department’s curriculum and its paradigm syllabuses for the Core.
As a scholar, he has been incredibly productive. He has published two books in the past few years, he has a third under contract, and he is editing a fourth volume of essays. In addition, during his time here, he has published over a dozen articles in top-tier journals. This professor’s ability to connect with his students on an existential level is mirrored in his scholarship. In 2016 he published an accessible and engaging introduction to philosophy, entitled, The Way to Philosophy, which very much captures his classroom approach.
Moreover, he has run the Philosophy Colloquium for several years now, giving up his Friday afternoons in order to enliven campus intellectual life, and he has made this colloquium much more interdisciplinary in character. In terms of service, he has served on at least eight different University committees. He is currently serving as director of the M.A. in Philosophy program. He is truly the model of a gentleman scholar and professor.
His first step was to enroll in physician’s assistant school at Baylor’s College of Medicine, a career trajectory to which he had aspired since his early childhood. Nowadays, Jonathan Cunningham, BA ’17, is dedicated to the vocational pursuit of comfort and healing at MD Anderson in Houston, among the largest cancer treatment centers in the U.S., where he was once a chemotherapy patient himself.
+ Read MoreDuring his Rome semester in 1991, Joseph Meaney, BA '93, with his friends (now Father) Kevin Cook, BA '94, and (now Texas State Representative and UD Trustee) Tan Parker, BA '93, attended a private Mass with Pope St. John Paul II. Several weeks earlier, they had hand-delivered a letter to the Swiss Guards outside St. Peter's requesting the Mass and including their contact information; at last, they'd received the phone call instructing them to be at the Bronze Gates at 5 a.m.
+ Read MoreFrom the time he was in fourth grade, Bishop Francis Malone, BA '74 MA '77 MDiv '77, knew he was going to be a priest. As he was serving Mass in his home parish, Malone heard God's call, loud and clear.
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