To this day, my grandfather mentions an English class he took his first year of college, where a professor taught him how to form his own arguments. Similarly, my father often mentions, with fairly vivid detail, lectures he attended and papers he wrote that sparked his intellectual curiosity during his undergraduate years. I know that, when I am older, I will talk about the two classes I took with Professor Sam Sommers with the same kind of wistful enthusiasm.
Sommers was one of those professors who, throughout his time at Tufts, gained celebrity status among students. Nonpsychology majors would take a class with Sommers just to experience his famed teaching style. He had an amazing ability to make almost any topic seem interesting and important. I’m incredibly saddened that no future students will be able to experience what was a major highlight of my college experience.
Despite his celebrity status, I heard less talk of what exactly made Sommers’ teaching so special. So, I felt that it would be a fitting tribute to examine why his teaching was so special and what lessons we can take away from it.
Sommers made an extraordinary commitment to ensure the size of a class did not hinder his ability to interact with his students. When he would pose a question to the 250-person class, he would always walk around the auditorium, calling on students even in the farthest back rows.
Sommers also made the lecture halls feel smaller in a more curious and, dare I say, magical way. When he lectured, it felt as if he was talking directly to each student. When I went to his office hours for the first time, I was taken aback when he asked for my name. For a split second, I completely forgot that he only knew me at that point as a small face in a crowded lecture hall who occasionally raised his hand. In my mind, we were already fairly well-acquainted. That’s how much Sommers was able to connect with his students. Although I’m not exactly sure how he produced this wonderful illusion, it probably was the result of his ability to thoroughly break the boundary that traditionally exists between teacher and student. One of the ways he did so was by bringing anecdotes from his personal life into lectures in an endearing and often hilarious way. For example, in one lecture about social perception, Sommers showed a video of a series of social psychological ‘experiments’ he had conducted with his children when they were very young. He also frequently used his relationship with his roommate during his first year of college to illustrate certain social psychological principles (and to subtly roast, in a friendly way, his former roommate).
And I could not end this article without mentioning how Professor Sommers also always went the extra mile to seem as far from a stuffy academic as possible. He never sacrificed his articulateness and extreme intelligence along the way. Sommers would ingrain his lectures with humor, from incorporating Lizzo into lectures to using “Seinfeld” clips that illustrated the course’s topics.
While I can completely understand professors not wanting to bring their personal lives or potentially distracting pop culture into class, Sommers’ liberal use of examples from his personal life, combined with his relatable humor, made him seem all the more human to his students. Because of this, he was much more than simply a person standing at the front of the classroom imparting wisdom onto his students. He was a truly magical presence on the Tufts campus, and he will undoubtedly be missed.
