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Profs into People, an interview with Doug Challenger

by Hilary delaBruere
Exchange Staff

Hd:  What do you teach at FP?

DC:  Sociology, but I also founded and directed the New England Center for Civic Life for five years, an academic institute at Franklin Pierce that teaches people effective ways for citizens and students to have a voice in public affairs and politics at all levels. And, I was involved with the Walk in Europe program as a teacher and Walk leader in recent years.

Hd:  How long have you been teaching at Franklin Pierce?

DC: 15 years. I was gone one year when I had a Fulbright Scholarship to be a Visiting Professor at a university in Slovenia in 1996-1997.

Hd:  What made you choose this career path and why?

DC: I chose teaching because I like learning and I like being around young people and helping them to get excited by learning.  Someone said: "The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else."  Sociology is a subject that is vast and I tend to be interested in a lot of things and their interconnections, so studying and teaching sociology enables me to explore those interests and connections. 

I was drawn to the field as an undergraduate when I read the writings of the founding theorists—Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber—who were all trying to explain how the modern world—with all its good and bad features—came into existence and how our life today  is different from life in the past.  They were asking big questions and their ideas continue to be enlightening to me and others. 

Hd:  What are your hobbies?

DC:  Oil and watercolor painting, playing acoustic music (fiddle, mandolin and guitar), stage acting and dancing.  I also like athletic activities—I was a baseball and soccer player for many years, and even played soccer semi-professionally in California for a couple years after I graduated from college. I continued to play and coach for almost 20 years.  These days I enjoy long-distance walks and yoga, as well.

Hd:  Where did you go to school? What did you study?

DC:  I went to High Point University (then College) back in the late 1970s for my BA.  After playing soccer in California and teaching secondary school social studies for about five years, I went back to graduate school at Syracuse University to get my Masters and Ph.D. at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Hd:  Where were you born?  Where did you grow up? Tell me about your family.

DC:  I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but didn't stay long.  My parents moved back to where they were from in Delaware when I was 2 and that is where I grew up.  I have an older half-brother who I wasn't part of my immediate family, and a younger brother and sister.  My father was a minor league baseball player with the Red Sox when he was young.  He died in 1994 and my mother, brother and sister all live with their families in Delaware. My half-brother lives in upstate New York.  

Hd:  What makes you interesting?

DC:  I guess I have lots of interests and I have decided to try to pursue as many of them as I can.   That keeps me busy.  These days I find that I want to actually do the things I teach about, not just comment on them or critique them.  I have come to be a believer in experiential education—the idea that to "taste" life is to know it.  That's one reason why I was attracted to the Walk in Europe program and to other kinds of long walks—like the pilgrimage trail in northern Spain—the Camino de Santiago, which I walked last summer—where one goes on an adventure to learn about yourself and the world first hand.

I have always been drawn to music, but it's only been in the last five or six years that I have made a commitment to playing it myself.  I guess that goes for art and acting, too, and all these pursuits are part of my desire to "taste" life fully and learn from that and share these passions of mine with others.   

Hd:  Where have you taught? (Anywhere else besides FP)

DC:  My first teaching job was at a junior high in a town called Glencoe on the north shore of Chicago. I later taught two years of high school in Los Alamos, NM, where I also coached the girls soccer team (we won the New Mexico state championship the second year I was there).  Then while in graduate school I taught part-time at Lemoyne College and the State University of NY at Oswego.  And, as I said before, I was a visiting Fulbright professor at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia (part of the old Yugoslavia).

Hd:  What did you do after college and why?

DC:  Played soccer (see above) and then began teaching and coaching.
 
Hd:  Do you have any advice to the class of '08?

DC:  Shakespeare said "To thine own self be true."  That's good advice and I would try to pursue those things in life that make you feel alive and enthusiastic. I have found that that is not as easy as it sounds.  Ask yourself, Am I living the life that wants to live in me? If you are, you will be living soulfully and your great joy in doing that will be exactly what the world needs from you. Students are always being admonished to be of service, but I think that what the world needs most is not our service, but our joy.

Hd:  What should the student body know about you?

DC:  I wasn't the best student when I was in school, and my parents did not have college degrees, and my family didn't have a lot of money, but my desire to learn, and not just the stuff on the syllabus, took me a long way in life.  Oh, and I love contra-dancing!

Hd:  Is there anything else you can think of to tell me about yourself?

DC:   I think that's enough... :)