Before he came to Hillsdale, Rhetoric and Public Address Professor Ethan Stoneman taught class wearing a beret, and his students called him “Sir.” Now, he opts for slacks and lets students lead class discussions.
Stoneman joined Hillsdale this semester after leaving his post at the Virginia Military Institute, where he taught English, rhetoric, and humanistic studies. Stoneman completed his undergraduate studies at University of Pittsburgh in 2006, earned his master’s in communication at University of Colorado, Boulder in 2009, and returned to Pittsburgh to complete his doctorate, finishing in 2014.
While an assistant professor at the Virginia Military Institute, where he bore the rank of Major in the Virginia Militia, Stoneman faced the challenge of teaching students with two full-time jobs: military training and academics.
Stoneman said the workload heightened students’ stress levels considerably over those of civilian college students, which influenced his approach to teaching. Because of students’ mental exhaustion, Stoneman said, he had to teach in a lecture-style format.
“It was an honor and a privilege to have helped contribute, if only in some small way, to VMI’s mission of forming the citizen-soldier,” Stoneman said.
Stoneman said he was drawn to Hillsdale because its environment and ideals stood out among other liberal-arts colleges.
“The idea of being able to teach at a place that took the liberal-arts legacy seriously, and was committed to preserving it, sounded like a wonderful opportunity,” Stoneman said. “Having colleagues that I respected and could talk to, that collegial atmosphere, is also something that is no longer the norm.”
Kirsten Kiledal, chairman of Hillsdale’s logic and rhetoric department, described how the quality of her conversations with Stoneman helped her and the hiring committee to choose him to fill an open position.
“There was a difference with Dr. Stoneman from the others from the beginning, in that he and his work engaged the faculty who were part of the [hiring] committee from across the whole campus,” Kiledal said. “When we met together afterward, the talk was still about what he was studying and the way he had presented it to his students.”
In his studies, Stoneman said, he unites rhetoric and political theory.
“If I want to write about things, I want to actually have something to say,” Stoneman said, regarding his decision to study philosophy.
With this motivation, Stoneman developed his political theory, inspired by the pragmatism of Niccolo Machiavelli as well as the principles of Plato’s “Republic,” particularly its focus on education, poetry, and the requirements for creating and maintaining the good society.
“My focus is on how we maintain subjective adherence to the political community, and then [determine] what are the symbolic threats to it,” Stoneman said. He explained that his philosophy is concerned with the preservation of ideals and shared values, rather than solely theorizing about the ideals themselves.
His style has already impacted students, such as sophomore Jackie Eubanks, who’s working with him to create an interdisciplinary major called multimedia communications.
“[His class] has inspired me to pursue communications as a major,” said Eubanks, who is enrolled in his mass communications course. She said the major will be a way for her to master all forms of media, to become fluent in them in the real world.
When he’s not inspiring students in the classroom, Stoneman enjoys his new home in Allen, Michigan, situated on a sandy dirt road, off another sandy dirt road. Together, he, his wife, and their two children explore the area, canopied with trees and next to a lake, while two Newfoundland dogs, Odin and Dos, play in the shade and the water.
