F. David Sanders . .. Intellecutal interaction
Biographical sketch of David Sanders. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.The citation for this article is: "F. David Sanders . . . Intellectual interaction," Pieces of Eight, October 1, 1987.
"A lot of what I do seems to involve one major overall purpose -- getting better students for the University," says David Sanders.This assessment seems right on target. In addition to teaching in the English department, Sanders heads the undergraduate Honors Program, serves on two University Scholars Award selection committees, and chairs arrangements for the Scholars Weekend and Distinguished Alumni Lecture series.
Much of his effort is directed toward recruitment and retention of the academically superior student who shows early promise and who is self-motivated, inquisitive, creative -- who blooms in a climate of lively interaction with what an Honors Program alumnus has termed "other nimble minds."
The basic goal of ECU's Honors Program, Sanders explains, is "to provide special classes and a sense of community" for such students, "to encourage them to raise their expectations of themselves instead of rewarding them for adjusting down to average objectives."
"The topics of our seminars reveal a lot about our program," Sanders says with pride. The seminars are often interdisciplinary, team-taught and tend to be of great current interest. Two recent seminars were intriguingly entitled Masculinity / Femininity: Sociobiological Perspectives and The Horrific, the Holy, and the Heroic in American Popular and Folk Culture.
"We've drawn faculty from all over campus -- from the arts, the humanities, the social sciences, allied health, medical ethics," Sanders said. "They find this approach to their fields to be exciting and challenging. We're always looking for seminar proposals, and we welcome controversial topics," he emphasized.
Challenges to the Bright
This semester Sanders himself is directing a Monday afternoon seminar, What's All This Fuss about Humanism?, in which students will read and discuss major humanist texts and also current writings of humanism's detractors and proponents. The ECU Honors Program is an outgrowth of an extracurricular freshman honors seminar series begun by former philosophy chairman John Kozy in 1964. It was designed to involve selected students in a challenging program of readings and discussions early in their college careers. During the administration of Chancellor Thomas Brewer, the honors seminar series came under scrutiny by a Planning Commission task force which recommended further development. As an active leader in the program, Sanders was a logical choice to become director as the seminar series was fashioned into a fully functioning academic entity, a process that began in 1975.
More than 300 students are now enrolled in honors seminars and honors sections of regular freshman and sophomore level courses. "Just about all the honors sections were filled up this semester," Sanders said.
Ready to Move
A popular professor among English students, both graduate and undergraduate, Sanders was presented one of the two 1987 Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Awards. His academic specialty is the literature of the English Renaissance, particularly Shakespeare. This is his last semester in his Ragsdale Hall quarters -- his office and the Honors headquarters will be relocated into the new classroom building later this year. He's temporarily sharing his space with an enormous state-of-the-art Savin V-35 copier destined for the new building. No less imposing is the poster-size reproduction of an engraved portrait of the Bard on the wall right over the copier. Theatrical posters adorn other wall surfaces, and near the door hangs a genealogical chart of Britain's royalty -- useful for sorting out the dramatis personae of Shakespeare's history plays.
When The Move is accomplished, Honors will have a part-time secretary to assist with office chores, an item on Sanders' wish-list. Among others are sophomore and transfer student scholarships, establishment of a "visiting authority" program to bring outstanding leaders to campus to teach three-week seminars, and funds for field trips and foreign study tours.
Bright Youngster
Though he's far too modest to acknowledge it, David Sanders himself was the type of student honors recruiters dream of.Born and raised in the Baltimore area, young David was an only child whose neighborhood playmates were coerced into being his pupils in a favorite game -- playing school. Siblings might not have been so easy to manipulate, he says. Later he excelled in French language studies, and in high school won medals from the French government for outstanding achievement in French. Also, he edited the school yearbook and was voted "most likely to succeed." His parents -- deeply religious, evangelical Christians -- offered him two roads to this success; either live at home and attend the University of Maryland or enroll at a fundamentalist Christian campus.
He chose the latter course, selecting Bob Jones University in South Carolina, a campus well-known for its strict standards of behavior and conservative orientation. But while most Bob Jones students majored in religion, young Sanders intended to continue his French studies. However, a particularly stimulating sophomore lit class turned him toward English and ultimately to his career goal of college teaching.
Graduating magna cum laude, he went on to earn MA and PhD degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill. Then followed seven years of teaching at the University of Richmond, with several summers as assistant director of Middlebury College's famed writing school, the Bread Loaf School of English. "Bread Loaf was a real cultural high," he recalled. "Six weeks of that rarified air, in the middle of the Vermont mountains." Not infrequently Sanders found himself thrust into the role of "resident Southerner" and called upon to use the reputed charm of this region to smooth ruffled feelings and rough edges.
Growth at ECU
Sanders joined the ECU faculty in 1968, and immediately felt himself part of "an exploding campus." "The Richmond campus was very bound by tradition; a common way of dealing with ideas there was to say, 'It hasn't been done before, so we can't do it now,'" he recalled. "Here, by contrast, was a place whose forte seemed to be inovation. New ideas were encouraged and there was always something new going on -- the First Annual this, the First Annual that. The prevailing attitude was, 'It hasn't been done before, so let's do it.'"
Active in national and regional honors circles, Sanders is soon to assume the presidency of the North Carolina Honors Association. He's also a board member for two "pet" projects: the magazine Tar River Poetry and the Greenville-based Playwrights Fund of North Carolina. Both provide outlets for new literary talent from across the nation.
He shares his Greenville home and Indian Beach condo with Piper and Shelley, a pair of rather possessive female Bedlington terriers. People assume that the dogs were named for 1950's film stars, but actually their names are from the world of poetry.
"Shelley's for the poet Shelley, of course, and Piper gets her name from the opening line in Blake's Songs of Innocence -- 'Piping down the valleys wild,'" Sanders explained, ever the consummate teacher. "I didn't call her Blake, because dogs seem to respond best if they have two-syllable names."
