2019 All-Star Faculty Team—Zach Finn | Butler University
2019 All-Star Faculty Team—Zach Finn | Butler University
‘Doc’ McGowan in Retirement: Reading, Writing, Thinking
PUBLISHED ON May 13 2017
For almost 25 years, Dick McGowan taught Butler students—mostly in the Lacy School of Business, and mostly about ethics. But the underlying lesson in everything he taught them was about hope.
McGowan would tell his classes about how, as an undergraduate at Colgate University, he had been unprepared to leave home and not ready for the academic rigors of college. In his first three philosophy courses, he got a C-plus, a D, and a C.
“I made sure my students knew that,” he said, “because I wanted them to understand redemption. What happens can be overcome. There’s hope. I want to teach hope. I think professors have to teach hope. If they don’t, they’re not doing their entire job. What I like to say is, ‘George W. Bush is not the only C student who did something with his life.’”
And now that McGowan has retired—2016–2017 was his final year—he looks back proudly at what he achieved.
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McGowan grew up on the north shore of Long Island, New York. His father was an athletic director working with disadvantaged kids; his mother stayed home to raise eight children.
After graduating from Colgate in 1971, McGowan moved back to Long Island and became a field supervisor, overseeing the construction of about 80 houses. He guesses he would have been a multimillionaire if he’d stuck with that profession.
“But it didn’t suit my nature,” he said. “I had a boss who wanted us to skimp. But if you don’t follow the contract, that’s a mistake. It’s a moral shortcoming.”
Instead, he moved out to Washington state, where he worked as a bartender, forklift operator, hot-tar roofer—anything to support his habit. The habit of learning. He finished his master’s at Washington State University in 1976.
From there, McGowan went to Marquette University, where he worked as a teaching assistant and earned his doctorate in Philosophy in 1985. He also met and married his wife, Barbara, a research scientist, and they began a family that grew to three sons, all now adults.
After graduation, he found himself teaching at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, “which had very little use for ethics,” he said. His wife’s job was going to lose funding, so they started to look for work elsewhere. McGowan landed a position at St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, as an associate professor and director of the school-wide required ethics course.
Rensselaer was great for him, but not so much for Barbara, who was underemployed and unhappy. He decided to “commit career suicide” and follow her to Indianapolis. She worked, and he stayed home with the boys. In 1993, Butler hired him for a part-time position teaching business ethics.
“What they learn in ethics is going to impact everything, whether they’re in business or whether they become firefighters,” said McGowan, who was elevated to instructor in 2001. “Basics ethics courses are for everything, all human activity. All voluntary human activities needs an ethics course.”
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Over the years, McGowan taught a variety of courses, including ancient philosophy, biomedical ethics, introduction to ethics, introduction to philosophy, and assorted First-Year Seminar classes. He also ran the Undergraduate Research Conference for five years.
Students—who call him “Doc”—and faculty alike found him helpful and influential.
“Doc has inspired me to do the impossible,” said Nyree Modisette ’19, a political science major. “I never thought I could publish any of my work; however, Doc changed that for me. He helped me publish my essay titled ‘Framing the News; Dividing the Country,’ which has been published in the Kokomo Tribune, USA Today, The Commercial Appeal, Burlington Free Press, and other places. He saw something in me that I did not see. Doc deserves to be celebrated and recognized for all the great work he has done for all of his students.”
Connor Brooks ’18, a finance major, said McGowan encouraged and sponsored him to present a paper during the Butler Undergraduate Research Conference last spring. He described McGowan as “a friend, mentor, and professor—in that order.”
“Doc made a personal connection with me and from the beginning has encouraged and challenged me to pursue my passion,” Brooks said. “He sees the good in people and encourages students to be better people in the classroom, on campus and in society as a whole. I am grateful for professors like Doc who encourage and support students both in and outside the classroom.”
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Around Butler, McGowan became known for a number of disparate characteristics. He rode his bicycle to work most days, a commute of about 16 miles round trip. He paints tiny pictures that he gave to people as gifts. He kept espresso candies in his desk that he shared with anyone who needed a little burst of energy.
Associate Professor Hilary Buttrick, who is taking over the ethics classes McGowan taught, remembers getting one of those candies when she came to Butler to interview for her faculty position. She met McGowan at the end of that day.
“I think he could tell that I was exhausted, stressed,” she said. “He sat down and looked at me and said, ‘What kind of books are you reading right now?’ So we spent most of our interview time talking about books that we’d read, books that we want to read. So I will always think of Dick as somebody who has tremendous compassion for the people he’s working with and he encounters, and compassion for his students.”
McGowan counts among his proudest achievements helping Fraser Thompson ’01 became Butler’s first and only Rhodes Scholar (“One of the cleanest, clearest writers I’ve ever had”) and helping the women’s lacrosse club get off the ground.
“I thought it was important for women to run around and hit each other with sticks, consistent with Title IX,” he said with a smile.
