Mark Person, a German language senior lecturer, was one of 24 faculty members recognized at the 42nd annual “Top Prof” dinner held by UW’s Cap and Gown Chapter of Mortar Board at the end of January.
The Mortar Board “Top Prof” recipients are nominated by student-members of Mortar Board for having made significant impacts in their academic experiences and in their lives as a whole.
“The thing I particularly like about this award is that it’s a nomination that comes from the students themselves,” Person said.
Person will be the first to tell you that he isn’t technically a professor.
While his official title is “extended-term lecturer,” Person’s nearly 40 years of experience teaching German at the collegiate level have earned him plenty of respect.
One of Person’s students held enough respect and appreciation to nominate him for “Top Prof” this year, and that was Katie Anderson, President of Mortar Board for 2021-22.
“When I transferred from another school, one of my first classes was with Mark Person. Even though it was over Zoom, I still felt like I was part of a classroom,” Anderson said. “That class was so much fun, and he taught so much more than language skills.”
Anderson described how he would tell jokes to connect to lessons in class, and how he encouraged participation and helped lift the class out of “the COVID blues.”
“Part of what built up my confidence was going up to present and being embarrassed, because he would do that to himself,” Anderson said.
“It’s a lovely distinction to have them single you out as a prof who’s made a difference in their academic life,” Person said. “It’s terrifically validating to get something like that where the students are letting you know themselves that they appreciate what you do, it means a lot.”
Person recalled his time studying German, and how often he found himself confused by what seem like simple concepts to him now as a German speaker of more than five decades.
“That’s always been sort of a guiding element of my teaching, is anticipating problem areas that students are going to have and trying to sort of head them off at the pass,” Person.
If teaching German wasn’t an option, Person could see himself as an English or History professor.
“I got to teach as a young grad student here at UW,” Person said, “and to my great delight I discovered that it was what I wanted to keep doing.”
Another large factor of Person’s career in the German language has been translation.
“Now, late in my career, I also started to do a lot of serious translating,” Person said. “Those are the two things I love best about German is teaching and translating, and I get to do both.”
As a scholar of classical German literature, he has translated several texts by German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, namely “Views on Nature.” Person hopes to begin work on Humboldt’s five-volume magnum opus “Cosmos.”
“I think that the translation lives in the original text and that our task as translators is to preserve that, but also to present it in a fashion so that the impact it creates in the new language is as similar as possible to the impact it created in the first language,” Person said.
Like translating, teaching isn’t all about the puzzles presented by grammar and the satisfaction of a job well done. Both are about something greater for Person, which is one reason he was singled out as a “Top Prof.”
“Translation is one contribution that people can make by helping to facilitate the sharing of ideas,” Person said, “and it’s fascinating to me that in teaching language you’re also teaching cultural studies, you’re teaching sociology, you’re teaching music to some degree.”
“Understanding and appreciating as many cultures as we can, I think, will also lead to better understanding and cooperation between those cultures,” Person said.
For Mark Person, teaching German is about much more than working a steady job or fulfilling students’ credit requirements, adding that he sees it as a way to tackle cultural divides.
“Language study is vitally important for that because I don’t think it’s possible to understand another culture without knowing something of their language, or at least them knowing something of your language,” Person said.
“For parties on both sides of the language divide to reach out and learn each other’s languages is building a bridge from both sides, and the communication becomes much more useful, much more fruitful, and much easier.”
Language is his lifelong subject of choice, and he is happy to say that teaching it to younger generations is his lifelong commitment.
