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A3 22 Sept. 2016
Beier here to challenge students, discuss ideas By | Alan Kotlyar Collegian Freelancer More than 30 minutes after class ended on a Friday afternoon, the new education professor is still discussing a topic from class with two of his students in Kendall Hall. But Assistant Professor of Education Benjamin Beier, who is replacing retired Professor of Education Jon Fennell, said that is why he came to Hillsdale College. He said he was knew Hillsdale’s students are people with whom he can discuss challenging and meaningful subjects. “It’s a job where I could teach really motivated students the things I believe are fundamentally important,” Beier said. Freshman Avery Helms is taking one of Beier’s two sections of Classical Logic and Rhetoric, a new required
course in the core curriculum. He said the class moves at a fast pace and has plenty of reading homework. “He’s very knowledgeable on the subject, but he’s willing to debate a point in order to teach the class,” Helms said. “This is definitely the hardest course I’ve taken.” Beier said he knows the class is difficult and wants to use various ways of explaining the concepts. “My hope is students feel comfortable asking me questions,” Beier said. Associate Professor of Education Daniel Coupland said he is excited to have Beier at Hillsdale. “He is a gifted teacher, a thorough scholar, and a kindhearted human being,” Coupland said. “He provides for our department a wealth of experience as a student of classical rhetoric.”
Beier has a long history with classical education, attending a classically oriented school from kindergarten through 12th grade, which he said “made an impression” on him. He completed his undergraduate education in his home state at the University of Kansas, noting its the alma mater of Provost David Whalen. His life-long interest in reading led him to major in English and history. A devout Catholic, Beier then studied at a seminary before dropping out to work for the Kansas state government. After, he pursued more advanced degrees at the universities of Kansas, Dallas, and Wisconsin. For the past three years, Beier taught at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, before accepting a position at Hillsdale. Beier, however, is not without his quirks. Despite coming from the South, Beier said he
New core course offers major benefits By | Breana Noble News Editor Unlike other classes at Hillsdale College, the new Classical Logic and Rhetoric course doesn’t have a home academic department. Although the speech major’s new name is rhetoric and public address, the new core curriculum class is under COR 150 in the course catalog. That is because logic and rhetoric are at the basis of a liberal arts education and provide tools for later evaluating more specific subjects, said Kirstin Kiledal, professor of rhetoric and public address, who helped design the course with Associate Professor of Education Daniel Coupland. “We wanted it to be owned, not by a department, but by the faculty,” Kiledal said. After a college committee commissioned to evaluate the core curriculum found a need for more instruction in logic and rhetoric around seven years ago, it charged Kiledal with writing a piece on how the college can implement them. “One of the holes they discovered was in the tools students need to study well before they can study in depth one of the higher liberal arts,” Kiledal said. Provost David Whalen said adding logic and rhetoric to the core curriculum is an attempt to recover a part of higher education that has been lost in recent history. “They were the absolutely essential elements of the soil out of which all intellectual development in the West occurred up to 100, 150 years ago, and when we turned away from them, we basically uprooted ourselves from the soil from which we were natively born,” Whalen said. Assistant Professor of Education Jeffrey Lehman said the addition of the course aims to provide Hillsdale students with a more complete education. “The liberal arts are ways by which students can make a good beginning in an education for freedom and self-rule,” Lehman said. “Since logic and rhetoric are foundational arts, this course will help students get the most out of their studies at Hillsdale, regardless of what majors or minors they pursue.”
