Per Don’s email, which I’ll include below, I am very excited to know that the cat is finally out of the hat!
Congratulations PhiloDave on being this year’s HWC Distinguished Professor!
It is a well deserved honor (and IMHO, one that you should have received a couple of years ago).
Ok kids, feel free to leave your kind words, or heck, go ahead and roast the man. It don’t matter.
Perhaps you just want to give him a pat on the back the next time you see him. That’ll be fine too!
In any case, here’s to a professor that epitomizes the words college and community.
One last thing: Since we will not hear from Dave at this year’s graduation (bwah, bwah, bwah), I’m suggesting that he be the main speaker at the Fall State of the College get-together. I can think of no better way of making this more personal.
Ok, here’s Don’s email (he’s much more eloquent than this peep):
To the Harold Washington College Community,
Please join me in congratulating this year’s Distinguished Professor, David W. Richardson.
Professor Richardson is an Assistant Professor who teaches a wide range of general education philosophy and humanities courses that emphasize active learning and facilitating student engagement with primary philosophical and literary texts.
Professor Richardson serves as an active member of the Harold Washington College community. He has served for the last two and a half years on Faculty Council, including one as Secretary and one and a half as Vice President. In his role as Secretary, he created The Harold Lounge, a blog site that he has since continued to administer. Other activities at the college have included work with the Women’s Studies Committee, including a year as Secretary, the Assessment Committee, and many other college wide and departmental initiatives, including chairing Humanifest-OH!, the Humanities Department’s annual Festival of the Arts from 2006 to 2008 and again in 2010. He was named Employee of the Month in February of 2009.
Mr. Richardson’s teaching career began with a TV course in 1997. Three years later, he was hired as an adjunct at Columbia and Harold Washington Colleges and thereby convinced to quit his full-time job as a whiskey slinger on Division Street and commit himself to the possibility of a teaching career. Hired to the full-time faculty at Harold Washington for fall 2003, he was named department chair a year later, where he served for four years, earning tenure in 2006.
Having personally observed Professor Richardson in the classroom, I can attest to his skill at engaging students and pushing them outside of their comfort zone to wrestle with challenging texts and concepts. The Harold Washington Community is enriched by Professor Richardson’s excellence as a faculty member.
The Harold Lounge 
Congratulations Dave! I can´t wait for your speech!
Awesome. Well-deserved!
Congratulations, Dave! I left CCC & moved to Oregon, but I can’t stay away from the Harold Lounge, and I’m so happy to see you recognized for your hard work and many talents! ~ Lara Ravitch, former Truman College faculty
That’s awesome, Lara! Hope Oregon is treating you well.
Drop by anytime!!
Oregon is fabulous, but I do miss my fabulous colleages at Truman & across CCC. I’ll be back to visit, for sure, and you better be looking “distinguished” when I see you 🙂
I’ll try my best–that’s not a word used to describe my look very often!
Great to hear from you.
After observing you in action, in and out of the classroom these past few years, well-deserved is right!
Dave! WOW! Congrats. Your students love you. Your colleagues love you. What can I say? You are a total rock star! 🙂 Bono would be jealous! 🙂 Ellen
Thank you, everybody, for all the kindnesses directed my way. I’m completely overwhelmed at the idea of it–like I told my office mate yesterday, most days I feel a long ways from distinguished, more like a knucklehead mucking through, stumbling around and trying to fix the mistakes I’ve made and ending up feeling like I’ve failed miserably…
I’m glad it looks different on the other side of it!
And I’m so, so grateful to be working at such a great place with such great people at such an important job. I feel incredibly lucky on every count.
Thanks, again; now back to work!
Dave, Congrats! I couldn’t imagine a better person for the job! In fact, I have always wanted to take one of your classes!
Do it! Do it! That would be spectacular (for me, at least). I would love to have your eyes and ears out there…I know I’d learn a ton.
(and thanks)
Participating in his class was a joy and a challenge. His teaching methods in Logic are first-rate and helped me later with Discrete Structures class at NEIU. Keep it up Dave and PLAY THAT BANJO!