In retirement, McGowan plans to continue painting, reading, writing, thinking, traveling, and riding. He said if he has any regrets, it’s that he didn’t pursue baseball after high school. He was a pitcher in high school, he wishes he had seen how far he could have gone.
He loves baseball, roots for the Milwaukee Brewers and the Atlanta Braves, and for years led a quixotic campaign to get pitcher Virgil Trucks into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Trucks, who pitched two no-hitters in one season (1952), and McGowan ultimately became friends.
Hank Aaron, the great home run hitter, was one of McGowan’s idols.
“He was what I wanted to be,” McGowan said. “But being a philosophy professor wasn’t bad.”
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
‘Doc’ McGowan in Retirement: Reading, Writing, Thinking
For almost 25 years, Dick McGowan taught Butler students—mostly in the Lacy School of Business, and mostly about ethics. But the underlying lesson in everything he taught them was about hope.
For almost 25 years, Dick McGowan taught Butler students—mostly in the Lacy School of Business, and mostly about ethics. But the underlying lesson in everything he taught them was about hope.
New LSB Speaker Series to Promote Business Ethics
PUBLISHED ON Jan 15 2020
All Andre B. Lacy School of Business students must take the 200-level Business Ethics course. A new speaker series will enhance that experience.
This semester, the Lacy School of Business Ethics Series will feature two events and the series will return for the 2020-2021 academic year. Each semester will feature a keynote speaker as well as smaller, fireside chat-style events. The Ethics Series will bring in alumni, Indianapolis business leaders, and entrepreneurs from across the nation to share their experiences and training for all Butler students, staff, faculty, and the community to consider.
Tyler Shultz will be the first keynote speaker at 8:00 PM February 11 at the Schrott Center for the Arts. The event kicks off the series, which will continue in April with a student-focused talk in the Business Building. All Ethics Series events are free. No tickets are required.
Shultz was a 23-year-old employee for Theranos, the infamous $9 billion start-up that claimed to have technology that could detect diseases from one drop of blood. However, the technology never worked despite years of smoke and mirrors from founder Elizabeth Holmes. Shultz came forward to the Wall Street Journal. The article by John Carreyrou revealed research too good to be true and revenue that never was. The fiasco led to the HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley and Carreyrou’s subsequent book, Bad Blood.
Associate Professor of Business Law Hilary Buttrick will moderate Shultz’s talk as well as a question-and-answer segment at the end of the event. She says students will get to experience how important being ethical in business practices can be from an entrepreneur only a handful of years older than them.
“Theranos was his first job out of college,” Buttrick says. “He was really going up against Goliath.
“I think that type of ethical fortitude, that type of ability to trust yourself to say ‘This isn’t right,’ that’s a really important lesson for students to learn. Even though you’re young and new, you have the power, the right, and the obligation to stand up when things are wrong, even if you’re at the bottom of the corporate ladder. We think (Shultz) has a really important story to tell our students.”
Shultz landed well after the Theranos dust settled. He is the CEO and co-founder of Flux Biosciences, Inc., a Bay-Area start-up specializing in bringing medical-grade diagnostics into the homes of consumers by using technology to measure biomarkers related to stress, exercise, and fertility. His efforts were recognized by Forbes when he was named to their “30 under 30” Health Care 2017 list.
Buttrick says the speaker series will be integrated into class curriculum, in turn enhancing the learning experience.
“I can’t think of a better case study,” says Buttrick, adding that the February 11 event will count as a Butler Cultural Requirement. “Think about the things you’re learning in Business Ethics class; this guy had to do it.”
Lacy School of Business Dean Stephen Standiford says the Ethics Series will be a major part of the program’s push to be a Midwestern leader in business ethics education.
“Our goal,” he adds, “is to continue to infuse ethical practice and leadership development with our students, future leaders, and community as a whole.”
The Lacy School of Business Ethics speaker series is sponsored by Old National Bank.
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New LSB Speaker Series to Promote Business Ethics
Series will focus on ethical business practices with the help of alumni, Indy business leaders, and keynote speakers
Series will focus on ethical business practices with the help of alumni, Indy business leaders, and keynote speakers
If Susan B. Anthony Had a Smartphone
PUBLISHED ON Oct 10 2019
What would the fight for women’s suffrage look like in 2019—a centennial after women won the right to vote?
Sally Perkins, a professional storyteller and Director of Butler University’s Speaker’s Lab, imagines Susan B. Anthony would be texting her fellow activists. Ida B. Wells would be tweeting about the importance of the black female voice. Anna Howard Shaw would become Ellen DeGeneres, and the spirit of Sojourner Truth would shine through Queen Latifah. And no matter how hard the fight for voting rights became, none of them would give up.
In Digging in Their Heels, a one-woman storytelling performance that will hit the stage in New York City later this month, Perkins captures the complexities of this part of American history she’s found most people don’t know much about. Through modern references and comedic elements, she makes this 100-year-old story more accessible to audiences who don’t know much about what it took to win the vote.
