Ferguson is the college’s T.R. Garrison Chair of Humanities.
“If you like your job, the reward for doing it well is that you get to keep doing it,” Ferguson says.
Ferguson joined Wofford’s faculty in 2003 to lead the college’s theatre program and to transform it from being an extracurricular activity into a degree-granting program. Theatre and study abroad opportunities are passions of Ferguson’s.
He taught drama, American literature, translation and composition in Germany and founded the English-speaking University of Stuttgart Theater Project before returning to Wofford. Over the years, he’s continued to teach in Germany while on sabbatical and has led Wofford students abroad during Interim.
“Studying abroad is one of the greatest things about going to college, and the fact that students can have a Wofford experience outside of the happy confines of 429 North Church Street is exciting,” Ferguson says. “Moving forward, I’d like for more and more Wofford students to have the opportunity to get out of town, out of the country and out of their comfort zones, which is where real transformative learning occurs.”
Ferguson has four guiding principles that shape his professional practice:
Fun
“Aristotle argues that learning is the greatest pleasure available to humans — to that I would add that teaching exciting, interesting, important stuff to sharp, engaged Wofford students is also fun. Moreover, my academic discipline is theatre, which can be as intense and complicated as anything else, but if you do it right, it is also super fun.”
The liberal arts
“I believe in Wofford’s liberal arts model. The most efficient problem solving is done by people who can critically process large amounts of complex information, deal with abstraction and uncertainty, hold competing or even contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time and think around corners. The systematic study of the arts, sciences and humanities — the course of study that constitutes a Wofford education — is, in my opinion, an excellent way to prepare human beings to be those sorts of efficient problem solvers.”
Service
“Like everyone else, my relationship to work was influenced by my teachers and mentors. The example of commitment and service to a vision of what an institution could or should be was set by my friend, predecessor and the first Garrison chair, Dr. James R. Gross, along with the many women and men I’ve worked and collaborated with at Wofford over the years.”
Belief in theatre
“I have devoted my career to theatre because I loved it and because it felt inexhaustible: plays were not only great works of literary art, but they were also philosophy-in-action, demanding consistency and integrity from artists and audiences; great productions were sculptures, paintings, music and architecture, as well as a playground for history, psychology, science, math, language and religion. Theatre demands we dive deep in specific ways, but also that we stay current and participate in the cultural life of our community, our nation and the world.”
by Dudley Brown