Dr. David Strain
Chair, Humanities and Fine Arts Division
Professor of English and Humanities
B.A., Ouachita Baptist University
M.A., University of Arkansas
Ph.D., Harvard University
Office: 150 Walton Fine Arts Center
Phone: (479) 979-1340
E-Mail: dstrain@ozarks.edu
Dr. Strain joined the Ozarks' faculty in 1992 after completing his Ph.D. at Harvard. His innovative teaching style and dedication quickly became apparent, and in 1996 he received the University's Bagwell Outstanding Faculty Member award in recognition of his efforts. In 1997, he was named chair of the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, a position he still holds.
Dr. Strain's great passion, language, has found outlets in many different courses at Ozarks--from freshman composition to French, from linguistics to lyric writing to Latin: "I get paid to do things I love doing. I get paid to speak French with students. I get paid to talk about Chaucer with them. I get paid to make them diagram sentences from Henry James, and I get paid to extract villanelles from them. For Heaven's sake, I even get paid to take them to Rome. Of course, the price of all that is committees. We're still Calvinist enough to pay for our pleasures."
Dr. Strain's philosophy of teaching is a blend of humor, drama, and, most of all, a powerful sense of human potential: "People fret a lot about 'first-generation college students.' Well, I was a first-generation high-school student, and I think that was a great advantage for me. My parents grew up before the Great Depression in the piney woods of southern Missouri. My father had to drop out of school after the fourth grade because his family needed him to help cut timber, and my mother had to drop out after the eighth because her family couldn't afford to send the girls into town for high school. For those reasons, though, I was never allowed to take education for granted. My parents knew very well just how tough life can be, and they saw education as a way to ensure that my life would be better than theirs had been. I grew up with that in the water. More than anything else, it was what helped me get to Harvard. And then it was what brought me back home."
One might wonder where Dr. Strain finds his inspiration to maintain his high-energy teaching style. His immediate answer: "Students." He goes on to explain: "A couple of years ago, I was skiing with one of my former students. We were making our dull, safe way down a dull, safe slope when, all of a sudden, he tricked me into heading down one I didn't think I could handle. As we were making our way down, I cursed all his major organs and his forebears all the way back to Prussia. However, once I got to the bottom of the trail, upright and in one piece, I couldn't decide whether to kick him because he'd tricked me or be flattered because I knew bloody well where he'd learned the trick. If watching students grow up doesn't make you feel young, you need to go sell shoes."
What's special about Ozarks, according to Dr. Strain? "As an institution, we share an exceptional awareness of the liberating power of education. Some at Ozarks come from backgrounds similar to mine--we've lived the experience. Those who come from different backgrounds have witnessed it in the lives of their students. Regardless, we understand that education really matters. That's why we're unapologetic about upholding high academic standards. Although we're careful to guard against being elitist, we do our dead-level best to be elite. We know the difference between silk flowers and roses."
