Mike Awalt, Professor of Philosophy, has been at Belmont University since 1970 . He did his

undergraduate work (BA) at Baylor University, earned a MDiv from Southwestern Baptist Theological

Seminary in 1966 and received his Ph. D. from Baylor University in 1984. He received the Award for

Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology from the National Conference on College

Teaching and Leraning in April 1997. He also won the prestigious Ernest L. Boyer International Award

for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology in April of 1997. He has received the Chaney

Distinguished Professor Award at Belmont in 1985.

 

His Specializations include: Existentialism and Phenomenology, Postmodernism, Kierkegaard,

Nietzsche, and Philosophy of Film.

 

He spent a sabbatical in 1988 at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum at Perugia, Italy studying

Continental Philosophy. He now has a work in progress in the area of autobiography and philosophy

which grew out of a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship at the Louisiana State

University in 1991.

 

His most recent publications are "Decentered Selves" in the Personalist Forum, "Writing the Disaster:

Inscripting the Self in Plato, Kierkegaard, and Wiesel" in Medicne, Suffering, and Death, ed. by Rob

Fisher, and "The Owl of Minerva Flies on the Internet" in On the Horizon and also included in a new

CDROM entitled Technology Tools for Today's Classroom. He has co-presented with Dr. Littlejohn

"The Decentered Classroom: Problem-Based Learning and the WWW in an Introductory Philosophy

Class" at the National Conference on Teaching and Learning in April of 1997, the Computing and

Philosophy conference at Carnegia Mellon University in the summer of 1997, the Baptist Association

of Philosophy Teacher's meeting in the fall of 1997 at Samford University and the Lilly Conference on

Teaching at Miami Uinversity of Ohio in November of 1997 . They will make presentations on the use

of Problem based learning and the use of Technology in teaching Philosophy at the World Congress of

Philosophy to be held in the summer of 1998. In April of 1997, he presented "The Crisis of Morality:

Ethical Ambiguity in Picket Fences" at the Ethics and Popular Culture conference at the University of

South Florida.

 

Prof. Awalt is a member of the Conference on Persons, the Soren Kierkegaard Society, the Society for

Existentialism and Phenomenology, the Baptist Association of Philosophy Teachers, the American

Philosophy Association and the Popular Culture Association.

In 1994, Dr. Awalt developed the peer tutoring program at Belmont. 18 Philosophy majors and minors

have participated in the program as Peer Tutors in Introduction to Philosophy classes.

Dr. Awalt's office is located in Fidelity Hall, Room 316.