Beyond the Studio: Language, Literature, and the Long Life of Teaching

In the Division of Liberal Arts, endowed support has expanded opportunities for students to engage with language and literature as artistic and professional tools that extend far beyond any one course.

Hans Gabriel, the Michael and Amy Tiemann Distinguished Professor in the Division of Liberal Arts, teaches German Studies, a minor that has provided students with sometimes surprising pathways toward international study, performance, and Fulbright opportunities.

“There are currently three UNCSA German Studies minor alums in Austria,” Gabriel said. “One is an English Teaching Assistant at the prestigious Vienna Boys Choir Academy, one is pursuing graduate studies in music in Vienna alongside and with funding from the Fulbright Austria Assistantship, and the third will sing in the Berlin Philharmonic, also alongside his Fulbright Austria Teaching Assistantship. Another alum will appear on stage in a Vienna State Opera production.”

He attributes these outcomes, in part, to the Tiemann Professorship. “It has ‘super-charged’ my efforts in all areas of my professional work and life, allowing me to build on the groundwork I tried to establish alongside many years of full-time teaching in a way that would otherwise never have been possible.”

Gabriel’s colleague, Joseph Mills, is the recipient of the Sue Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities. Mills’ distinguished professorship supports decades of creative and scholarly work, and its impact is inseparable from time itself.

“Without question, I would not have generated such a body of work without this professorship,” he said.

For Mills, teaching extends beyond the classroom calendar. It continues through years of conversation, memory, and return — students revisiting texts, sending new work, or recognizing ideas in their lives long after a course ends.

“The classroom walls are the scaffolding of the education,” he said. “Take them away and the education continues on.”

He credits the Wall Professorship as an important ingredient in keeping his approach to education fresh through the years. “Thanks to the professorship, I am more energized than ever,” Mills said. “Even after decades of teaching, I head to the classroom with a bounce in my step and a belief that our time together is one of the most important things we could be doing.”

In Liberal Arts, endowed professorships support work that shapes how students read, think, and move through the world. They underwrite the slow, long arc of teaching — the kind that changes lives not in a moment, but over years.