Project Advisor, Philosophy, Religion, and Humanities and Dean, Curriculum Management
Grant Potts is a scholar of religion, philosophy, and the humanities. He currently serves as Dean of Curriculum Management, providing programs at Austin Community College (ACC) with support on all processes related to curriculum development and review and approval by the college, state, and other regulatory bodies. He is also a professor in the Philosophy, Religion, and Humanities Department. His interest in character education grows out of both his research on religious traditions and ritual systems as normative systems and his teaching of introductory Ethics and Humanities courses.
How has your community college teaching experience shaped your character over your career?
Teaching in a community college has taught me, more than anything else, that good teaching, and the development of good knowledge systems, is rooted in caring relationships defined by integrity and a commitment to truth. Working with students in developing foundational understanding of the courses I teach demonstrates to me every day how important it is to not only share methods and knowledge, but to model a commitment to the intellectual virtues that are required for those methods to effectively produce knowledge. I’ve also learned, in listening to my students speak of their own lives, that we cannot segment intellectual virtues from other virtues, and that ultimately we must give space for students to explore and understand how their academic learning connects with their moral and social concerns.