Whalen said these arts provide scholars with the tools needed to make progress in their narrower fields of study. “It enables and endows any discipline to do what it needs to do with greater precision and effectiveness,” Whalen said. “What discipline doesn’t think? What discipline doesn’t use reason?” Since Classical Logic and Rhetoric lacks an academic department, professors from all disciplines will teach it. In fact, 22 instructors from across campus are taking a class learning how to teach the “guinea pig world of logic and rhetoric” this semester, Kiledal said. Professor of Biology Frank Steiner is one. He said as an instructor, he would take a scientific approach to the materials. “I was intrigued because logic is really the science of knowing,” Steiner said. The course originally comes from a class in the education department approved three years ago by faculty and is a requirement for classical education minors. Revamped, it now covers a larger array of ideas geared toward freshmen and sophomores rather than juniors and seniors, though the course remains a requirement for education minors. The class consolidates primary texts, handouts, and exercises into four books, which mostly Lehman developed. There is a reader containing primary sources like those for the classes Western Heritage, American Heritage, and U.S. Constitution as well as a textbook containing explications and definitions, exercises, and supplementary resources for both logic and rhetoric. Senior Jessica Stratil took Classical Logic and Rhetoric for her minor. She said it taught her how to read deeply and analyze writing. As an administrative assistant to Kiledal, she also helped with preparations for the new core course. She put her classical studies major to use as she looked through the original Greek and Roman texts in the reader and wrote some of the introductory paragraphs to these excerpts. “All of my backgrounds in all of the classes I’ve taken here have really helped for this one core class,” Stratil said. “It’s really interesting to see how my
majors and minors and the classes that exist in the core have come together in this one class.” Students will read texts from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian as well as more modern pieces dealing with the rhetoric of literature, science, economics, and more. “It’s going to remind us we’re all rhetoricians, whether we’re scientists or mathematicians or teachers, that we all have to communicate, all have to persuade,” Kiledal said. And students will put the canons of logic and rhetoric to use. They will present on something they found interesting or unique about a piece they read, Kiledal said. Prior to the class of 2017 core curriculum, the Great Books courses were supposed to include instruction of rhetoric, Whalen said. Doubling up the subjects, however, proved impractical, he said. Likewise, speech departments in higher education were once included in English departments until the 1950s and then moved to the theater department because of the focus on oratorical abilities. The adoption of the new core class, however, provides a good time for Hillsdale’s speech department to rebrand as rhetoric and public address and become an independent department, Kiledal said. “We’re doing different things than theater,” Kiledal said. “We decided that with this class and the way resources were going to be directed that it was a healthy time at Hillsdale to make this change.” That is also because at least nine classes in the rhetoric and public address department will need alterations, since students taking the new core curriculum will enter upper-level classes with foundational knowledge already. “The class pushes you outside your comfort zone in terms of what it teaches you, not even what to think, but how to think,” Stratil said. “You learn how words are put together and that words really mean things and how to put all these words together to create a beautiful whole, the whole of language.”
looks forward to a much more “active” winter in Michigan. He also said his wife makes fun of him for his soft H, saying “yuman” instead of “human.” “In the dictionary, it is an acceptable pronunciation,” he said. When not in the classroom, Beier stays busy with his three young children. He also said he enjoys traveling, practicing calligraphy, and playing and watching various sports. “Dr. Beier is a devoted husband and a loving father to three beautiful children,” Coupland said, adding, “Nobody is perfect. Dr. Beier and his family are dedicated fans of the Kansas City Royals.” Despite Coupland’s attempts to convince him to become a Detroit Tigers fan, Beier said he is thrilled to be at Hillsdale. “It’s a place where students and faculty seek wisdom,” he said.
New Assistant Professor of Education Benjamin Beier teaches a lecture for his Classical Logic and Rhetoric class in Kendall Hall. Hannah Kwapisz | Collegian
A face to remember
Former professor Edward Facey shaped Hillsdale’s economics department during his 23 years at the college with his wife By | Stevan Bennett Assistant Editor A man known equally for his serious demeanour and his love for “The Mickey Mouse Club” birthday song, Edward Facey died last month. The former Hillsdale College economics professor and his wife were a major part of the college landscape from 1973 until their retirement in 1995. Edward Facey, a student of Austrian-thought economist Ludwig von Mises and a Korean War veteran, died Aug. 16 at the age of 86, after battling several health issues. Members of the faculty said one of Facey’s greatest achievements at Hillsdale was his instrumental role in shaping the free market-focused economics department that Hillsdale houses today. Eddie Facey Jr. ’86 said his father was a man with a high level of curiosity who held a deep love for teaching others to become well-rounded human beings. “For my dad, he loved engendering learning in others,” Eddie Facey said. “What made him happy was seeing others mastering the material that he was teaching.” This passion for students often led Edward Facey and his wife — Febes, a former accounting professor at Hillsdale — to welcome students into their home on the corner of Oak Street and Academy Lane for dinner, conversation, and mentoring. Edward Facey’s love for teaching came from his own pursuit of knowledge. He received an undergraduate degree in engineering from the Manhattan Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in economics and philosophy from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Facey also studied economics at the University of Chicago, before transferring to New York University to study under von Mises, eventually receiving his doctorate in economics.
