Retirement – Houghton STAR

By Evan Babbitt ('25)

UPDATED: OCTOBER 8, 2024 7:32 PM EDT | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED OCTOBER 4, 2024 11:50 AM EDT

The Ortlip Gallery will host a reception for the Ted Murphy Legacy exhibition on Saturday at 7 p.m.

The show is composed of 77 alumni artists and includes over 80 pieces—ranging from landscapes to abstracts, and watercolors to fabrics. It celebrates Professor Ted Murphy’s 38 years of teaching art and art history at Houghton University.

“It means a great deal to me,” Prof. Murphy said. “It is visual evidence of not only my influence on past students but our entire department’s.”

According to the Gallery Director, Linda Knapp, about 80% of the alumni represented in the show are full time artists. Murphy also notes that 12 of the alumni shown are now professors as well.

“Many are professional artists,” he said. “Some just manage to continue to work despite their complicated lives with family and their other work. It is gratifying to see such outstanding work from these wonderful people.”

One of the alumni presenting work in the show, Jeff Babbitt (Class of ‘96), recalled: “It was during Painting I class with Murph when I decided I wanted to major in art. Murph was the perfect combination of hilarious and brilliant. He was a true connoisseur of the liberal arts, seamlessly blending literature, history, and culture into classroom discussions and everyday conversation.”

Knapp noted that a flood of people wanted to be in the show when asked, which stands as a testament to Prof. Murphy’s presence in the classroom.

“[Murphy] is really adept artistically and has created a safe space for generations of students to find their calling as artists,” Knapp commented. “He has influenced people by his works, but more greatly by who he is—not flashy, but by his daily interactions and listening ear.”

People are flying in from the Netherlands and California to come to this show, Knapp added.

“Houghton has [had] a rich art tradition here long before I arrived,” Prof. Murphy said. “The artist that preceded me fought the good fight to make Art matter.”

Prof. Murphy finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1980 at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, and then received his Master of Fine Arts in 1983 at The Ohio State University. Before coming to HU he was an assistant professor at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine.

“[T]o be a teacher you must have students. But nowhere is it required that we like them,” Prof. Murphy noted. “Just teach them.”

Many who came into the art program were glad to be able to study art seriously and have many mediums to work with. Prof. Murphy feels blessed to have students who he loves and appreciates.

“In the twilight of a career,” he said, “every person is aware of the question Henry James said we should all ask. “Was it worth it”? I believe it has all been worth it. It has been a very privileged life here in Houghton. Nancy and I raised our children here and by their reports they each also love this place. God has blessed us beyond measure.”

Prior to the beginning of the show’s reception will be an open panel discussion hosted by alumni artists at 4 p.m. in the CFA Recital Hall. ★

Professor of history, William Doezema, who came to Houghton College in forty years ago, will be retiring in the spring of 2017.

Eliza Burdick-Risser ‘18, took Recent American History, 1920 to Present, with Doezema. Burdick-Risser recalled a semester of history made vivid through Doezema’s rich teaching. “You walk into Professor Doezema’s class at eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning,” she said. “You sit down, and he starts with discussion questions on the reading from the night before.” However, the resemblance to a predictable lecture stops there.

“He was really good at providing examples of what happened, because he experienced a lot of this stuff. He was able to tell us about the Cold War, and what it was truly and honestly like to grow up during that time period,”she said. Burdick-Risser stated Doezema’s teaching gave the students in the class a greater tie to history, as well as a broader perspective on major events. “At twenty years old you haven’t experienced, a Cold War,” she said. “And most stuff that has happened, we haven’t even had a say or a vote in it.”

Doezema joined Houghton College’s history department in 1979, and has been teaching at Houghton for almost forty years. In addition to teaching, he enjoys historical research, as well as presenting and publishing scholarly work on a variety of subjects ranging from the Salem witch trials to China’s Taiping Rebellion.

The history department’s small size allows for close working relationships between faculty. “Teaching in an area of academia I love and learning much from colleagues inside and outside my department have been incalculable privileges,” Doezema said. He added, “I’ve been struck over the years by how much we complement one another.”

Those colleagues seem to agree. Meic Pearse, a fellow professor of history, described the small, tight-knit department as a blessing, “[W]e all get along so well together; departmental meetings are mostly punctuated by funny stories and laughter.”

Professor of history, David Howard, was one of the faculty members who interviewed Doezema for his teaching position years ago and said Doezema is “a wonderful colleague; absolutely a person you can count on.” According to Howard, Doezema’s presence, in conjunction with Houghton’s other history professors, has helped to balance and strengthen the department. In addition to maintaining a warm dynamic with fellow professors, Doezema said, “The most satisfying side of teaching … has been helping struggling students develop confidence in strengths they scarcely realized they possessed.”

Burdick-Risser said she appreciates the way Doezema drew connections between the past and the present, and navigated those topics in a way that allowed students to reach their own conclusions about politically-charged issues. “He never made it a thing of ‘Democrat versus Republican’ … I found that really nice. It was just history for what it was” stated Burdick-Risser.

Pearse affirmed this sentiment and stated the world needs “non-mythologized, non-romanticized, non-ideological history.” Otherwise, “All we do is delude ourselves and confirm our own prejudices, and fail to understand our own place in the world, or why others act as they do—and so fail to anticipate what is likely to happen next.”“[A]s one historian has put it,” says Doezema, “history is ‘an act of self-consciousness.’ History can make us all more discerning Christians.”

Howard said, if Doezema decided to leave Houghton after retiring in the spring he will be missed. He said, “There are very few people I’ll miss as much as Bill.”