The show races through 72 years in 60 minutes. But Perkins helps audience members keep track of the 16 characters by assigning each suffragist a modern alter-ego—a well-known woman who mirrors the suffragist’s personality and activism style. The characters use smartphones and social media to communicate, “in some ways pointing to the fact that they didn’t have that technology,” Perkins says. “It was so difficult what they did.”
And the performance doesn’t shy away from those difficulties, which emerged both from those outside the movement and between the women leading it. Instead, Perkins shows where black women experienced racism from their white counterparts, even as they all worked toward a shared goal.
“I’m doing what I can to bring that truth to the story,” she says. “We cannot talk about issues of gender without talking about issues of race.”
The show first launched at the IndyFringe Festival in 2018. Perkins has performed at several venues since, including a show for Indiana’s League of Women Voters and a few visits to out-of-state conferences. On October 17, she’ll take it to New York for the United Solo Theatre Festival, a 10-week international event dedicated to one-person shows.
When Perkins first applied to perform at the festival, she didn’t really think she had a chance. But she received her acceptance in April, and her October show is now listed as a bestseller among the more than 120 performances on the United Solo calendar. If the first performance sells out completely, Perkins will be able to schedule a second, and that process could repeat for up to eight total shows throughout the course of the festival.
Digging in Their Heels first started taking shape in late 2017, then it unfolded over about 10 months of research and writing. Typically, Perkins is more of an oral performer than a playwright. But to juggle the stories of 16 women over 72 years, sharing the narrative of women’s suffrage demanded a more robust script. And to help keep audience members grounded in the chronology, she called on the skills of Butler CCOM colleague Armando Pellerano, Lecturer of Strategic Communication, to design an interactive set.
“The audience should never have to be thinking, ‘Where are we in the timeline of all this?’” Perkins says. “So I have a huge set with a timeline and a map of the United States, which helps people keep track of which states have granted women the right to vote at different points along the way.”
In Pellerano’s 20 years of experience in the creative services industry, he had never designed a set piece. But on a late-April day when he saw Perkins rehearsing on campus, he stopped to see what she was doing. They chatted about the graphics on her old set, and after a brief critique from Pellerano, Perkins asked if he could help her design something that would tell a better story.
Pellerano chose colors and patterns that captured a Victorian-era mood, making sure the set would complement Perkins instead of drawing attention away from her words.
“I was trying to find something that fit her vision,” he says, “as well as accomplishing what I wanted from a visual standpoint, which was getting people to focus on what she was talking about without being distracted by the background.”
During a recent local performance of Digging in Their Heels, Pellerano had the chance to see the set design in action.
“To me, the coolest thing was seeing her actually use all the pieces,” he says. “There’s a little marker that moves down for the timeline, and we made velcro pieces so she can reveal information more gradually.”
But the show was even more interactive than Pellerano expected, and he was amazed at the way Perkins connected with the audience. Plus, it told an important story he didn’t know.
“What I really learned about was the politics of that time in history,” Pellerano says. “You can read about something, but you’re not really situated in what the conventional wisdom of the time was or what the cultural norms were. To me, it was revelatory that these women were as strategic as they were about when to dig in their heels and when to back off.”
While Perkins has spent the last few months focused on her upcoming trip to New York, she says performance is just one part of her career. At Butler, she teaches public speaking classes and runs the Speakers Lab, a group of tutors who provide students with one-on-one help in creating and delivering speeches or presentations.
In the community, Perkins works with professional clients, helping them effectively tell their stories. She trains organizations on the basics, explaining the power of storytelling when it comes to fundraising, sales, organizational development, recruitment, and more. She also offers individual coaching for a range of story-based projects. This professional service work, along with her commissioned performance experience, strengthens what Perkins does at Butler.
“All my storytelling work has deepened, improved, and impacted the way I teach public speaking,” she says. “Before I started doing all of this, I would never have talked about the importance of storytelling in public speaking class. Now I totally do.”
But it works the other way around, too, and she lets a love of education influence her performing. When audiences walk away from Digging in Their Heels, she wants them to have learned something.
“I want people to feel inspired not to give up, even though, as I say at the end of the story, many of these women went to the grave without ever casting a vote,” Perkins says. “But we need to not give up with whatever our battle is. It matters to me that people walk away feeling inspired by the longevity of the movement, and that they think about how we can be better in the future, no matter what the issue is at hand.”
Digging in Their Heels
Thursday, October 17, 7:30 PM
410 West 42nd Street, New York City
Tickets: $45 (purchase here)
Media Contact:
Katie Grieze
News Content Manager
kgrieze@butler.edu
260-307-3403 (cell)
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If Susan B. Anthony Had a Smartphone
Celebrating 100 years of women's suffrage, Sally Perkins takes her one-woman storytelling show to New York City.
Celebrating 100 years of women's suffrage, Sally Perkins takes her one-woman storytelling show to New York City.