When you enter the English department and head towards the office of Dr. Daniel Pigg you can expect to be greeted by a door that is covered with memes about pigs and an office that is filled with books. Behind the man that sits in the office chair is blank walls; walls that lack the framed degrees from a professional student.
Pigg’s arrival at UTM looked much like campus today, it was the fall of 1989 and he had just finished his doctorate of English at UTK. Pigg knew that he was going to be leaving one system school to join the next.
“UTM is the university that gave me the opportunity to do what I have always wanted to do,” Pigg said, recalling that UTM was the only school to allow him to teach in multiple areas.
Pigg grew up in Columbia, Tennessee, and remembers his passion for teaching coming from the calamity of observing his grandmother’s third-grade classroom when he was four years old.
“It seemed like the right place to be. The classroom was a feel-good zone. Doesn’t mean it isn’t challenging, it just means it is my home,” he said.
The thought of taking that passion for teaching to the level of professor began when he was merely eight years old. As a joke, a family member called him “Professor.”
Though at the time he was unsure of the meaning of this new word, he knew that teaching meant there was always an opportunity to share ideas. That is what is most important about education to Pigg.
As with many educators, ‘The Professor’ still allows himself the growth opportunities of a student. In fact, the amount of degrees he has is often a joke amongst students. After all, most undergraduate students can’t imagine surviving their first degree, let alone the subsequent seven. That’s right, Daniel Pigg currently has eight degrees.
As if that isn’t enough, Pigg’s ninth degree is under works and he plans to finish it in May 2019, if all goes well.
Many times, Pigg happened into his degrees. He had intentions to take a few classes and someone, like an adviser or registrar, would tell him how close he was to a degree and encouraged him to finish.
“One time at MTSU, I was taking a couple of courses in support of a doctorate education degree that I was working on at Memphis. I took nine hours and a professor said, ‘A master’s degree is only 36 hours, you are already a third of the way there. Why don’t you just finish it out?’ and I did,” Pigg said.
That happens to be very similar to the situation that the incessant student is in now. He was taking a couple of courses offered by a scholar of the New Testament studies on the historical Jesus and over time had only eight hours left to finish the degree.
“Sometimes degrees are planned, sometimes degrees happen,” Pigg said. “That’s probably why I would not be the greatest advisor in the world.”
“Learning comes with its rewards- like recognizing that knowledge is always growing and that there are opportunities for learning new things,” Pigg said.
His passion for learning also motivates him to try new things when leading his own classes.
In his British Literature class, students looked at a poem from Ben Jonson on the plays of William Shakespeare and debate whether Jonson is being serious, comic or satiric when Jonson refers to Shakespeare as “the soul of an age.” Watching students develop ingenious points for their reasoning of Jonson’s deposition in his poem is particularly interesting and fun for all.
He also finds that incorporating pop culture into his lectures gives the material a new aspect of approachability that students may overlook. For example, pairing poems with Ed Sheeran songs allows for students to understand and better grasp the secular and personal poems.
Pigg encourages students to enjoy the educational experience along the way; not to look at a college experience as a “pipe dream” for the future, but to live, experience and appreciate their time as they’re going along. The process of education, he believes, is as valuable as the product of a degree.
“The last thing I want to be remembered for,” Pigg said, “is that I helped pass along some knowledge from the past.”
“But [I] encouraged the students to think about that knowledge critically, not to accept it blindly. [Students should] realize that knowledge comes out of curiosity and that the knowledge we have is constantly under review, because education is never finished, until the last breath.”