During this time, Facey also spent two years as a soldier in the U.S. Army, serving in the Korean War. Perhaps the most consequential event from Edward Facey’s time studying under von Mises, however, had nothing to do with economics. It was in a von Mises class in 1962 that Facey met his future wife, an international student from the Philippines. The two married after graduation from NYU. In 1972, then-President of Hillsdale George Roche recruited the couple, asking for Edward Facey’s help in developing a free market-based economics department. The two taught side by side at Hillsdale for 23 years. Those who met the Faceys would have never thought they were husband and wife because Febes Facey was much more outgoing than her husband, Professor of History Tom Conner said. Edward Facey did have a corny side, though, his son said. He always insisted on playing the Musketeers’ birthday song from the decades-long television show “The Mickey Mouse Club,” whenever a family birthday came around. Despite the couple’s differences, however, they were a tightly knit family, Professor of Economics Gary Wolfram said. “They really had quite a close relationship,” Wolfram said. “Their close relationship between husband and wife showed a very important part of Hillsdale.” Their intimacy allowed the Faceys to establish a sense of community with their students, Wolfram said, something he had not previously experienced as a professor. Edward and Febes Facey were married for 52 years. Eddie Facey said it was their devout Catholic faith that made them close. He said his mother’s prayer was always to a marry a poor man — but a good man — which she found in her
husband. Edward and Febes Facey lived in Hillsdale until 2011, when they moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, to be closer to their son and his wife. Those years were a gift, Eddie Facey said. In 2003, his father was diagnosed with severe heart failure. On average, twothirds of people with the condition are dead within a year, but Edward Facey refused to accept that prognosis. “He told the doctors, ‘I want to get out of here, but I know you won’t let me,’” Eddie Facey said. “So he asked, ‘What do I have to do for you to let me out?’ He had an attitude of ‘I am going to get better. Tell me what I need to do, and I will do it.’” It was with this kind of determination and passion that Edward Facey pursued all of the things he held dear. Eddie Facey said although academia was important to his father, he never failed to prioritize the important things: faith, family, and Cleveland athletics. He was, perhaps, most happy when he had the chance to intertwine them — in a father-son tradition of watching the Cleveland Browns together. “Pretty much every Sunday at 10 a.m., we would be there, watching some really bad football together. There was something about Dad and I and this really bad team,” Eddie Facey chuckled. “Last Sunday was the first time I sat with an empty chair next to me, and although my wife did come sit with me awhile, it’s not the same without him. It just isn’t.” Edward Facey leaves behind his wife, his son, and his daughter, Betty Facey ’86. And at Hillsdale, his memory lives on in the students, especially those with a passion for Austrian economics. “He was one of the cornerstones of the economic program, as it began its expansion to one of the largest majors on campus,” Wolfram said.
Students participate in Assistant Professor of Education Benjamin Beier’s Classical Logic and Rhetoric class in Kendall Hall. Emilia Heider | Collegian
D.C. from A1
ence, faced opposition during a second panel from the audience. Moe argued giving the executive branch of government more lawmaking authority and limiting that power in Congress would increase government effectiveness. His remarks were shouted down and greeted with laughter from the audience. Senior Gwendolyn Hodge said the audience’s response to Moe’s conclusions disappointed her.
5
things to know from this week
-Compiled by Brendan Clarey
“We talk about how we are willing to bring in liberal speakers, and we’re open to that kind of thought,” she said. “But one man was in the room, and he was attacked.” A few of the six members of Hillsdale’s George Washington Fellowship Program, however, said the other events overshadowed the conflict. The celebration also included a dinner and keynote address by Sen. Jeff Session, R-Ala., and a luncheon at which Todd Huizenga, senior research fellow at
Calvin College, spoke. Other panelists included Hillsdale Professor of Politics Ronald Pestritto and F.H. Buckley, a professor at George Mason University School of Law. “Constitution Day was an incredible experience,” senior Emily DePangher said. “It was a great opportunity to have fun and also to connect with the donors and just be able to appreciate Hillsdale from an outward perspective.”
Protestes erupt in North Carolina after shooting
Suspect in New York bombing found
Nike’s self-lacing shoes to hit stores in November
U.S. military accidentally bombs Syrian soldiers
Michigan governor signs marijuana bills
Police shot and killed a black man Tuesday afternoon in Charlotte, North Carolina, sparking riots Tuesday night. The man’s family claims he was unarmed, but police say he was holding a weapon. Protesters injured 16 officers, after a stretch of Interstate 85 was closed.
An explosion rocked the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea on Saturday. The suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was taken into custody Monday, after a shootout with police. Rahami was born in Afghanistan and is thought to have had help.
Nike Inc. set an official release date for its HyperAdapt 1.0 for Nov. 28. The self-lacing shoes are featured in the movie “Back to the Future II.” Users will tighten and loosen the shoes using “+” or “-” buttons. A light will show the amount of charge left.
While trying to bomb Islamic State forces, American pilots accidently killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers. This comes after Secretary of State John Kerry made a deal with Russia to ease tensions in that country.
Republic Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan signed three bills legalizing medical marijuana and regulating its dispensaries Tuesday. The bills protect the legitimacy of medical marijuana sales and clarify the usage of edibles.
Former Hillsdale College professors Febes and Edward Facey at their wedding in 1964. Eddie Facey | Courtesy