<a href="http://natureofcollege.org/wp-content/uploads/jim-farrell.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-868" src="http://natureofcollege.org/wp-content/uploads/jim-farrell-630x419.jpg" alt="Jim Farrell" width="630" height="419" /></a>

<em>At the start of the 2013–14 academic year at St. Olaf, faculty were mindful of the loss of our friend and colleague Jim Farrell, who died the previous summer. We considered the immense significance for the college of Jim’s teaching philosophy and practices. We mourned the loss of a great role model and mentor. We mourned that the college had lost an exemplar of a particular understanding of the academy’s work. </em>

<em>So we collected – from colleagues who knew, taught with, or admired Jim – brief reflections about his teaching: short reports of how Jim’s manner, matter, and practice influenced us and the college for the good. As a collection, these reports offer satisfying personal remembrance, fitting tribute, and good service to the colleagues and students Jim loved and served so well. </em>
<h2>Jim Farrell As Teacher</h2>
Reflections from St. Olaf Faculty

<strong>Charles Taliaferro</strong>

Philosophy, Environmental Studies, Paracollege

Three memories of Jim as professor. First, no one I know has ever come close to Jim’s patience and ability to ask a question and to wait in silence until a student responds. I was not surprised when one student told me Jim went 20 minutes waiting for a response. Second, on too many occasions to recall, Jim would work with, assist, and engage at length with students regardless of whether the students were enrolled in his courses. For many years, this stood out to me as the high water mark we should all aspire to. Third, I recall Jim running on campus. And every time I saw him run, I thought he is running from one great meeting with students and the time got away from him, and he is now running toward another meeting and he does not want to be late.

<strong>W. Bruce Benson</strong>

College Pastor, emeritus
<p class="p1">I admired Jim Farrell. It is difficult, maybe even unwise, to distill the many reasons down to one meta-reason, but I’m going to try. Faithfulness. I admired the unswerving, unwavering, undiluted faithfulness of his humanity. Jim didn’t teach well because he wanted to be noted for it, he taught well – amazingly well – because he was faithful. Faithful to his students, his subject, and the larger world. He wasn’t creative and imaginative because he thought being so was cool, but because his imagination was fired by faithfulness. He wanted to be faithful to life, truth, knowledge, community. Faithfulness pushed him to imagine better, more honest ways of living and understanding. He wasn’t on the cutting edge of social and ethical issues because he was a thrill seeker or an attention grabber, but because that’s where faithfulness to justice and the spirit of God compelled him to be. Even his gentleness – it did not come from timidity or a need to be liked, it came from his faithfulness to the dignity of others, his recognition that we all bear the image of God. Thanks be to God for Jim Farrell.</p>