Timothy Morris
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
Contact630-637-5339
tpmorris@noctrl.edu
Office Location
330 E. Van Buren, 200
I first came to North Central College in the fall of 1978 as an adjunct faculty member while I was still a graduate student in the Chicago area. I joined the full-time faculty in the fall of 1981 and have been here ever since. During my time here, I have taught a wide variety of courses in a number of different institutional settings. Through my first fifteen years or so, in addition to the regular series of philosophy courses I taught to traditional-aged students during the day, I also taught many sections of our introductory courses to non-traditional students in our evening and Weekend College programs. I very much enjoyed these classes, and they were some of the best classes I have had in my time here. In addition to my regular responsibilities for philosophy courses, I have had the opportunity to teach outside my department. For about the last twenty years, I have taught in the History of Ideas program, which is part of the college's honors program, teaching a course in Early Modern Thought. More recently, I have offered a seminar on "the goals of medicine and the history of health care reform in the United States" in the honors program and a somewhat similar course in the Masters of Liberal Studies graduate program. I have also had the opportunity to team-teach two biology courses over the last fifteen years, one in human sexuality and one dealing, at a more introductory level, with water, food, and sexuality. My role in these courses was to bring in issues of ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of science, and public policy into the readings and discussions.
Although a bit out of fashion, I see philosophy more as a "way of life" than as a form of "academic entrepreneurship." We already have enough of the latter in higher education.