James Bogan Receives Outstanding Teaching Award
By Leslie Rott

James Bogan, Mackinac Island summer resident and this year’s University of Missouri System Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching recipient, is pictured outside a nature reserve in the Amazon, while filming “The Adventures of the Amazon Queen.” (Photograph by Diogenes Leal)

“The best teaching happens when you’re learning,” said James Bogan, who, May 25, received the prestigious University of Missouri System Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching for his work as an art history and film professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla.

Originally from Chicago, Mr. Bogan’s family has a long history on Mackinac Island. His great-grandfather “got off the boat here” from Western Ireland and both his father and grandfather were born here. His grandfather was the Island doctor in the 1920s and 1930s and his father served in the Merchant Marine and spent the last 25 years of his life on the Island.

Mr. Bogan came to Mackinac as a child and has spent summers here since 1970. He enjoys the family history that he is surrounded by here, the people, nature, the difficulty of getting to the Island, and he especially loves winters on Mackinac.

For many, the Island has brought them inspiration in their creative endeavors. James Bogan, however, cherishes his time on the Island, not so much for the inspiration, but for the relaxation and solitude, the escape from the pace of everyday life in the 21st century. He enjoys having the summers off and says that, for him, coming to the Island means not having to think, but turning oneself over to the rhythms of the woods, the lake, and the stars.

He received his undergraduate education in English at Loyola University in Chicago and spent a year in Rome. He then went to the University of Kansas, where he studied English Literature, then attended the University of Missouri-Rolla, where he finished his coursework and dissertation on William Blake. He has lived in the Missouri Ozarks ever since.

In 1986, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Brazil, where he said he “laundered his book allowance and turned it into 16 millimeter film stock” and shot T-shirt Cantata, a poetic documentary about the people of the Amazon, which also won him a CINE Eagle Award.

After 37 years of teaching at the University of Missouri-Rolla, Mr. Bogan has climbed up the ranks. In his first 10 years there, he taught English and said that he graded more than 10,000 compositions, but was then traded to the art department for “a future draft pick and an undisclosed amount of cash.” He traded his red pen for a slide projector and now calls himself a “rehabilitated English major.” His study of William Blake, he said, helped to lead him into the areas of film and art history.

Mr. Bogan is full of anecdotes about everything from what he ate for breakfast (peanut butter) to the Amazon (not as hot as Missouri in the summer). He has only had one job interview his entire life, which was for a teaching position at the University of Missouri-Rolla. That was also the last time that he shaved his beard, although he does trim it. And for all of his time spent in Brazil, he has never had a formal education in the Portuguese language. He claims that he has been able to gain such fluency in Portuguese by drinking beer with friends on the banks of the Amazon.

Of this recent award, he said he has “answered the bell for 37 years, not knowing what to expect at any given hour.” He has a low tolerance for boredom and hopes that his excitement about what he teaches enhances the curiosity of his students. He describes teaching as an emotional experience that cannot be easily quantified, and so he is gratified at receiving the award. It is, he said, “a confirmation that I have toted the barge and lifted the bale with some kind of competence for a few decades.”

He added that he feels his international teaching experience in London, Brazil, and the Netherlands contributed in a large way to such recognition. Teaching everything from Headstart to Elderhostel, and appearing at venues from tea parties to taverns, also helped, he said.

Nominees for the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching have to be tenured faculty members with at least 10 years of service at any of the University of Missouri campuses. Each of the four University of Missouri campuses is eligible to submit one nomination. The nominations are then received by a peer committee, comprised of two faculty members from each campus. Nominees are ranked on a variety of things, in categories ranging from “classroom teaching” to “teaching contributions outside the classroom.”

“The competition is tough,” said Sam Kanatzar, assistant to the vice-president of academic affairs, although he said the committees and the process used in the selection at each campus are confidential.

The award comes with a $15,000 stipend, which Dr. Bogan said he will use for “teaching, research, and student development,” including the completion of his latest film, “The Adventures of the Amazon Queen,” which chronicles the building and sailing of a model boat, launched in a spring, then onto a creek, then a swamp into the Amazon, and eventually into the ocean. He readily admits to having taken the plot of “Paddle to the Sea,” one of the great books of northern literature.

He has previously earned several awards from the University of Missouri, including a Faculty Excellence Award in 1993, and the Distinguished Teaching Professor award and the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997.

His works of poetry have been aired on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Market Place, and The Savvy Traveler.

He has made eight films, what he calls “poetic documentaries,” three filmed in Brazil and five in the United States. Next winter, he will combine his three Brazilian films, “T-shirt Cantata”, “The Adventures of the Amazon Queens,” and “The Hammock Variations”, into a “Brazilogy” and will show them from Patagonia to the Amazon.