I don’t want this to sound like a speech on Oscar night, but I do wish to take a moment to thank some people.  I am grateful to the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences not only for honoring me with the present award but also for material assistance in the past in the form of College Research Awards and other sorts of aid.  I also express my gratitude to my department chairs over the years, Roger Biles, Bodo Nischan, Mike Palmer, and Gerry Prokopowicz, for the support that they have given to my work. I am sustained by the love and indulgence of my family, my wife Bonnie and my daughter Liz, who long ago resigned themselves to the fact that I am hopelessly embedded in the nineteenth century. And I shall always be grateful to members of my department not only for their encouragement and helpful criticism, but also for the fine example of their own good work.

     Indeed, I wish to emphasize that while I am deeply honored by this award presented to me today, I would like to be seen simply as a representative of the History Department, which I consider one of the strongest in the university. The History Department’s achievements in research and teaching and service are prodigious. I started to make a list of some of the noteworthy accomplishments of individual colleagues, but the list soon grew very long, and I remembered Dean White’s admonition that people in this audience would be eager to get to lunch. So I will simply mention a few aggregate figures. In the last five years alone the faculty members of the history department have published 25 new monographs, 15 other books, 42 chapters in books, and 194 articles and book reviews.

     I point to this research record not because I believe that research is more important than teaching, which it is not, but rather to underscore the indispensability of productive research to our continued improvement as a university. Teaching and research are complementary, each informing the other and both essential to our enterprise. I believe that with few exceptions the most active scholars make the best teachers.  And students can appreciate the qualitative difference in teaching by a professor committed to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and interpretation, and one who simply recycles a discipline’s accepted notions. Thus, a tendency to view research as somehow expendable as we confront the need to make budget cuts is doubly destructive to our mission, because teaching as well as research will suffer.

     But some may ask, “Does the sort of work that we pursue in the liberal arts and sciences really matter? How many lives will such work save?” To which I respond that those of us who labor in the arts and sciences, in research and in the classroom, may not save a life, but we do deal with those things that make life worth living. It is especially our mission in the College of Arts and Sciences to educate our students not to a narrow trade but to a broader outlook and understanding. To allow the current economic crunch to push ECU backward toward mere vocational instruction would be a tragic disservice to our students. In this College we take pride in our efforts to instill in our students a fuller comprehension of the physical world, a keener appreciation of literature, art, and philosophy, and a deeper understanding of the evolution of the human condition. When we succeed, we rescue our graduates from self-absorption and civic incapacity, and we endow them with the prospect of fuller and richer lives. This is a glorious mission. It is a mission that lies at the heart of the university’s purpose and my own professional endeavor. So I am profoundly humbled and grateful that the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences has chosen to recognize the part that I have tried to play in service to that mission.