Most students work hard through college to make money after graduation. Students in Professor Ronald Wallace's English 167 class, on the other hand, might make money by simply attending lecture. Wallace's rather unorthodox teaching methods include contests, costumes and $100 giveaways.
Unfortunately, this semester is Wallace's last time teaching \Monsters, Madness, Melancholy and Mirth: Self and Society in Selected British and American Fiction and Poetry,"" in which he keeps around 270 students interested and learning with surprising and entertaining lectures.
Early in the semester, Wallace planned a lecture packed with abstract, intellectual material.
He said he realized, ""This was not something in the beginning of the semester that was going to grab the students and make them excited.""
So, he announced at the beginning of class that the reward for listening carefully would be a $100 bill.
""I thought that would wake them up, and certainly it did. Everybody was rapt by this material,"" he said.
At the end of class, students guessed the contents of a box at the front of the room based on lecture material and Wallace's clues.
""They all had ideas about what might be in the box, and the ideas they were throwing out indicated that in fact they had processed the material in the lecture,"" he said.
According to Wallace, ""Once you've done something like that, then people sort of expect something in every lecture, so what makes it fun for me to lecture is to have something in each that is unexpected and lively.""
When the class studied Emily Dickinson, Wallace asked students to recite a poem in front of the class.
""Whoever did so the most dramatically would win a fabulous prize, either a can of Spam, a bag of gummy worms or another $100 bill,"" he said.
Also while studying Emily Dickinson, Wallace employed his opera-singing daughter's help to demonstrate how Dickinson used hymn meters in her poetry. Finding his vocal abilities lacking, Wallace decided to call his daughter Emily, named after the poet, in Australia-at 4:00 a.m. her time.
""I put her on speakerphone and talked to her, had the class talk to her a little bit, and then she sang the poem to the hymn,"" he said.
One of Wallace's teaching assistants, Ann Doggart, said of the phone call, ""It was very touching. I think it humanized him too.""
When the class studied Emily Bront??, they discussed unreliable narrators, so Wallace held a lying contest.
""People confessed the lies that they've told in their lives and voted on who was the best liar and tied that in to the novel,"" he said.
UW-Madison freshman Jessica Pizur admitted, ""I was once pulled over by a cop, and to get out of the ticket I poured water on my lap and told the cop I peed in my pants.""
Her fabrication not only got her out of the ticket, but also won her a $100 bill from her professor.
Wallace also lectures in costume. He dressed as the minister from Nathaniel Hawthorne's ""The Minister's Black Veil"" and the monster from Mary Shelley's ""Frankenstein."" As the characters, Wallace let them tell their own stories and argue their sides. ""I think that helps the novel come alive,"" Wallace said.
In studying Walt Whitman, the class discussed how he described his poetry as a ""barbaric yawp,"" a ""cry of joy and excitement and emotion and power and sexuality and all of the things that are Whitman,"" Wallace said.
""So we had a yawping contest in the middle of the lecture in which I had various people give me their impressions of a barbaric yawp, and we voted on who was best,"" Wallace said.
He instructed the winner to yawp every time he heard the word ""yawp"" for the rest of the semester. From then on when the students seemed to be losing interest, Wallace could just say the word ""yawp,"" and they would wake up.
Wallace's antics not only kept students awake, but they also keep students coming to class.
""It's one of the few classes that if you don't go, you might feel like you missed something good,"" said UW-Madison sophomore Sarah Berglund.
""It's the only class I've never missed,"" said UW-Madison freshman Matt Garfield.
Wallace intends for the entertainment to enhance rather than distract from learning.
""It sounds like all we're doing is goofy stuff, but the fact is, in a 50-minute lecture, maybe three minutes is taken up with this. But that three minutes, through the lecture, I think enables the students to keep focused on the material,"" Wallace said.
Wallace said his teaching style has evolved over the years. When he first started teaching the course in 1973, he ""just taught it straight as a big lecture course to freshmen."" He soon realized, however, that students were taking the course to fill a requirement and not out of their interest in literature.
""Many of them probably would not go on in literature or may not even read fiction or poetry after this course. ... It became clear to me that in a course like that, you can't just let the subject matter carry the course. There has to be a certain entertainment value as well,"" he said.
He quoted Sir Philip Sidney, who said, ""Literature is meant for instruction and delight."" Wallace said he believed people read literature first ""because it's fun, it's entertaining,"" but ""You also read literature for instruction, to learn things about yourself, to learn things about the world you live in, and to learn something about the history of your culture.""
According to Wallace, lecture should mirror literature. It should both instruct and delight.
Although he will not be instructing and delighting English 167 students anymore, Wallace will be teaching other courses, mainly in creative writing.
