Tim Lougheed
The famous Russian satellite Sputnik went into orbit 50 years ago this fall, a few weeks after Ronald Bodkin’s teaching career was launched. And just as we continue to feel the impact of this first spacecraft’s high flying career, so does this professor of economics, who still finds himself soaring with students in the classroom.
Professor Bodkin was only 21 when it all began in 1957, having completed his undergraduate degree and started his master’s at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
“I actually had the academic rank of instructor, just on the basis of an honours BA in economics,” he recalls. “These were the days when they threw graduate students in as instructors of introductory courses.”
Many of Professor Bodkin’s students were just slightly younger than he was, and some were much older in the evening courses he occasionally taught. Regardless, he found himself immediately comfortable with his role, enjoying it today for precisely the same reason he enjoyed it then.
“It’s the excitement of seeing the light go on in a student’s face, or sharing a good presentation in class, with interaction,” he explains. “That’s remained pretty much constant.”
After finishing his doctorate, Professor Bodkin held positions at Yale and the University of Western Ontario, eventually arriving at the University of Ottawa in 1975. He has written 10 books and dozens of scholarly articles, with much of his research exploring macroeconomics, in the past and present and in various parts of the world.
In the early 1990s, however, he developed a specific interest in the economics of gender, examining issues surrounding women and the feminist perspective. Collaborating with the University’s Institute of Women’s Studies, he founded an introductory course in this field for the Department of Economics, which he teaches today, some six years after he was subjected to mandatory retirement.
Professor Bodkin wanted to continue working, and became part of a vocal lobbying effort to repeal the province’s retirement laws, a goal that was achieved late last year. Meanwhile in 2004, he was invited back to continue teaching in a semi-retired capacity, an opportunity that he welcomed.
Those intervening years when he was away from the classroom were among a handful of interruptions to his half century of pedagogy. Along the way, he has seen blackboards give way to PowerPoint presentations, although he insists that the development of the overhead projector for transparencies was the last worthwhile development in teaching technology.
Similarly, while he values the role of humour in developing a good rapport with students, he is careful to avoid jokes that may have become politically inappropriate, or simply dated. Conversely, he can pepper discussions about the economic fortunes of women with his own recollection of legally sanctioned employment bans in the 1950s and 1960s, when women could lose their jobs after getting married or becoming pregnant.
Above all, he values the direct encounters with students, who help him ensure that both he and the University are always trying their best.
“The students won’t let you ignore the teaching,” he says. “The students are going to keep you honest.”
