Amy Maupin

I enjoy watching students wrestle with texts and big questions, because it is in these efforts that they truly begin to grow as people.

Students who study education at Transylvania do not merely study techniques and methods. Rather, as associate professor Amy Maupin puts it, the study of education at Transylvania is a “truly unique experience” in which students develop a “deep theoretical understanding of education and its many issues.”

Those students will also be able to articulate a philosophy of teaching and learning that is “grounded in many of the other disciplines that intersect with ours,” she says, disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, history, anthropology, English, and the arts. All of these, Maupin adds, have an important place in the study of education.

In her role of teaching future teachers, Maupin has adopted a philosophy centered on the notion that she must create a “special space that is safe and brimming with curious energy” and anchored in the belief that teaching is an “act of love.”

“Because I value my students as whole human beings, and because I see knowledge as something more than static facts, figures, and textbook materials, I believe that teaching is an act of love that empowers students to construct meaning from the disciplines as they connect to their lives,” she says.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Maupin most enjoys her engagement with students. “It is rare, indeed, that I leave a class session without feeling injected with a good dose of what it means to be a college learner today.”