Outstanding Faculty Award: The Accidental Professor
By Kim Billings, Advancement Communications
February 7, 2007
© Lisa Nugent
James Tucker was an accidental professor who has become an
enthusiastic and intentional professor. The UNH sociologist
graduated from college and went to work for an advertising
agency, then a greeting card company, and then a series of
other white-collar jobs. He learned that he was more interested
in the social dynamics of the business organization than he
was in making money. So, he went to graduate school. A highly
regarded book, The Therapeutic Corporation, published by Oxford
University Press, was based on his Ph.D. dissertation, which
was inspired by his experience in the private sector.
Tucker’s subsequent research and publications have examined
the unusual such as psychics and schizophrenics. “I like
to look at what goes on at the margins,” Tucker explains,
and he adds, his research makes a contribution to the discipline. “I
study what appeals to me personally, but I also try to fill
in the gaps in my field of study—unconventional businesses,
unconventional religions, unconventional forms of social control.”
Currently Tucker researches legal and social responses to
suicide. His approach is historical and cross-cultural. In
the U.S. he’s talked with the friends and relatives of
people who have committed suicide. “I have an open mind
when I talk to anyone,” he says. “I’m interested
not only in how they respond to situations, but why.” And,
according to Tucker, people like to talk about the beliefs
they have and why they do what they do.
This summer he gave several talks on this research in Taiwan
and traveled in Southeast Asia, making research connections
with scholars in Vietnam and Thailand. Additionally, Tucker
is collaborating with a former graduate student, who is exploring
these questions in the UK.
But if his research is about the unconventional, about life
at the margins, his academic life is steeped in the conventional,
about being solidly in the middle of things. He has taught
at UNH since 1991 and became department chair this fall. Tucker
has served on several College of Liberal Arts committees and
boards and earned several awards, including faculty development
grants, the Faculty Scholars Award, and a fellowship in the
Graduate School. From 2001 to 2004, Tucker was the Lamberton
Professor of Social and Criminal Justice. That prestigious
appointment provided Tucker with resources to continue his
research on the various formal and informal ways people seek
justice. He consistently earns high scores from his students,
teaching a full load, including two large undergraduate courses,
advanced undergraduate courses in his area of expertise, and
graduate courses on sociological theory and crime and conflict.
“He has the great skill to be able to combine charisma
and rigor in his work with students, and he has contributed
significantly to the curricula of the department, Justice Studies,
and Cinema Studies,” says sociology colleague Sally Ward.
“I love teaching,” Tucker says. “I like
the bigger classes and engaging my students. When there is
mutual engagement in teaching between a professor and his or
her students, there’s nothing quite like it. Students
keep me going.”
During the 2004 New Hampshire Presidential Primary, Tucker
undertook a documentary film project with a local homeless
man. Tucker filmed him as he attended events with all of the
Democratic primary candidates. The Nice Man Cometh was selected
for last year’s Carolina Film and Video Festival and
was screened for the UNH Center for the Humanities Documentary
Film Series. It also was awarded the Best Documentary at the
2005 CheapShot LA Film/Video Festival.
The subject of that film is no longer homeless. He has moved
away from the margin and toward the middle. That doesn’t
mean Tucker has lost interest. “I just gave him my old
computer and he’s online now,” Tucker says.
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