Joining the Judy Genshaft Honors College at the start of fall 2023, Dr. Blaze Marpet has spent the past semester sharing his passion for philosophy, religion, and education with the Honors community as a visiting assistant professor of instruction at the 最新天美传媒鈥檚 (USF) St. Petersburg campus.
鈥淲hat animates my work is an interest in philosophy as a guide to living well.鈥� - Dr. Blaze Marpet, visiting professor of instruction at the Judy Genshaft Honors College
Originally hailing from the suburbs of New York City, Marpet teaches a variety of
Honors courses including: Acquisition of Knowledge: Practical Wisdom and Interdisciplinary
Inquiry, Evolution and Ethics: Darwinism and its Implications, Happiness and the Meaning
of Life, and Mindfulness, Meditation, and Modernity in a Global Context.
Honors News met with Professor Marpet to learn more about his approach to teaching
and his excitement at the opportunity to work with St. Pete Honors students.
Welcome to the Honors College!
Thank you! I鈥檓 thrilled to be here.
What is your educational background?
I hold a Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern University and an M.A. in Religious
Studies with a focus on Sanskrit and Indian philosophy and religions from the University
of Chicago.
What do you research and how does this tie into your teaching?
My research interests are in philosophy, specifically the history of philosophy, both
in Greco-Roman antiquity and in classical India.
These interests tie in very closely to the courses I'm teaching here at the Honors
College, which include Acquisition of Knowledge, and Evolution and Ethics, which focuses
on overarching questions about the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution by
natural selection.
How are you acclimating to USF's St. Petersburg campus?
I think the St. Petersburg campus affords such a unique opportunity because of its
small class sizes and students coming from all different disciplines in a beautiful
location where students can avail themselves of the waterfront and vibrant city life.
What lessons or advice do you hope to impart during your time in the Honors College?
If I could just give one single piece of advice to all my students, it would be to
cultivate a sort of two-fold approach to the learning they're going to engage with
in the Honors College:
The first would be to approach their learning as a skill to acquire and not some innate
disposition that they're either good or bad at, but to apply themselves and make effort
and respond to feedback in various ways so that they can constantly improve.
And the second aspect I'd hope that they could cultivate is just the love for learning
for its own sake!