Be Remembered, Not Rated: The Movie-like Life of Professor John Shank

Last month I was in Columbus giving a talk at Ohio State, and I kept flashing on one of the most amazing professors I never had.  He was an OSU PhD alum and he had the office across the hall from me 30 years ago.

​​There once was a legendary, larger-than-life professor.  If Marvel’s 137th movie of this year is named UltraProf, it would be based on John Shank.  He taught a dry subject (think Accounting), but his charisma and his orchestration of his class made each class session seem like 60-person David Mamet plays.  Every class had passion, drama, and some surprising reveal at the end that people still talked about ten  years later.  Here’s a quote:  
​
​As a teacher John was at home at any level, and always brilliant. I could offer the testimonials of others, however, what brought his classroom performance home to me— and it was a performance in the truest sense of the word—was watching him at an Accounting Round Table at Pitt’s business school. He held 50 top financial officers in the palm of his hand while he presented his material. They were busy individuals with many things on their minds and schedules, but not a one left until John had answered their last question. I can assure you that their staying until the end was not out of courtesy (Bernberg 2008).
​
Some, however, believed he was only about style. He wore Brooks Brothers braces, walked with a MVP swagger, drove a Dartmouth green sports car, and he had a runway model wife who was some VP of Finance somewhere.  His office was professionally-decorated with French draperies, super-thick Dartmouth green carpeting, and a massive 18th century French desk which sat in the middle of the room so his desk chair could face the doorway.   Even his two huge perfectly groomed standard poodles (the huge ones) were effortlessly well-mannered. On Saturdays he’d come to work, and they’d sit on either side of his desk and face the door.  They were like poodle lions on either side of a throne, and he was like Odin . . . or some Viking king.  His dogs keep eternal vigilance. My dog wets on me and then licks my face like nothing happened.

This was 1992.  Because John had about the highest MBA teacher ratings at Dartmouth's Tuck School and I had about the lowest ratings, he let me sit in on his classes so I could watch what he did and suck less . . . so I could learn better teaching strategies and MBA-theatre management skills.  

One Saturday during a Tuck alumni reunion I had been mingling with some of the alums during a breakfast reception.  As I was walking back to my office, his door was jarred.  I stopped and told him I had just overheard some alumni talking about something they had learned in his class 10 years earlier. 

He looked up over the top of his half-glasses, and said, “That’s what they’re supposed to do.  It means I’ve done my job.”  

He had told me before that his goal wasn't to teach students to succeed at their first job, his goal was to teach them to succeed for wherever they will be in 10 or 20 years.  Although he got outstanding teaching ratings, he brushed them off by saying that teacher ratings "measured the moment" – they mainly measured the warm feelings a student had on that last day of class.  Ratings might capture style (which he was very good at), but they may not always measure long-term substance.

I regret that I never had the presence of mind to ask him how he did it -- how he knew what long-term impact to aim at.  Since he was on company Boards of Directors and did a lot of consulting with upper management, I suspect he taught his courses like he was teaching board members and upper management.   That is, when he was teaching, he treated them like they were high level managers.  That would be one way to do it.

Ten or fifteen years after I left Dartmouth I was in Boston with an extra day between events.  I rented a car to drive the 2 hours north to Hanover, NH to visit John.  I wanted to thank him for being so generous, and I also wanted to prove to myself that he, his office, desk, and dogs were as cinematically dramatic as I remembered them and as I would recount them to others.  

I took the stairs up to the third floor two at a time.  Energized and smiling, I took a deep breath as I strode to his door and raised my hand to knock.  I froze.

There was a different name on his door. I learned I was two years too late.  John Shank had passed away in 2006 in a car accident in Southern California.

I love the idea of trying to educate for a long-term impact.  It’s like trying to create long-term memories.  I sometimes think I can remember everything John said to me because he was always so intentional with every conversation.  Just like he was with his classes.
 
At the next reunion, if his former student’s aren’t talking about what they learned 30 years ago, they’ll be talking about how hard he tried.  That itself was a great lesson.