USD Magazine, Summer-Fall 1993

JOHN SWANKE Professor of Philosophy Years at USD: 25

Swanke was the first layperson hired in the philosophy department at the College for Men, but working alongside the priests did not present a problem. "I almost became one myself, you know," he chuckles. Getting students to take his classes wasn't a problem, either. "I always had a large number of students taking my classes, even my 8 a.m. classes," Swanke explains. "The first week of class, I'd scare them to death with all of my rules and requirements. If they hung in with me, by the third week they discovered I was really a marshmallow." But he was a marshmallow that required his students to learn how to write. "I thought it would be a disservice to my students to let them out of my class without learning to put their thoughts down coherently on paper." Consequently, Swanke assigned no fewer than three papers a semester, with not one, but five, drafts of each paper to be turned in on the due date. "I wanted to see their thought process, and how they got from point A to point B with their thinking. Requiring five drafts forced them to think things through and put them down on paper." Although students might have moaned and groaned at the time, several have written or called to thank Swanke for forc– ing them to learn to write-one alumnus who is currently president of the art school at the Art Institute of Chicago, for example, and another who is a former dean at the University of Seattle. Swanke says perhaps his favorite compliment came from students who took his 8 a.m. class. "They write or call and say, 'I never once fell asleep in your class,'" he smiles. "Now that's a compliment." The 66-year-old professor received another compliment at this year's Senior Class Banquet, when he was presented with the Outstanding Teacher Award, voted on each year by mem– bers of the senior class. "I must have been nominated because I promised every senior in my class an A-plus,'' he teases. Despite looking forward to spending time with his wife, Kathleen, his children and 10 grandchildren, Swanke remains a bit melancholy about leaving USD. "For the first time in many, many years, I'm unemployed," he says. Pausing a moment, he quietly adds, "I will really miss those young people."

When John Swanke was 16 years old, his grandmother over– heard him explaining the process of developing film to his young cousin. "She pulled me aside and said, 'John, you know, you should be a teacher,'" Swanke smiled. "I thought she was crazy." Instead of taking his grandmother's suggestion to heart, Swanke decided instead to pursue his first love, writing. "I had dreams of going to New York and becoming a famous novelist," the philosophy professor says. So after graduating from high school in Sidney, Neb., Swanke traveled to the Big Apple to pursue his dream. "The reality of paying rent and the necessity of buying food rudely interrupted my plans," he says. The young writer soon found a job at WCBS New York, writing routine material for talk shows, soap operas and commercials. "After doing that for about a year, I realized I had exhaust– ed my knowledge, and I needed to go back to college," he adds. While living in New York, Swanke was befriended by a Dominican priest, who made such an impression on the young man that Swanke decided to join the Dominican Order. "But after six years in the Order, I realized I wasn't cut out to be a priest," he says. He also realized that his grandmother might have been right after all. "I discovered that I had a knack for explaining things to people in a way they could understand and remember." After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Illinois, Swanke accepted a teaching position at St. Joseph's College in Indiana. "I was hired as an English instructor, even though my degrees were in philosophy," he says. "I also was in charge of the counseling center and the student newspaper. I quickly learned a lot about a lot of different things." While performing the myriad of tasks assigned to him at St. Joseph's, Swanke decided to pursue a doctorate at the Universi– ty of Ottawa. After completing his degree in 26 months, the young professor returned to St. Joseph's to continue his teach– ing career. In 1968, while attending a philosophic convention in New Orleans, Swanke met-and was offered a job by-Father Ship– ley, then chairman of the USD philosophy department. Later, Swanke's former boss, who was working at USD at the time, called to reinforce Father Shipley's offer. "I had never heard of the place, so at first I turned him down," Swanke recalls. "But he persuaded me to come, and here it is 25 years later, and I'm still here."

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