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>> Thomas F. Freeman.
And I was in the Department of Religious Studies for about 20 years, starting around 1972.
And Niels Nielsen was the head of the department.
We were friends in the East.
He went to Yale and I went to Andover Newton Theological Seminary.
Both of us found ourselves in Houston.
And I was in administration at Texas Southern University.
And he visited me and asked me, Didn't I miss teaching?
I said, Man, yes, I miss it.
But all this is administration.
He said, Why don't you come over to Rice and teach for us?
I said, No, that's impossible, because I have the administrative responsibilities.
And somehow there was interaction between the two presidents.
And my president called me into his office and said, Tom,
I have approved a recommendation that you teach at Rice.
And I didn't know anything about a recommendation having been made.
And I came over to visit Rice.
And after that, I was invited to be a part of the Department of Religion.
And I introduced several innovative courses.
Talking to persons who were in the course,
it made some kind of impression, because they still remember it.
They remember what took place in it.
And I have forgotten what took place in the class,
but they -- they remember what took place.
I had courses in contemporary religion.
Then I taught a course in -- The Ethical Community Dilemmas.
And those are the kinds of courses that attracted students.
And the classes got so large that they had to restrict the class.
And you had to sign up a semester ahead of time, in order to take the course.
Now, at the time, while I was doing this teaching,
I had no idea that I was making an impression on anybody.
And I wasn't doing it to make an impression.
I was just doing what I thought ought to be done in that kind of course,
while a teacher on this kind of campus.
And most of the students seemed highly motivated.
And I suspect that is because most of them excel --
most of them had come from backgrounds which had encouraged excellence.
And I found students very good.
I found them thorough in the performance of the assignments given.
That was very encouraging.
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