Brian Little in this month's TIME magazine cover story.
“Take Brian Little. He’s a research psychologist and superstar academic lecturer, his class on personality at Harvard was perennially one of the most popular at the university. He’s also a serious introvert…”
TIME subscribers can read the full article online.
By Brian R. Little | From the April-May 2010 Issue of Academic Matters
Sometimes, the academic life demands that faculty deny their fundamental personality traits. But if collegial respect includes allowing colleagues the latitude to nurture their true characters, academics can survive and thrive amidst the challenges of academic life.
It often comes down to personality. Despite the candidate’s obvious brilliance, tenure is denied. The comment “insufferably arrogant,” uttered almost sotto voce just before the vote, helps tip the scales. Across campus a dedicated but painfully shy associate professor is reading the term’s teaching evaluations and, once again, is simply devastated. And over at the faculty club, a newly minted Professor Emeritus bounces into the retirement party to find only three attendees at the event, trying in vain to create the illusion of a throng. Later, at the bar, the reluctant pseudo-celebrants agree on one thing — this wouldn’t have happened to any of their other colleagues. Personality matters.
Continue readingLindsay Kines
CanWest News Service
Saturday, July 05, 2003
Psychology professor Brian Little, who grew up in Oak Bay, is one of the most popular teachers at Harvard University.
It’s a sunny Friday morning at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel and the man voted a favourite professor by this year’s graduating class at Harvard University seems happy to be home. Brian Little, 62, will be wearing a sweltering, blue and gold doctoral gown later in the day for his class reunion at the University of Victoria. But right now the former Empress hotel page boy looks cool and relaxed in shorts and a golf shirt, a patio umbrella overhead, the ocean stretching out behind him.
“This is home,” he says. “It really is home.”
He grew up just steps from here in the house his father built with his own hands — “everything except the electrical work” — the house where his family gathered around the piano each night, singing and laughing.
A family photo of Brian Little when he was six years old.
It was there, perhaps, that the young performer first emerged. Brian Little, boy soprano, began singing on stage at age two and, even though puberty eventually stole his voice and left him with an “utterly mediocre baritone,” he’s still wowing university crowds all these years later.
His children have a theory about his teaching, he says. “They say it’s my way of singing.”
There is more to it than that, of course. There’s an immigrant father’s belief in the power of education; a young man’s delight at scientific discovery; and the dedication of a born introvert, who, every day, goes against his nature to connect with his students.
There is more to it than that, of course. There’s an immigrant father’s belief in the power of education; a young man’s delight at scientific discovery; and the dedication of a born introvert, who, every day, goes against his nature to connect with his students. Continue reading