Meeting Your Heroes
December 4, 2025
This year I was able to attend the 44th Annual Lilly Conference on college teaching. Each year it is held at Miami University with a variety of talks and workshops on pedagogical strategies and frameworks specifically for a university setting. There was a particularly interesting talk from Mary Ann-Winklemes on utilizing the TILT framework to increase transparency and equity in the classroom. It is a great low-lift strategy that has a huge impact for student success. She will be our Spring CTE Keynote Speaker, so be sure to be on the lookout for a scheduling email.But what I wanted to talk about regarding Lilly was that I had an opportunity to meet and have coffee with Milt Cox. Milt is a personal hero of mine. He created the Lilly conference 44 years ago, designed the concept of Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs), started the Center for Teaching and Learning at Miami University, and actually helped as a consultant when we developed our Center of Teaching Excellence (CTE) here at Xavier years ago. On top of all that, he is a theoretical mathematician like myself. So, when I had the opportunity to go to a small workshop run by Milt I jumped on the opportunity without even looking at the title of the talk…. The title of the talk was “Retirees Teaching Retirees: A Study in Greene and Greene Architecture”. Not exactly the most relevant topic for a mathematician whose kids are still of the age where I must tell them to eat their vegetables and clean their rooms (and quit saying six-seven). But it was such a great experience— hearing about people who love learning so much that they spend their retirement years learning and teaching, not because of grades and career outcomes, but because they love to learn.
That is what we are trying to do here at Xavier, create passionate lifelong learners … and here was my revelation at the conference: we do it really well at Xavier. Our faculty create passionate projects, dynamic learning experiences, and meaningful relations all the time. We do it because, like Milt teaching in his retirement years, it is who we are; it is our passion. I listened to a lot of talks trying to pitch innovative engaging teaching and finding myself consistently saying “I already know 5 people at Xavier doing this”.
The old saying is that you shouldn’t meet your role models, but for me that wasn’t the case. For me meeting my role model was a wonderful experience. Not only was he someone I strive to be and live up to, but he helped me realize how many amazing role models I get the luxury of working with every day. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being amazing colleagues, and inspiring not only our students but each other every semester.
Happy Holidays!
Eric Bucher
Faculty Director, Center for Teaching and Excellence
Associate Professor, Mathematics